I have a dissertation due in five weeks and I've written 400 words. I've cleaned my flat, reorganised my bookshelf by colour, watched a full documentary about tunnels, and made a detailed revision timetable that I've already fallen behind on. I know exactly what I need to do. I just don't do it. I'm not lazy, I swear. What is wrong with me?
— Student, GlasgowNothing is wrong with you. You’re a completely normal person who has discovered that tunnels are fascinating when the alternative is your future.
You’re right, you’re not lazy. Lazy people don’t reorganise bookshelves by colour. That’s labour. It’s just labour on the wrong thing, performed with the devotion of a monk, for an audience of nobody.
Four hundred words written, five weeks to go. At this pace you’ll submit sometime in your early fifties.
Here’s what’s actually happening. The dissertation feels so big and important that starting it feels like a test you might fail. So your brain finds something small and safe, like tunnels, and you become an expert in something that won’t appear on your transcript. That timetable isn’t a plan. It’s a headstone for one.
Grain of sense, delivered with contempt: make the task insultingly small. Not “write chapter two”. “Open the document and write one bad paragraph.” Twenty-five-minute timer. Phone in another room, ideally another postcode. Bad paragraphs can be fixed. Blank pages just sit there, aging, like you.
And yes, the tunnel people have made more documentaries. I checked. That’s how I know it doesn’t help.