I went through the exact same thing a year ago. I know exactly of what you speak. A couple things that helped me:
- Lower your expectations for daily output. The (seeming) enormity of the task paralized me. I told myself "today will be a success if I can get one page done before noon, even if it's crappy. Whatever else happens today doesn't matter". Getting myself rolling with an achievable goal in the morning led to more productive days, since the pressure would be off in the afternoon.
- Find a non-judgmental friend, and tell them you will be emailing them your daily output at 6pm (or whatever) every day. Tell them they don't have to read it but you would like some positive feedback please, even if you've just written a couple paragraphs.
- After getting deep in a hole, I went and talked to my supervisor. I said "I'm having trouble with this, but I really want to finish. Here's what I have done, now let's set achievable goals to get to the end". It was hard to admit how far behind on things I was, but that was really the first step towards actually finishing.
- Sometimes it was good to just worry about getting words on the page and not worry if they made sense or not. For me, editing was much easier than trying to write a sensible first draft.
- Set hard limits on how long you're going to write for each day and each week. I decided I was going to write 9-5, Monday to Friday and try to live like a normal person. If 5pm rolled around and I hadn't got much done? Doesn't matter, heading home. This ended up making me way more productive during my writing hours and stopped the thesis from consuming my life.
This is a really horrible open ended question, but I need help.
It is not a horrible question. Search "thesis" in AskMe, or "thesis procrastination" on google to see hundreds of other people asking the exact same question. Knowing I wasn't alone was I real help to me. Good luck!
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