Moving toward PhD title: Been stupefied (the third and last part)

Several posts ago we started to discuss what should you do to break down from been stupefied working on PhD thesis or articles. In addition to communicating the problem to friends or your supervisor you can also:

1. Postpone your work for some time and switch the type of activity – go for a walk, start building a house or garden. Here you hope that your brain will recharge after some time and you will be able to use it again later … after it was cleaned from all details you never actually needed. Once the light will turn on again in the brain and will do even more than you did so far.
   The biggest disadvantage is – lost time. Besides you can loose the taste for the research and find more useful to deal with the current work task, friends and family on the constant base instead of PhD activities.
   



2. Leave you ideas for a while and start researching others. For example to read recent articles from your or neighbour topic hoping to get from there something, that could either be useful for you or even will give you a new, inspiring idea.
   
   The biggest disadvantage in those approaches is sufficiently decreased productivity and general tiredness that will definitely follow the no-ideas period As soon as you are not concentrated on the topic you find attractive, you will think that it is boring and is not worth to spend your time at all. Especially if you read others articles and struggle to understand the point in these papers. The reason is very simple – your body try to recover from pressure you put on it in the past by routing available resources on other type of activities or just on rest. Generally it is good as you must relax for certain time, but there is a danger to loose a taste of research, forget how interesting it as it is much more boring without details when you look at it from a huge distance.