Write. Of course, it is not as simple as that, but I will state my case, in the hopes that it does indeed help you, too.
In any case, I guess it is good to have some perspective or at least some context on the matter. In my case, what was causing my anxiety was having to prepare to write +5 pages for an article that is due to be published in a few days.
What did I do, that was not so effective, up to now? Well, I fired up an AI, sent a bunch of texts that were related to the matter I was trying to tackle, and asked for a few citations to help me get started (no more than 15 or 20). As I had figured, that would be the sweet-spot for number of citations in 5 pages, it would be sufficient.
I am just trying to get something published, not to reinvent the wheel or change the world, so I figured I could use some help, like AI and all that. And no, before you started questioning, I will not as AI to write me that piece, because I still abide for research integrity. But at least it an “read” and select pertinent information way faster than I do.
So there I went, and it gave me a bunch of citations, which was what I had asked for, but now I was overwhelmed by that tiny amount of citations. Where should I start? How would they connect in terms of argument to one another? Oh gosh, the darn AI forgot to put the page numbers… Are the page numbers on these PDFs equal to the ones found in the physical books in any case? If not, I’ll have to tackle that somehow…. And well, well, well, you get where my mind was racing, and it was wearing me out fast.
I just conjectured possibilities, trying to think of the next logical step, then promptly forgetting it altogether in the next two seconds, and coming back to it again, in a loop. Over, and over and over again. It was no fun, and I felt as if I started panicking. Thinking to myself: “Gosh, this is just too much… Why did I even bother with it? I should go fishing or something…” And worse: “Oh, I just remembered, there is that friend of mine whom I hadn’t answered in months, maybe I should answer him right now!” - And so I was now on a loop of avoiding what had to be done and procrastinating, and that didn’t resolve the matter not one tiny bit.
I went full avoidant into something that was just… stupid? Come on, writing is not that hard, you just have to twist a few words here and there and state your point and voilá, you have what you need. Well, or at least I thought so.
Gosh, why does it always have to be easier said than done?
Because of course, I had all those other things to check first, before I could even start writing.
So then, what was the secret formula? Exactly, write.
No, no! No, you stupid. Not that writing part! At least not now. But I actually took two steps back (maybe it was three actually), and started writing about actionable steps that I needed to do first before actually writing the 5 pages I needed to.
So I came up with a list.
I dumped every single thought that was plaguing me previously, haunting me that I needed to do this and that before that other thing and you get the picture…
And then, suddenly, as if out of magicks, I could see what was previously hidden inside a self-inducing anxiety generating stream of thoughts. The thoughts weren’t wrong, they were just tangled up, like your grandma’s ol’ good ball of yarn.
So I did what I did, and started stating what should be done first…
- Check actual page numbers of citations (manually)
- Check which citations I will actually use (manually, too)
- Arrange them into a cohesive order for arguments (AI can help with that)
- Craft a sketch of the interconnections between ideas (AI can also help)
- Actually write on top of the proposed ‘wireframe’ I had setup (manual)
- Review with GPT for any nuances in language, or a more “direct” language that is suitable for an academic article (me + AI)
so, now, I had a roadmap. I culd see that the list and tasks were not infinite as I had previously felt, and which were causing my mind to go haywire thinking: “It’s not possible, it’s not possible”, and honestly… As much as I like to think myself as some intelligent person, sometimes my mind just acts out of plain stupidity, and is pretty dumb.
Well, so far, so good! Now I could see more clearly the path in front of me, and actually start doing something about it.
I know a platform that has the actual books with the real page numbers, and I could check the citations there for the numbers, the go on to the next steps and tops in a couple of hours I would have all the preparation finished….
Of course, of course, this is all related in particular to my personal experience in trying to write some academic article that probably no one will ever read.
But besides that, I do believe that taking action, and being held accountable of the next steps to take into a particular course of action can at least help relieve a little bit of one’s anxiety? In this case, it was “thinking out loud”, and with a pencil and paper in front of me. And what worked wonders. Of course, it is still not 100% subsided, the anxiety stuff, because I still have to complete a few of those steps, and I believe it will be entirely gone only once I finally finish the thing and send it over for peer review.
In which case, that will be the whole task done, and I believe that one could do it in one day, tops?
So, there you go, this is my personal field guied, tried and somewhat tested to try to get my shit together in the midst of a sparse initial crisis. (I must say that I failed miserably at that yesterday, and all I could do at one point was not trying to cry, and go to sleep, hoping that tomorrow (today), I could think better). As it turns out, it kinda worked? If I feel overwhelmed, and can wait a bit for this shit to wear off, I try to take a nap, or outright sleep on it. Sometimes it works, othertimes, well, not so much.
In any case, wish me luck, and I hope, anyhow that maybe something in here might have relieved you a little bit of unwanted personal psy-op propaganda your goddamned mind keeps pushing upon thyself trying to believe gibberish that things are gonna blow up outta proportion. Sometimes, thinking is good. Other times, thinking too much, well, not so good.
Always strive for the balance, people!
I gotta go.
ttyl
bye
Paece.