Looking to improve your productivity? Check out our time management tips for students and researchers you can use today!

Becoming a Motivated Academic, you will develop excellent time management skills. Why? Working in research and higher education can be challenging because of the amount of work and variability of activities we’ve got to prepare. Good time management skills are necessary to make meaningful progress in your research. 

I often see that people struggle to balance their work-life balance, especially when you’re doing your PhD while working full-time or have caring responsibilities. It can get difficult. Hence managing time effectively is crucial to succeeding in your research project. Although you may feel that your time management skills aren’t good enough, these are still skills. And as with any other type of skill, these can be further developed by regularly practising them and figuring out what works for you. 

That’s the thing with time management – it’s no one-size-fits-all solution. We’re all different and approach time management when studying differently. That’s why it’s useful to explore different frameworks to find out what works for you. Wondering how to manage your time as a student or a researcher? Look no further. Here I share some of the approaches I tested in my research journey! 

Avoid repetition by scheduling time for planning and reflection

What is the first of many time management tips I usually give to my students and researchers? No, it’s not using any specific apps or tools. I usually recommend my students dedicate some time to planning their week and month.

This may seem counterintuitive – why should you spend time doing something that doesn’t directly contribute to your project. But believe me. Effective time management is highly dependent on your ability to plan your work and reflect on your performance. By doing so, you can find the right balance between your work and life, and avoid repeating meaningless tasks.  

Set realistic goals

We did talk about setting SMART goals on many occasions before, but I cannot overestimate the importance that well-defined goals have on your productivity and research outputs. Knowing why you’re doing something, where you’re heading, and when you’ll know when you achieved it is key to good time management. By setting realistic goals, you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed and will not spend time trying to “improve” your work, even though it’s good enough already! 

Break your goals into manageable tasks

This is one of the time management tips that I learned only a couple of years ago, but it had a significant influence on how I approach my projects. Rather than tackling a huge goal at once, break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

As a result, you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of work that is associated with the main goal (i.e. complete PhD within 3 years) and will know exactly what to achieve in a shorter timeframe (i.e. write an introduction for your research paper this week). This is one of the tools for time management that you’d need to deploy as early as possible in your research project to stay focused and produce extra time for your research. 

Create weekly and monthly to-do lists

The power and efficiency of to-do lists cannot be overemphasised. One of the key reasons why students and researchers struggle in their projects is the uncertainty associated with what to do next. This question keeps coming to our minds really often and then we start thinking. Maybe I should follow this idea, maybe another, and we end up procrastinating.

A to-do list is simple, yet one of the best time management strategies to stay focused on your project and achieve meaningful outputs. This is because you know exactly what to do next in your research project.

More importantly, once you’re done with a specific task, you can cross it off from your to-do list – this can give you an enormous boost in motivation as you feel that you’ve actually completed something and you have a feeling of progression. You can use an organizing tool such as Asana or other time management apps for efficient to-do lists. 

Learn to prioritise your tasks

Not all tasks in your research project were created equal. This is a fact. Some tasks will get you closer to finishing your project sooner. And there are tasks that you’re asked to do but may not actually contribute much to your project. It’s obvious which tasks we should be focusing on right? The ability to prioritise your work is key to good time management. Therefore, if you want to deliver your project as soon as possible or find extra time to do extracurricular projects, you need to identify the tasks that will get you to your goal sooner. 

Start with small tasks before moving to the big tasks

It is one of the rarely given time management tips, but it can make you feel more motivated and productive in your project. Tackling small tasks before focusing on bigger tasks will give you a sense of completion and achievement sooner, boosting your motivation.

You will feel that you can get more done within the same period of time. That’s why when you’re creating your daily and weekly to-do lists, it’s a good time management strategy to include a few small tasks and 1-2 big tasks per day. 

Identify and eliminate time-wasters

As I mentioned above, not all tasks are created equal. What you really need to pay attention to is time-wasters. These tasks can significantly delay and even derail your research project.  Regardless of whether that’s tasks that don’t get you any closer to your end goal, through social media and other distractions, to people who don’t appreciate your valuable time – make sure you identify these as soon as possible and find a way to eliminate time-wasters from your schedule. It isn’t easy to do but crucial to managing your time effectively. 

Eliminate any perfectionist tendencies

This is one of the main time-wasters of our time and finding a way to deal with it will have a huge impact on your ability to manage time effectively. We tend to overdo our work, trying to make it perfect, polishing it for hours. It often happened to me that when I wrote a research paper, I then spent hours trying to ensure it was perfect.

As you could imagine, I’ve wasted quite a lot of time working on a paper that was already very good to make it excellent. And although it was good enough and would have added value to the readers, I still wanted to feed my inner perfectionist.

The key to avoiding perfectionist tendencies is to set a clear end goal and explain to yourself how the “end product” would look like. Define its characteristics before you start working on it – this will give you a clear definition of when you should stop working on this activity. 

Be flexible but realistic

One of the key characteristics of research projects is their inherent uncertainty. This usually causes challenges to planning your research project and, hence, managing your time.

But this doesn’t need to cause frustration or overwhelm. Instead, maintaining a flexible schedule to accommodate the uncertainty is a useful way to manage your time. This can be anything from a couple of hours per week of “buffer time” that will give you space to complete your writing or experiments, without worrying that you won’t deliver on your project.

You do, however, need to stay realistic about the amount of buffer time you include in your plan next week. Remember, time is relative and the duration of your activities can easily extend to the amount of time you allocated to them. So the same activity can take 2 hrs if you’re focused, or the entire day. 

Do one thing at a time

This is critical, especially now that we are literally bombarded with tones of information every second. Staying focused on the task is a critical time management skill that you need to master to succeed in your research career. And there is nothing worse to our focus than multitasking.

