This is not surprising that you have a few weeks left of thesis submission and you have not written even a single word. Now then you will cut off from your personal life and completely get engaged in your thesis work. In fact, you will compromise with your food and sleeping style, but you can maintain a balance between your personal life and thesis writing.
Revise your schedule
Many PhD scholars become unable to follow their schedules and deadlines. They are always burdened by responsibilities and other tasks that they are left with no choice to cut down on hours for social activities and sleeping. You should revise your schedule according to your priorities. Don’t treat your schedule as a permanent schedule as it keeps changing as your priorities change. Therefore you should revise your schedule every week.
Don’t give priority to emails and social media chats
PhD is no picnic; it requires you to do intensive research, lab experimentations, thesis writing, and preparing defense statements. Your PhD project should be your first priority. Digital communication is the greatest cause of sucking time and energy. If you start your day by responding emails and messages on social media sites, you are prioritising others tasks. In fact, this will be killing your time more than you expected because other people would respond you at the same time if they would be available for chat that time. You should think wisely. First you should give priority to your thesis writing during a day, and when you get some free time, you should proceed with responding emails.
Segregate your project
One of the biggest problems that PhD scholars face during a programme is they are not able to decide how to start their projects. They are overwhelmed by long projects that they keep putting off, and consequently the time of submission comes to a head, and they start writing long hours losing the quality of their work. To avoid this situation you should consult your supervisors and ask some suggestions how you can break down your long projects into smaller tasks, and accordingly maintain your schedule.
Decide your goals
You should set goals for everyday. Plan earlier what you want to achieve by the end of the day. Give rank to your all tasks that you decide to finish by the end of the day. Attempt big and difficult tasks in the beginning of the day, and then easier and smaller tasks. If you complete difficult part of your scheduled work in the middle of the day, you will be motivated. This approach will encourage you complete your scheduled task daily without affecting your health and the quality of your work.
Focus on one task at a time
Nowadays being multitasking has become a trend, but unfortunately it makes you jack of all trades. When you are doing at least two tasks together, your mind is switching back and forth between tasks. This deteriorates the quality of work and incapacitates you to concentrate on your work properly. However if you are concentrating on two tasks, you should set a short timer for each tasks so that you will be completely focusing on a particular tasks that time. For instance, you are working as a freelance manager for a company, and you are supposed to coordinate the queries of other staff on hangouts. So decide a fixed schedule when you will be available for their queries resolution such as 10.30am to 12.30pm and 3.30pm to 5.30pm. This will help you completely focus on queries at the time of query resolutions, and the rest time you will be able to work on your thesis.
