Starting today, I am going to publish a Monday motivation series. It will be called “M for Monday and Motivations”
Why such title? actually it is an idea that arises just recently as I am currently working on making the ABC card slot for my little one. So it’s like A for apple, B for Ball and etc are the things that are going on in my head.
My intention of writing this is not just to motivate others but mostly to motivate myself. To keep myself at pace and at least to be putting myself some fear or sort of shamefulness if I do not do as what I suggest others.
The thing about motivation is that, somehow it pumps you a little while, and then it gets flat again. That’s why you need motivation session every now and then. And I believe that, Monday is the best day to this. Not just because it has the same first letter to it. Really. Monday is when most of the people feels it is so hard to get out of bed, so burden by workloads and even so lazy to do anything at all after such a good weekend.
So, what I do and find it works too.. is to give myself a little bit of boost of motivation each Monday.
I get Monday blues all the time. Since I have been in Canberra, there is hardly any weekend that is not busy and packed. Most of our weekend are spent either at the park having picnic with friends or tidying our little home. But it is never enough a weekend you know. So you get the point when it comes to Monday. I feel like the weekend is truly not over just yet. At least I wish it would not.
Anyway, back to the motivation here.
I have been organizing things lately. Well, at least at my office. I am now testing it to my home too.
I believe organizing things really help in setting the mood for many, many days after that. I had a down moment last week as it was like the first week after the long holidays. I guess you’ll get this every now and then if you are doing PhD like me. There are times when you get lost and all. So this, I believe is the moment you should do the less important thing BUT still will help you do the more important thing in the future more effectively. One of these things is to get things organized. Yes, it takes time to this and you will not do it when you are so well pumped up with research ideas. You do this when you don’t have any idea where to start or lost. It works like a therapy to me. I love seeing things organized. My suggestion for any PhD student is to get your literature sorted nicely. Have them in good folders and sort them out according to whatever work best for you.
Need an idea? Mine is sorted in categories of what I might need it for in the future writing or experimental ideas. All of them are named with the last name of the author, followed by the year of publication and a little keyword. Here is what it looks like currently:
Of course you can have it any ways you want it to be. This is just an idea which I found to be very effective for me. Now, you should do this at an early stage of your PhD. Get into the habit of keeping it and maintaining it too! Otherwise it’ll get so messed up and too many to organize and will totally diminish your motivation to have it organized anyway. I have my reference updated every now and then into the “ever so helping” endnote programme. I love this programme. It helps reduce stress in organizing the reference and writing them in whatever paper or article. I totally recommend this. Even if you are not fully capable of using the whole function of endnote, using it sort our reference and getting it to your Microsoft word during writing is totally worth it.
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