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Physics and Astronomy at Western Blog

How to thesis: Time management

Last month, I briefly mentioned I’d talk a bit more about scheduling. So I figured it would be good to follow up on that.

Managing my time well is also something I’ve learned to do in graduate school (although one could maybe argue that I’m still not so great at it). It’s not that nobody ever tried to teach me how to do it before now, it’s more that a lot of the usual ways (e.g. keeping an agenda) don’t really work for me (e.g. I never check the thing). So I’ve tried figuring out what works for me and maybe some of these things will work for some of you too.

To Do Lists

These are things I make not only to keep track of what I’ve done and what I should do, but also because there’s this nice satisfying feeling that comes from crossing an item off the list.

One thing I’ve found really useful lately is actually the Tasks feature that come with gmail. That way every time I check my email I can be reminded of the things I should be doing. With this feature, it’s even possible to create separate lists for different spheres of life. Right now I have a list for research; another for tasks that are still related to work, but not research (e.g. job applications, TA duties); and one for my personal life.

I keep a paper version of my to do list for the week, however and I try to plan out little ones each day. Which brings me to…

Setting Mini-Goals

In research, you’re not going to get everything done in a single day and getting to the point where you’ve completed enough work for a paper (or a thesis) can seem really far away. Further, it isn’t even always clear what you have to do in order to get to this end state or it can be really easy to lose sight of what has to be done.

To avoid losing sight of everything, it’s helpful to break every large task into many smaller tasks. This can be done over the course of months or weeks or even throughout a day.

To keep from spending too much time on one task, I try to set mini-goals as I work throughout the day (e.g. by 3pm, I want a program that does x). I also try to hold myself accountable for how I spent my time. To do this, I use this document:

time_well_spent.pdf
Download this file

It’s basically a pdf that I print out each week that helps me plan out my week and my days.  This version is just 5 days (my weekends are a bit more free-form).  I usually try to write down what I’ve done every hour or so and set small goals to be accomplished throughout the day.  Sometimes it’s difficult to stick to this, but when I do it definitely helps.

I (once again) hope that something I’ve said can be useful to someone else.  If you have suggestions for how to manage time effectively, you’re welcome to leave these suggestions in the comments.

Until next month.

 

Sarah is in the final year of her PhD. “How to thesis” is a series in which she imparts various (hopefully) useful things she has learned during her graduate career.

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How to thesis: Focus

Focusing on one task for a long period of time is somewhat important for writing a thesis (or doing any task that requires sustained concentration in general).  However, it has never been a strong suit of mine.  Sometimes I feel a lot like that dog from the movie Up.

Fortunately, I have picked up some tricks that help me concentrate and perhaps this information can be helpful to others who might still be having problems with this.  Here they are:

Sleep

Now, this may sound obvious, but keeping a regular sleep schedule can be difficult sometimes and a lot of the time, sleep gets set aside in favour of more time to do work.   However, getting a solid x hours of sleep a night (where x is the number of hours you require to feel rested) is really key to working well.

There’s even science to back this up.  People who are sleep deprived experience more difficulty in performing tasks requiring a lot of attention as well as doing things like forming new memories (if you needed another reason to avoid staying up all night cramming for midterms the night before).

Of course, it’s also an entirely different thing to forgo sufficient sleep in the days just before a deadline than it is to make a habit of it.

Exercise

Regular physical activity not only helps with sleep quality and reduces stress, but personally, I find it makes me a lot less restless during the day.  If I’m less restless, I can get more work done.  It also has a lot of health benefits, so it’s a good thing to do aside from helping you pay attention.

Caffeine

If you’re the sort of person who has a lot of negative effects from caffeine, this won’t help.  But there are studies indicating that caffeine does help improve focus and attention span.  This may seem a bit counterintuitive (e.g. shouldn’t it make you more restless?), but it does make sense when you consider that a well-rested person can focus better than one that is sleep deprived/tired and that caffeine is a stimulant, which will temporarily make you feel less tired.

Scheduling

I think I’ll write more on this point in another post, but in short: Make a schedule and try to stick to it.  If you make a series of small goals throughout the day (or mini-deadlines, if you prefer to think of it that way) and make a sincere effort to accomplish the tasks you set by the time in which you set out to do them, it can be easier to focus on that one task that you want to finish by a certain time.  Don’t beat yourself up if you fail to meet your schedule, just do your best (you can never anticipate the difficulties that might crop up during a particular task if you haven’t done it).

Take Breaks

By this, I don’t mean that you should randomly take some time out of your day to browse youtube.  I mean you should schedule some breaks throughout the day (say 10 minutes every hour) in which you do something that takes you away from the task you were performing.  So if you were working on your computer, go for a walk, have a snack somewhere that isn’t your desk, make some coffee/tea, do some dishes, whatever.

Working in small chunks makes it easier to focus (you don’t have to do it for nearly as long) and doing something different from your previous task really gives you a break from it.  If you go from sitting at the computer working to sitting at the computer checking your email, this isn’t quite the same effect (your body isn’t getting a break from its previous task).  You may also find that taking a walk can give you time to mull over any issues you were having with your work and perhaps you can think of a few solutions by the time you get back to your desk.

Music

This definitely doesn’t work for everyone.  It does work for me (and I know I’m not alone in this), but listening to music or having some background noise (nothing too loud, just enough that it’s not absolute silence) helps me pay attention to my work a lot.  It might come from growing up in a fairly noisy house and doing most of my homework in front of the television when I was in high school, but I really just can’t focus when it’s quiet (nor can I focus with construction noises).

I hope that my tricks to stay focused are helpful.  If you have any tricks that you employ, feel free to leave comments because perhaps what works for you will work for other people too.

Until next time…

SQUIRREL!

 

Sarah is in the final year of her PhD.  “How to thesis” is a series in which she imparts various (hopefully) useful things she has learned during her graduate career.