Sure, we may think that we can do many activities simultaneously, but the truth is that this drains our productivity and, consequently, our motivation. Focusing on a single task at a time is one of the most important time management tips I was given during my PhD. Before that, I was writing, running models, and spending time on social media all at once. You can only imagine what it’s done to my productivity! 

Develop habits and routines

Habits are your friend, and you’ve got to develop healthy habits as early as possible. Why? Developing a working routine will help you become an efficient researcher without you even thinking about it. This can relate to your habit of running experiments and reflecting on your results, academic writing, or networking. Regardless of what good habits you develop in your research, it’s good to be aware of the end goal that you want to achieve with it.  

Develop fixed schedule

Building on the habits and developing a routine schedule for your work will help your mind focus better. Suppose you develop a regular working pattern, for example, using the Pomodoro technique. In that case, your mind will know that you need to focus on a specific task over a fixed period of time. Then you can take a break and reward yourself. This also helps you to manage your meeting schedule and social media schedule to minimise distractions. 

Take time off regularly

Taking time off is crucial to your mental wellbeing and your brain processing power. I’m sure that you’ve experienced mental fog when you tried to focus on something so hard and your mind just went blank. No ideas, no realistic ways to move forward with your work. But when you took a break and your mind off your task, the solution came to you naturally after a while.

That’s how the unconscious mind works. It needs breaks to process the information you’re feeding it with. Therefore, when you’re working on your schedule, do include regular breaks. It’s also good to take a couple of days off from time to time and detach from your research project. 

Check your notifications only several times a day

Email, social media, texts steal minutes, if not hours, of our time every day. These can be huge time-wasters if not managed properly. As researchers and academics, you probably receive hundreds of emails every day.

Also, if you’re actively building an expert brand on social media, then you want to “be on” 24/7, literally breaking your flow when working. Such distractions can drastically reduce your productivity.

Therefore, one of the good time management tips is to allocate several time slots a day (i.e. 15-30 mins 3-5 times a day) when you go through your notifications. By including your social media and email time in your schedule, you would stay focused on what’s important when you’re working on your tasks, will be more productive and, effectively, more motivated. 

Reward yourself

“Why are you doing all this?” is the question that regularly pops up in my mind, especially when I experience any sort of challenge. One thing is to have a goal you’re working on (i.e. write a paper; apply for funding), but another thing is the tangible answer to the question of WHY this is important to you. When you’re setting goals, define what kind of reward you will receive once the goal is completed. This can be anything from a couple of days off, a new book if you enjoy reading, career progression and so on. Find what motivates you and associate rewards with your goals.

Wake up early

Depending on your circumstances, the time you can spend going research may be limited. What I found useful during my PhD was that I have much more energy in the morning, rather than later in the afternoon. That’s why I woke up early and was usually the first one in the office. I still do this and start work earlier than my colleagues. As a consequence of fewer distractions, you may become more productive and achieve more in a shorter period of time. 

If you’re feeling unmotivated, set a timer for two minutes

I haven’t tried this one yet, but I came across it when collecting information on time management tips for this article. This time management strategy assumes that if you focus on your work for just 2 minutes, you are more likely to get into the flow zone and thus carry on with your task even if you didn’t want to at the beginning. If you tried it, please share your reflections in the comments below. 

Make good use of your travel time

The daily commute is a reality for most of us. It can be daunting and seen as a waste of time. But when you think of it, it’s also the time you can use to read, review, or simply think about ideas.

I used to commute every day during my PhD and post-doc and rarely I was just sitting on the bus. I’ve always carried a couple of research papers to read or peer-review. Sometimes I downloaded an online course to learn something new.

As I drive to work now, I don’t have the opportunity to read on the car – it would be really unsafe to do so ;). But I recently discovered the world of podcasts and I tend to learn something new every time I travel to work. How do you make good use of the time when commuting?  

Learn to say no

Although I share many time management tips here, here is the one that you absolutely need you master. The sooner you learn to say no, the better your time management skills will become. Let’s be honest, post-docs and early career researchers often carry a significant workload and are worried to say “no” to their senior colleagues. They want to gain experience and demonstrate themselves as capable. I’ve been there. A result? Busy schedule, not time for my own research, anxiety and lack of motivation. It was only when I learnt to say no and prioritise my own work when I finally made meaningful progress in my own projects. Learn to say no as soon as possible. You’ll thank me later! 

Learn to delegate

This builds on the above. Saying no is one thing. But sometimes, you really want to accept the activity that someone asks you to do. What to do then to ensure your projects progress according to the plan? Well, if you have someone who can support you in either delivery of your own project or the extra task you’re being asked to do, don’t be worried to ask for their support. The ability to delegate tasks, especially if you’re leading a team of researchers, is crucial. You cannot deliver everything yourself. Working in a team makes it easier to change the world! This is one of the most important time management tips I received as a researcher.

Hang out with motivated and productive people

The last one of the time management tips I wanted to share with you in this article is finding a group of 5 people that you find inspiring and motivating. No time management tool will substitute the inspiration you can get from your peers or mentors. If you cannot find a mentor at your university, you can always use some of the online resources! Here’s a time management Ted Talk that may inspire you to take action. 

If you’re looking for more of my advice on time management, have a look at my webinar on time management. 

Conclusions – want more time management tips?

There are many time management tips I could share with you today. Instead, I decided to share what works or worked for me. The key thing here is that you are aware of how you manage your time and how different activities influence your productivity, motivation and wellbeing. Remember, by becoming more efficient researchers, you will get the extra time that you can spend on your own independent projects or with your family! 

What are your favourite time management tips and strategies? Please share it in the comments below!