[pwk]

One of the comments reads

Historically I’ve approached big projects with the nonstrategy of “let them overwhelm you in your head, then put them off till moment when the fear of not finishing exceeds the fear of starting.”

This is well put, and exactly how I handled all of college. It worked OK there because project size was generally reasonably bounded.

The "fear of starting" is pretty insidious. A project often looks hugely different on either side of "started working" line -- it can be a really quick change from "I'm not really sure how this is going to work" to "I'm in a groove, this is going great!"

[steveklabnik]

I had this exact conversation with a girl one time. She was the standard "work and work and work and work and work and you'll do well" kind of person, and I was more like you.

We were both in the lab, and she was working on finishing her assignment up for our class later in the day. I was reading Reddit and working on a side project at the time, and she asked how my assignment went. I replied that I wasn't yet finished, and she seemed horrified. I told her I had only about half an hour's worth of work yet, and I just simply didn't feel like doing it. My project was more interesting. She asked why I didn't just finish it and then I could "screw around" with the remainder of the time, because then I'd know I was done, and I couldn't really give her a better answer.

I started twenty minutes before it was due, and finished the work in ten.

[jvdh]

That may be true, but that is not a strategy that would apply to writing a PhD thesis. That is just such a great amount of work, and with no real end-date. Even then, the fear of not finishing on time will very likely come too late with such a big project.

I think the best advice in that case is just to think about how you eat an elefant: one bite at a time.