During school studies, you might be able to pass a class by stuffing the lessons a few days before the exam, and then forget about it. But for a research work, it doesn’t work like that. Research is a continuous process and in order to finish your research work successfully, you need to learn how to manage your time.
1) Organize your tasks according to the importance of topics: Make a schedule to prioritize your tasks and spend more time on the important tasks.
2) Plan your day but don’t plan more than 75% of your time: If you think that a certain task will take 1.5 hrs, take 2 hrs to finish it in your schedule.
3) Avoid distractions: Prevent unwanted and unintentional distractions and choose a dedicated workspace.
4) Set and achieve milestones: Assign a specific time to a specific task. Organize your effort and set milestones that you will pass on the way to complete the entire task.
5) Review progress regularly and make necessary adjustments: Tasks may not play out as you expect them to and therefore it is important to adjust your time plan with respect to your experience with the ongoing tasks.
6) Learn to avoid delaying things unnecessarily: It is better to do a task than to put it off so that one can able to get more done. If you get started in time you will have the opportunity to improve the quality and aim for perfection.
7) Learn to say “no”: This is one of the best time management techniques. You can’t do all the things in the world which are right. So try to avoid the things which are not suitable according to your goal.
8) Do it once, do it right: Do the job correctly for the first time itself, so that you can avoid the wastage of time by doing it again and again.