I had a class reunion today, in the coffee shop. My classmate* from my MRes and I met up to chat PhD things. She began her part-time PhD in October last year and is essentially in the same situation as myself, working full time, studying part time and commuting to see our supervisors every month or so. She messaged me because I said it was important to speak to others in the same situation and as we both commute to our respective universities meeting up in the middle ground (work) is the simplest option.
I hope she won’t mind me mentioning this, but she said she had hit her first hurdle with being able to concentrate on work. She has a space set up at home to study but finds herself getting distracted. I was given some advice by my supervisor about distractions quite early on. She told me to allow some distractions to distract me. If I am working from home, water the plants if I keep staring at them, put that washing in the machine. Otherwise the small distractions become bigger distractions. This helped me a lot. I could shrug off the guilt of moving away from the desk for five minutes and I felt that I was more productive while I was “in the zone”.
We also spoke about where we work. I try and work away from the computer as much as I can when I am at home. I am mostly desk based at work so coming home and thinking that I might be stuck at a desk for an hour or so in the evening would put anyone off! I do a lot of my reading and note making sat on the sofa, sat in bed or soaking in the bath**! I find it hard to work when there are voices on the TV but if the other half is playing computer games it is not a problem (and definitely not a problem for him as he is encouraged to play games!).
Hopefully some of my habits are useful to help her get sorted out. I think we all have to find our comfortable space to work in.
Yesterday I ended up in an interesting conversation with a maths academic about museum visiting. I mentioned my PhD and we ended up discussing class inequalities in museum visiting. It made me feel quite confident in what I am doing and in what I know. Hooray for baby steps!
*There were only two of us on the MRes when we took it. We both work(ed) full time and are now both on part-time PhD courses. The stats for progression following our degree must look amazing for our cohort!
** The bath has its downsides, dropping papers in the water and difficultly in jotting down ideas when they come up!
In a twist of fate, the PhDSupportNetwork posted this which is strangely relevant to this post!
https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/38106895/899479777
Numerical paperclips for organising articles, so satisfying!
bloggerbyresearch 
You mention ‘class inequalities in museum visiting’. Do you think or have you experienced that as a relevant fact? I can only talk about my own experience, obviously.
I’m from a ‘normal’, reasonably well-to-do family (not rich, but okay), my parents took me to a museum occasionally (I’m talking about the seventies, yes, I know, a different world), but it didn’t stick. I don’t like regular museums, as in ‘pictures on the wall with little explaining texts next to them, long silent corridors where children can’t have fun or explore’, you know what I mean? Hasn’t got anything to do with ‘class’, more with personal preference. Fortunately these days many museums are more interactive, but still they are somewhat ‘frozen in time’, if you know what I mean, static. The challenge is i.m.h.o. how to change that and change museums into places where people like to spend time. Maybe museums should disappear altogether, instead their collections should be part of our daily environment. The other week I visited a medieval bridge in Germany. Now, that is interesting, standing on a bridge that has been there for ages, where knights walked and wars were fought. Why not a Rembrand alongside a shopping mall? A Rodin as centerpiece of a modern city square? Swords and daggers where they were found, telling people of things that happened right where they are standing, instead of putting them in glass cupboards?
Have a good weekend!