Writing a Dissertation: 5 Ways to Schedule Your Work

Dissertations take a great deal of effort, focus and time management. It’s the last aspect – time management – that most students have trouble with. Most students end up rushing last minute, taking too much time on the assignment or (less generally) rushing through and finishing early. Good time management techniques can be the key to making or breaking your dissertation. Here are a few scheduling patterns and techniques that may help you organize your dissertation research and writing:

• Work in daily increments. Some students may find that working on dissertation in small pieces on a daily basis is helpful to keeping the assignment progressing. If you’d like to do daily increments on your dissertation, pick a time every day when you know you’re free. This could be just before you go to be, right after lunch, right when you wake up in the morning – whatever works for you. Keep these increments small – maybe 30 minutes – but make sure you work diligently the entire time.
• Pick a few days a week. Perhaps Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are living hells for you – you’ve got too many classes, plus volleyball practice, plus club meetings, etc. Find a few days during the week where you have more free time. Set aside a few hours (perhaps 2 or 3) on these days to work on your dissertation. Try to at least have three days where you do this.
• Set general deadlines. If it’s too challenging to set specific days and times for dissertation work, then try setting some larger deadlines instead. Maybe you’ll decide you have one week to get all of your research done, the next week to do your outline and organization, and the next two weeks to write and edit. The key is to have set deadlines on certain days, just as with any assignment, and to stick to those deadlines.
• Schedule with a friend. It’s often much easier to stick to any schedule when a friend is joining you. Partner up with a buddy also working on a dissertation and set your deadlines or scheduling goals. You’ll not only have someone to remind you of your dissertation work, but someone to motivate you through tough times in the process. You can also provide peer support and aid if either of you are stuck on part of your dissertation.
• Pair scheduled dissertation work with rewarding activities. Nobody likes to sit around, research and write all day – after a while, it starts to make your brain hurt. When you schedule times to work on your dissertation, try scheduling enjoyable activities afterwards. Determine that, if you complete your outline, you can do something fun – such as see a movie with friends. This extrinsic motivation can make even the most enthused dissertation writers desperate to work hard and finish the assignment.