Thesis Writing Help: Productivity Hints
Not all students have the luxury of being a full-time student. Some students juggle family and studies; some juggle work and studies; others juggle all three. So in order to get everything done and be as productive as possible in the time you have set aside for writing your thesis, you have to learn some effective time management skills.
5 Great tips to raise your productivity
- Tell everyone involved what you’re doing and what your commitment needs to be. For example, let your family and friends know you’re writing your thesis and you need to spend a certain number of hours a week working on it. You’ll be surprised who comes to your assistance to free up your schedule. Let your employer know so he or she doesn’t ask you to put in extra hours of work.
- Explain to your partner and family how this will benefit all of you. That way your family will be more understanding when you have to spend less time with them, at least for a while until the thesis is finished.
- Keep a schedule and stick to it most of the time. Flexibility is good too, as long as you don’t consistently replace thesis writing time with other activities. If a change in your schedule requires thesis writing time to be bumped off, immediately sketch it in somewhere else so that everything stays balanced. Try to work a little on many things over the course of the week, so one area of your life doesn’t get completely ignored.
- Treat your thesis as a job. Put in the minimum hours a week on the thesis as if it was a job where your employer expects you to be there.
- Build in some buffer time. In other words, don’t fill every minute of your schedule. What if you planned one entire day to work on your thesis and every other day was scheduled tight but then when thesis day came you were flat on your back and sick in bed? That would ruin the planning for that week. It would be more beneficial to plan in 4 hours a day for 3 days in a row. If you’re sick for one day, you only have to reschedule 3 hours of thesis time.
Time management works differently for each individual. The key to raising your productivity is to find out what works best for your unique needs.