Basic recipe:
- Work and Break; Repeat.
Read and work regularly for 6 days. Sustained reading and writing is actually quite draining, so breaks are normal and recommended. Try 3 hours of immersion, then a break with some reward, then 3 hours, then a break with some reward.
- Get intimate with your work.
Allow yourself to doodle and fiddle--don't fall into the trap of thinking that unless circumstances are perfect, or you're perfectly concentrated, you can't do anything. Sometimes the best work results from the idle thoughts or tinkering you're doing late or early, which suddenly blooms into something important. In other words, get close and comfortable to your material. Be able to sit down and browse through a book on occasion (this doesn't count as work-time, incidentally, in the sense of a targeted amount of writing/reading per day), or scratch out of some notes on the train, or see some relationship between your work and the time you wait for food at that ridiculously expensive sushi restaurant you frequent (one can dream).
- Competing and Complimentary Behaviors
Some behaviors compete with your target behaviors. You want to read/write for three hours this morning. Some behaviors will compete, and make that impossible. These include long browsing on the internet, glancing frequently at a television, etc. So you must think in terms not only of increasing the target behavior, but also decreasing competing behaviors (in whatever time-frame or circumstance you want to increase the target behavior).
Some behaviors compliment your target behavior. These can encourage your target behavior, or make it easier. They might include simple things, like getting enough sleep the night before, getting chores and items out of the way or organized earlier, having some coffee and food with you, getting into a certain mindset about your work (relaxed, focused, and optimistic). Increase these.
Faculty politics. This is tough. Keep your thesis in perspective. It's really important, but it's not the last thing you will ever publish (don't you wish). If your advisor is completely unwilling to support your approach--which doesn't mean uncritically accepting it, since you want and need sharp criticism, but does mean an understanding that the approach is reasonable and valuable--then you will either need a new approach or a new advisor. This is why, sometimes, it's actually a bad idea to pick an advisor who is a big name but is (fanatically) wedded to the approach which made him a name.
Master's thesis to PhD thesis. Divergence will result in more work, but may ultimately remit a better return. Regardless, the key factor is focus now.
And look... frustration is normal, and is a good sign. Frustration means dissonance, means realization of an obstacle, and that is absolutely necessary to progress. Frustration is the difficulty you have breathing before you reach the top of a hill on a run. So, if you're reading this as a means of avoiding writing or reading, and you can feel an underlying anxiety, and some frustration attached to the very thought of working, start breathing regularly and deeply, realize that your work is going to turn out great, understand that you're going to close this window and calmly, deliberately, start to work, and that you'll return in a couple of hours to give us all some better advice.
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