Dealing with low-quality legacy student-work My task is to summarize an MSc thesis some student finished months ago. The summary will go into a technical report. The report is going to be reviewed: one or two people will read it in a quick-and-dirty way at least once and make comments. The area is computer science. The thesis size is 100 pages, and it has to be compressed into around 20 pages.

The problem is that the student's work is very poorly written, both language-wise and research-wise. Reading and summarizing this lazy, full-of-plagiarism, incomprehensible low-quality paper is a challenge, but has to be done. How do you deal with this tedious, boring task?
The same way you deal with mind numbingly boring work in any area: one page at a time.

I've found the Pomodoro Technique very helpful. Set a timer for some short period of time like 25 minutes, and work without a break. Then take a short 3-5 minute break and repeat. It's like swimming. You go underwater for a period of time and then come up for air for a short break when you need to. (n.b. I have very little experience swimming) 

If possible, try to have other things to do at work and work on each thing every day. This way you're not stuck doing the boring stuff 8-10 hours a day. If you do this, it's helpful to try and get as much of the crappy work done at the start of your day. This way you're not dreading and putting off the tedium all day.

Also accept the fact that some days will be more productive than others. If you set a goal to do X number of pages a day, you can easily get stuck in a spiral of unproductivity and procrastination that bleeds over into the next day. Do as much as you can, but take breaks and try to keep your spirits up.