General Writer's block and a lack of motivation

U

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How do you cope with writer's block and increase your motivation? I know I already touched on that subject in this thread, but I'd like to discuss it in its own thread in order to gauge how many people have dealt with writer's block in their life and how to overcome a lack of motivation whenever you're dealing with a large project or a hard goal.
 
U

User.45

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How do you cope with writer's block and increase your motivation? I know I already touched on that subject in this thread, but I'd like to discuss it in its own thread in order to gauge how many people have dealt with writer's block in their life and how to overcome a lack of motivation whenever you're dealing with a large project or a hard goal.
From the perspective of scientific writing, writing up summary bullet points:
- 3 sentence basic intro: disease, biggest challenge, state of affairs to address
- 3 sentences on what aspect the study evaluates
- 3 sentences on hypotheses
- 3 sentences on design

start with incomplete sentences, put the section together based on message.
- add content until all is there

Then when it's all there, you can start turning the bulletpoints into sentences.

If you're good the fluff part of a scientific paper can be finished in 2 hours with this approach....the non-fluff part always takes a lot of time.
 

Thomas Veil

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Since you seem to be talking about your MR document…maybe you’re still too close to it. My suggestion would be to walk away from it for awhile and let the raw feelings wear off a bit.

In my experience, “pressing” rarely results in anything other than you getting frustrated and pressing even harder and getting more frustrated. A vicious cycle.

Whereas creative tasks I step away from, even if only for a day or two, tend to present themselves differently and from new angles when I return to them with my mind refreshed by my “vacation”.

If you feel you must do something, make it nothing more than an outline of your project. Then step away and see if, when you come back, that outline still makes sense. If so, then flesh it out.
 
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