Getting back into it - Steps

At the moment I am having to edit, change and overhaul two pieces of my work. These are:

• a draft of a paper relating to interaction with computer eductational content
• reworking my upgrade document for my PhD

I find this difficult for the following reasons:

• difficulty getting back into the data
• deciding between editing and re-writing
• feeling overwhelmed by feeling I have too much to do

I find the feeling of being overwhelmed by too much, and hence feeling flustered and fogged, an experience that I often get in research. Certain things make this condition likely to happen, such as the complexity of the data, the feeling that there are innumerate papers that you should be reading, the pressures of other things in your life, the complexity of the stored data on your computer (where is it all?- I literally have thousands of files relating to my data, usually in many versions) , the juggling of ideas, theory and data, overcoming mental inertia, the multitasking nature of it all (I am actually going off the concept of multitasking somewhat) . So one of the problems is finding where you are, taking stock, and breaking down the complex large task into smaller units.

This type of writing needs time, time to consolidate, think, re-establish your immersion in the data. Getting to that state of immersion is not, for me that easy.

Anyhow in my current position, of 'getting back into' these activities I have just written a series of steps (like quanta, packets of action) thus breaking up these complex tasks. Let's see if it works.

Step 1, for the content paper is simply to find and read my last version of the paper and make highlights where necessary. I probably haven't read this for some time. The aim of this is to try to get me back 'into' the paper. Anyway in my next entry I will talk more about these steps, and if this method helps.