system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Losing motivation to finish phD

After countless job rejections from even the most entry-level/graduate positions in ANY area in industry (finance, banking, consulting, software, data science, research, etc.) as well as many rejections from postdocs (engineering, physics, math) that are closely related to my phD (theoretical physics), I am feeling really demotivated to finish this degree.

Even though I only have 5 months left till I have to hand in my thesis, I actually can't see the value of my work whatsoever. It feels cheap, it feels worthless, and I honestly don't even care about it anymore. This PhD has put me through 60+ hours of work every week, weekends, public holidays, etc. for the past 3.5 years. Being on an extremely low salary with ZERO career prospects (I live in Australia and Covid essentially killed academia here) I just feel like all this work amounts to absolutely nothing in the end.

I even got rejected from a graduate job that only asked for a bachelors degree in economics, no experience required. Sigh. I don't know what to do. Literally the only work experience is in tutoring physics and math. I didn't expect things to go this way. There were a lot of postdoc/research opportunities before covid, then it all vanished within 12 months and not even my supervisors know what to say about the whole thing, I can see in their faces how aware they are of the fact that I will have a very hard time landing a job, and that my scientific/academic career is 99% likely to be over by the end of my degree.

I honestly regret this degree, this entire profession actually. I used to be really keen on learning physics and doing research in it. Now, I just wish I had stayed in engineering while I was still in my undergraduate degree. All my friends who didn't even do well in their bachelor's of business/IT/engineering/law have good jobs now and make at least 3 times what I make in a year, and they don't have to worry about career prospects because they already have 5+ years in the industry. Me? I am just a sad loser who made a bunch of very poor choices out of "following my passion" like an idiot. And to top it all off, I decided to invest in a bunch of cryptocurrencies this year and now all of the sudden the market is crashing, effectively wiping out around 60% in potential profits that I had just a few days ago.

How can I get myself motivated to finish this thing when I can't even see the value in it? No employer sees the value in it either, so I guess it's objectively a useless qualification.
gpt
Problem 1: It sounds like you might want to check that your application materials are communicating what you *think* they are. If you're not getting interviews this can be a sign that your applications are falling short somewhere. Maybe get a trusted colleague or mentor to look over things for you. preferably someone who has sat on panels recently, not another PhD student. If you're getting systematically rejected at interview stages then you might need to dig more into how you're approaching questions etc.

Problem 2: There's no magic trick to motication. There's no silver bullet. Target your goal, and push on until it's done. Break things out into small achievable tasks and just knock them out, one by one.