Struggling with time management and project delivery? Learn how to efficiently plan your project and manage your time considering the uncertainty of research.
Has anyone ever told you what is the most exciting and, at the same time, the most challenging aspect of working in research?
Would you venture a guess?
From the recent discussions with you, my students and colleagues I can conclude that the fact that, as academics, we work at the edge of our knowledge is both, the most exciting and the most challenging for most of us.
It’s exciting because we create or discover something completely new; something that no one has ever done before.
It’s challenging for the same reason. We need to come up with research procedures that can prove (or disprove) our hypotheses and are scientifically sound. It broadly means mostly means that other researchers should be able to repeat what we did to verify our conclusions.
Yet, there is another challenge that many of us struggle with, but we rarely discuss it. Because of the uncertainty of our work, we tend to underestimate the amount of time we have to spent on specific activities to deliver our research.
So how do you manage your time to ensure that you deliver high-quality research on time?
Here are some best time management practices you can implement straight away!
Estimate activity duration for efficient time management
As I discussed in my previous article, if you want to get things done and stay motivated, you need to set goals. Magda shared her experience and tips on how to set SMART goals for your work on our blog too. Make sure you check these out!
Setting specific, measurable, assignable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals is a must for each researcher. It’s crucial to efficient time management in your research.
Let me unpack the last component of a SMART goal. Each of your activities in your research project should be time-bound. It means that you need to set a specific deadline for completion of this specific activity. Knowing how long each activity is expected to take will help you to manage your time more efficiently.
But how do you set a specific deadline for an uncertain research task, especially if this is an activity that you haven’t done before?
Here’s a procedure you can use:
– consider if the design of the experiment or your research plan will give you a sufficient amount of data to test your hypothesis
– consider how much time do you need to complete a specific task should everything go smoothly (i.e. ideal conditions)
– conduct “what-if” analysis to identify potential delays (i.e. what to do if the PC breaks?; what would be the associated delay?)
– add extra time for unexpected delays (i.e. illness, accidents)
– determine the expected duration of the activity, considering any delays
Having estimated the duration of the activity, considering any delays, it is good practice to add some extra time for unforeseen circumstances. The amount of this extra time will depend on the actual duration of your activity, but as a rule of thumb, you can add up to 10%.
Set milestones to track progress against your research plan
Once you’ve estimated the most likely amount of time that you’ll need to complete a specific piece of work, it’s time to come up with a way to measure your progress. Tracking your progress is a fundamental aspect of time management.
