Have you ever felt stuck while writing your master’s or PhD thesis, essay or any piece of writing? Have you ever experienced a phase where you find yourself staring at a blank page on your computer screen? Do you ever feel stuck and lost and feel like your mind is blocked.

If you are reading this right now, I am guessing you are probably someone like me. I remember being stuck, lost and overwhelmed by the thought of writing. I was once at your stage when I was procrastinating by reading articles on how to write thesis or how to overcome writing block and procrastination. May be reading such articles is not always procrastination but a way to find a solution for our writing dilemma. Now when I look at my PhD thesis hard cover, I say to myself how on earth I was able to write that.. Also, all of my experimental chapters were published in high impact factor journals, before the first anniversary of my PhD viva.

So, if a procrastinator like me, can become a proud holder of PhD degree and author of peer-reviewed papers, you too can be.

Lets get to the point. There is an easy way to overcome this sort of brain block which works very well for me. Firstly, grab a drink of your choice, tea, coffee, milk, water.. whatever you like- note this is the most important step do not skip it. All you have to do now is open a blank document, name it as “Free writing” and start typing anything, literally ANYTHING.. that’s how simple it is. Actually for the very first time, I got this ‘free writing’ advice from my roommate while doing my Master’s thesis. And later I came to know that this is actually a thing!

Anyway, you can start writing, say, “I have got this annoying writing block and I am so overwhelmed at the moment. All I can think about is my thesis” and keep writing a paragraph or a whole page. Do not worry about spellings or punctuation at this point. You can also write something else, something about the weather, or your plans for the weekend or holidays, it could literally be anything. See that’s how simple it is. This will help give you a kick for writing and you will kind of get out of the “spell” and will be able to start writing instead of just thinking about writing and staring into the wilderness of a blank white page. Keep a notebook and pen next to you to jot down any important ideas or tasks that come to your head. This will help to not get distracted from the ‘free writing’.

What worked for me was that as I started writing gibberish, I actually switched to writing about the chapter or the topic. For example, I would type:

“My aim is to finish this chapter by xyz date or week or month, and the areas I need to cover are 

• abc
• def…

I also need to add about blah blah of the xyz part.” And so on.. You can ignore the bullet points and simply write as paragraph and at this point don’t stress over the chronological order of these bullet points, just type it out whatever comes to your mind.

Next you can write a bit more about your topic in general without stressing about the technicalities. For example, the interesting part of experiment 1a is the xyz finding or I am disappointed with the results of experiment 1b.

This random writing would give me a kick and give my fingers that confidence to actually start typing rather than just hovering over the keyboard. And believe me when I got to the part of actual writing the chapter or paper, I would sometimes come back to these “free writing” pages and get ideas from it.

The key to this method is that DO NOT STOP at this point. You need to get on to the next part (which is even easier) the same time the same day in order to actually start writing. I have discussed that in my next blog as this blog is already getting too long.

Don’t stress don’t panic, trust me you will get there as I did. You might be at a stage in your thesis or writing journey or any project, where you might feel overwhelmed, we all do that’s normal. There will come a time when everything will start falling into place.

Stay tuned for more tricks and tips….