Where to write your thesis?

Why is “Where to write your thesis?” an important question to ask yourself? Because it receives so little attention. If anything goes particularly well, or goes badly, we very, very often first relate it directly to ourselves:

“I can’t write for ten minutes straight.”

“I just don’t have enough discipline.”

About the importance of considering where to write your thesis.

Study after study shows that if you put the person in the right environment, that a lot may change. So we change the context, then a lot more changes. Next time you have unproductive thoughts like the above, check whether there is something in your work environment that you might be able to change. Is there something that needs to be optimized? Put differently: Where to write your thesis?

So, what are my thoughts and experiences about place? About the place where your work happens. That context is also what very, very often gets little attention in the scientific literature. Whereas the physical environment and the material that you’re working with is really of great importance, of great importance.

There are a couple of things regarding locality that I want to address here. This is, of course, a fairly arbitrary list and it’s absolutely not exhaustive. But I think it’s a good start. Maybe it will give you some good thoughts about where to write your thesis. So let’s start with a very simple question Should we rather work in the same place or should we rather change?

Constant location or flexibility?

The stability and familiar environment, of course, speaks to the fact that this makes it easier to build habits. And that can help us before. We may not even have to motivate ourselves there to do anything and get started. As soon as my butt touches the chair in the coffee house where I usually work, I’m completely in work mode. It works.

And it doesn’t work badly at all.

At the same time, of course, the habit brings with it a few problems, because not all work is created equal.

If we look closely at what we actually do all day, we realize that there are very different things to do. And that’s true even if we’re talking about a niche here, like scientific work. Even in this niche, there are very different things to do: Analyzing data needs something different than producing text, writing a discussion needs something different than setting up a research question, and setting up an interview appointment with someone is something else again.

@drdominikfroehlich #1 scheduling mistake of students while writing their thesis #thesis #research #writingtips ♬ original sound – Dr. Dominik – Thesis Coach

And all these different tasks have different requirements. In this respect, they can also be better stimulated in a different environment, can develop better there.

So let’s hold on: find the place for your planned activity that fits best . Freewriting? The coffee shop is often a good place for this. There’s really scientific evidence galore here, it’s a good place to write. For analysis, perhaps an orderly, sterile environment pays off. Of course, that depends on yourself as a person. Observe yourself a little bit: What kind of environment do you need to be focused or creative (I guess those are the essential two poles at stake here)?

Distraction

One factor that is also essential is your own distractibility. Your focus. The fewer things there are to influence you, the easier it is to stay attentive to your work. Make everything as easy as possible for yourself to work well. Does your phone need to charge at your work location? Maybe there shouldn’t even be a charger there, or not even the space to put your phone down. Then there won’t be that choice at all, and you’ll save yourself a lot of distraction problems.

Implementation

To implement these thoughts means, above all, to be mobile. And for that, of course, it’s very, very helpful if you can move your equipment along. Here I just want to share something with you, which I think was probably one of the best investments worth 30 euros or less in recent years. And that’s a good keyboard for my phone. At first I had one with a cable, simply because I don’t like Blutooth even turned up. Currently I use a wireless one. With both were actually only important to me that the keys are not too small, that it is more like a normal, full keyboard and I can write as fast as on the laptop.

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@drdominikfroehlich No excuses in the gym, no excuses in thesis writing #GoSpring #thesis #writing #gymlife ♬ Let’s go – Official Sound Studio