Your brain is fatigued from doing your PhD. It craves variety. Try doing one of your side projects for a month to refresh yourself. It needs to be something dif

Your brain is fatigued from doing your PhD. It craves variety. Try doing one of your side projects for a month to refresh yourself. It needs to be something different from your PhD, something fun that you can make immediate progress with and which holds some challenge. Don't just bake ornamental bread. After this 'reset', you will be in a position to alternate your focus between your PhD and this other activity. You may need to take on another later, but try to keep it below four. This is because your brain may not be that accustomed to the switching of focused attention required by multi-tasking. So don't try spinning too many plates or they will all come crashing down. The key here is to release yourself from thinking about the outcome of your PhD by tricking your mind into treating it like the other tasks you alternately focus upon. You may assume that doing unrelated stuff would cut into the precious time you need to do your main thing, but by reducing your anxiety over not having finished it already and just enjoying the process of doing it you will find that your productivity will increase as you spend less time not actually working on the PhD, but worrying about it and reading endless articles about procrastination and meditation. Remember, it may seem a cliche but "The Journey is the Reward" - in other words take pleasure in doing not finishing.