do you procrastinate or put things off until the last minute? do you want to be more productive and efficient with your time? do you feel like you’re always stressed out or don’t have as much time as you want for relaxation and fun? time management is a skill you can use in all areas of life: school work, social life, hobbies, career, family, work and even everyday chores and appointments. Time management is a broad category that includes prioritization, scheduling, goal setting, and other techniques to help you be productive and motivated, and to make sure you have time for everything that is important to you. With a finite amount of time in each day, week, and month, time management is really about how you choose to spend that time. In the menu to the right, there are multiple ways to plan your time and deal with distractions or procrastination tendencies. since how we spend our time is impacted by our values and goals, we recommend that you start with goal setting and big picture planning. Next, you may find it useful to develop a system for planning your projects, organizing your weekly schedule, and accomplishing tasks. Before your move on to other sections of the website, explore ways to deal with the unexpected so it doesn’t impede your plans.

Use the links to the right to guide you through different areas of time management. In addition, check out another great and thorough source on time management, the guide to time management. Washburn's mascot, the ichabod, honors the school's early benefactor, ichabod washburn, a 19th century massachusetts industrialist. The original design of the studious looking, tuxedo clad figure was created in 1938 by bradbury thompson ba '34 , who became an internationally acclaimed graphic artist. Sincere in his search for truth and knowledge, he studiously carries a book under his arm. time is that quality of nature that keeps events from happening all at once. Anonymous ailamaki amp gehrke, 2003 how can you manage your time to become a more productive writer? how can you find time to write for several hours a day? well, how do you find time to do the other things you do every day? eat.

It rsquo s important hellip if you intend to finish your degree, to be a writer, to be an academic. So you must find time to write each day, perhaps for no more time than you spend eating or exercising. Here are some suggestions that might help:
brause, in her book writing your doctoral dissertation 20 , suggests that you make a checklist of all the steps you need to complete your paper, manuscript, thesis, or dissertation and develop a plan according to the time needed for each step. In my first few years as an assistant professor, i worked with a dozen students who were writing their theses and dissertations. I asked each student to make a list of the major steps in their research and writing and to predict how long it would take so they could make a plan for completion.

After each student finished the thesis, i asked another question: ldquo how long did each step actually take you? rdquo invariably, for all the students the entire process took twice as long as they had anticipated. Some steps, particularly the ones the students were doing for the first time, i.e. Every single piece of the thesis or dissertation, were scary so the students didn rsquo t start working according to their plan schedule but started only once they were not afraid to attempt the next step. And even when the students stayed on schedule, their advisor me and their other readers my colleagues often took longer than planned to read and return their chapters with comments. the more elements that are out of your control, the more likely that surprises and delays to your schedule will occur. So my advice is to make a plan that has enough flexibility that you can adjust it when things take longer than you anticipate and they will without suffering dire consequences. Dire consequences? like your funding runs out, your housing lease ends, your spouse/partner threatens to leave you, your advisor leaves the university or heaven forbid dies.

One other tip for making your plan and schedule: set your own deadlines in advance of your advisor or publisher imposed deadlines. Then when things require more time, you are facing your own wrath or disappointment, not the wrath and disappointment of others. never miss a deadline set by your advisor. be aware of the steps that seem to take more time, not because they actually do, but because you did not start early enough on them or work more quickly. But how many time s have you said to yourself, ldquo i rsquo d be done with this darn _ section, chapter, paper if i had started a week ago. Or if i had written for more than 15 minutes each hour instead of _ your favorite procrastination activity. Ldquo if you cannot take control of your time, you will never finish rdquo brause, 20, p. Remember silvia rsquo s suggestion from the second posting: write regularly silvia, 2007.

Schedule it on your calendar as if it were a class you we r e taking or teaching. And when colleagues were trying to schedule yet another committee meeting area committee, undergraduate committee, curriculum committee, executive committee, mission statement committee, calendar committee ndash yes, even that, to plan the academic calendar , they would see ldquo research rdquo or ldquo writing rdquo written on my calendar and say, ldquo oh, you can do your research or writing anytime. Rdquo that was so o o unfair, manipulative, harsh for a junior faculty member trying to find time to write.

Kendall tackett 2007 suggests you can minimize procrastination and manage your time better if you plan a start and an end time for your writing. Kendall tackett 2007 also suggests using procrastination to your advantage by planning multiple projects. She describes dreading grading papers specifically ldquo really dreadful papers rdquo ldquo suddenly i couldn rsquo t wait to work on my manuscript. I would tell myself, lsquo i rsquo ll just work on one chapter hellip.before i knew it, i had taken a first pass through two thirds of the book rdquo manuscript due in a few months pp.

Procrastinate writing your chapter introduction only if your delaying tactic is working on another section or paragraph. You might be more productive if your schedule for working on chapter three looks like this ndash work on introduction from to , write five paragraphs on relevant literature from to , and draft a concluding paragraph or section for chapter three that provides a transition to chapter four from to 1 ndash rather than this: work on chapter three from to 1. Either way, plan a do able goal for the time you have available to write, and work to meet that goal. Work on chapter three is not a specific enough goal! another suggestion is the writing cloister rogers, 2005. Ldquo banish distractions, have timed writing times and break times, and beware of the hazards, which are times you can anticipate you will have difficulties such as when you usually eat, check e mail, have tea.

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Rdquo this is a hard core approach, and kendall tackett 2007 and rogers 2005 suggest it especially for when you are having some difficulty. It rsquo s not a long term strategy, but if for half a day this helps you produce, then try it. We rsquo ve conducted our own writing cloisters at columbia in the form of dissertation write in days and dissertation writing boot camp weeks. Some of the suggestions i rsquo ve shared with you come from our boot camp experiences.
please understand that you don rsquo t really have time to write a dissertation, or a book, or even a manuscript today.

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Unless you waited far too long to start, and then maybe you do need to write a manuscript tonight. how to write for a general audience: a guide for academics who want to share their knowledge with the world and have fun doing it. washington, dc: american psychological association. Cloistered writing: when you need a dose of discipline, take a writing retreat ndash at home.