Managing Your Time
Topic 2: Overview of the Dissertation Process

Setting Goals

• Plan you work and work your plan.  
  
• Strategy: Backwards mapping
  
• Finding time: You need to plan on spending about 15 hours/week minimum working on your dissertation draft. What is your plan to achieve that amount of time?
• On the chart to the right, create and name blocks of time for your standing time commitments. Then add in when you think you will work on your dissertation, knowing you are looking for 15 hours/week. Remember to include time for sleep, meals, family and work, in addition to the dissertation time. Once you are finished, share your schedule with your writing partner and your group for feedback. You will need to sign into your Google Account to utilize this template. 

Using Rewards
There will be days when you just don’t want to put your seat in the chair and work on this project. Procrastination is the enemy of the Ed.D. student. It’s easy to find all kinds of things to do rather than work on this project (that feels endless and confusing).  The first step towards conquering procrastination, which is a way of dealing with fear,  is to face your fears: what are you most worried about? Who could you talk with about this (hint: your chair, the team, your partner)?  We’re often afraid of the unknown, so when you express your fears, often you’ll find that it gets easier to deal with procrastination. 

Procrastination Elimination Strategies
To make sure you stay on task:

1. Make a public commitment to finish a task: You’ll feel more accountable for the task at hand. 
   Example: Email family members, and friends and tell them that you’ll finish writing the rough draft of your chapter 2 by November 31st.
2. Use parallel play: Arrange to work on your project with your writing partner or someone from your group who works separately on his/her own task in the same area. Seeing him/her do work will motivate you to work as well.
3. Use the 80% rule: Resolve to complete 80% of the task at hand. Write 80% of the literature review. You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment, and completing 80% of the task won’t seem as overwhelming. Once you completed 80% of your work give yourself some reinforcement and plan the completion of the final 20% of the task.
4. Use the Bits-and-Pieces approach: Break a large task into multiple, smaller steps.  Or shorten the length of time for the task. Example: you could break “Write Chapter 1” into 6 steps, and pledge to complete step 1 today. Similarly you could decide to work on drafting Chapter 1 for 30 minutes instead of all day. Instead of putting off writing all together, make a commitment to write one or two pages a day.
5. Use Prompts/Reminder notes: Use physical reminder notes placed in specific locations like Post-its on the side of your computer screen, the refrigerator, or the bathroom mirror to remind you to finish a particular task related to the dissertation.
6. Avoiding Procrastination during the Dissertation Process (.doc)

Using Reinforcements
Many successful students have used rewards to help them push through these times of low motivation. The keys to using rewards are:

• The task must be significant, otherwise you’ll reward yourself five minutes into the task and spend more time rewarding yourself than you do actually working.
• The task must be specific – how will you know when you have completed it?
• The reward must be meaningful AND in proportion to the work completed. In other words, “treating” yourself to 5 minutes (use a timer) on ebay is more appropriate for having completed 90 minutes of editing than would be a Las Vegas vacation for 3 days. 
• In the short video to the right, a successful alum explains how she used rewards.