How to fool oneself? Joan Bolker in her Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day (Amazon UK, US) has some crafty insights into behaviorism, and how to use these tricks - well, not really against oneself, but against one's tendencies to do anything else but stay focused with the PhD dissertation writing.
One of such useful tips is, "Set up deadlines so they involve rewards, not punishments." Deadline is a nasty sounding word, isn't it? But if you can fool yourself to wait for the deadlines, you can conquer mountains and fall in love with deadlines. How??
Firstly, you have to think what either motivates you, or what you find difficult to resist while writing/doing research. Secondly, you have to set (moderate) goals. Some will need several goals per day and big goals every weekend. Some find it easier to set goals relating to how many pages they have written, or when they have finished a sub-chapter or chapter. Thirdly, you have to decide how much each goal is worth, and how you are going to reward yourself.
Again, Bolker says, "Be a blatant behaviorist and bribe yourself shamelessly..."
I use this trick every day: I allow myself to go to Facebook after I have translated a whole chapter from Greek/Hebrew Bible or read a chapter of a book (sometimes I am too excited that I skip the "reward". Facebook equals with news and email, too. Except that I try not to open my email more than few times a day; it is easy to skim through few entries in Facebook, but usually emails require some action from you. I haven't come up with good rewards concerning bigger goals, partly because this system still works for me, and partly because I couldn't afford bribe myself with rewards that would be really worth pursuing for. I am sure that day comes when I will desperately need big carrots hanging over my keyboard, but until now, Facebook and its other silly friends will have to do. It is fun to fool oneself!
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