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!
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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 sho