I kept a research journal as a blog while I was writing my doctoral thesis. I was teaching Masters students who were writing a thesis themselves at the time, and I was therefore interested in being accountable, authentic, to model learning in public.
In case anyone wants to go back to those distant shores and see what it was really like for me, feel free: http://reasearchdiary.blogspot.com.au
I wouldn’t go there if I were you though, I kind of terrify myself.
Mindfulness is about being present in the moment with your writing, but there may be difficult feelings there. It can help to move from rehearsing how badly you feel, to articulating a beneficial wish for everything and everyone around you, including yourself. And apply it more specifically to your writing practice.
Maybe you could dial up the positive talk, to yourself and others. How does that feel? What grace could be experienced?
You will need to write an Acknowledgements section in your thesis, and you can have fun working out who you will thank and how you’ll include acknowledgements in your thesis. But you might also want to make a less formal, less constrained, more honest version.
This exercise is all about the counting. It’s just complicated enough that you can’t multitask. The equal breathing means your brain should settle into a state that’s not too sleepy and not too fired up but just-Goldilocks-right for the task.
