Getting through more quickly

Ross Woods, 2018, rev. 2020, '22-24
With thanks to Τοrι Sρencer for additions.

Many students struggle with their research, especially if they are in debt, and want to know how to get through more quickly. One year is a reasonable goal in many cases, and some students do it in six months, although they might have done substantial work before the official dissertation period. In other kinds of research projects, getting through in three years is considered quite fast.

The idea of getting through more quickly has a touch of irony. If you are still learning the skills that one learns in a PhD program, you will probably move more slowly. If those skills are already well developed, you will be able to move much faster.

The speed at which you can progress depends on some other factors. For example, some institutions have very slow administration systems. You country might make a difference; you will probably take longer in the UK where dissertations tend to be longer than those in the US for an equivalent topic.

Having said that, you can work smarter in many ways. Here are my tips.

Before you start
Getting a head start
Supervisors
Schedules and goals
Choosing a topic
Reading and thinking
The literature review
Personal work habits and attitudes
Methodology
Ethical approval
Other letters and permits
Outlines
Writing
Editing
Stuck? Don't waste time on it.
About publishing papers
But even then ...
 
 
 

Before you start

  1. If you are still at the stage of considering a Masters degree before a doctoral degree, take a Masters with a major thesis or project in the same field. This will prepare you better to write a dissertation.
    1. If you want to write a dissertation for a professional doctoral degree, take a Masters program that includes a significant project or thesis.
    2. If you want to write a research dissertation for a research doctorate, take a research-oriented Masters program that includes a significant research thesis.
  2. Be prepared in your writing and research skills, and develop skills in layout, referencing, and sentence construction. Some students struggle with writing skills that they should have learned at earlier stages.
    1. Some doctoral students have done research but think that a dissertation is somehow so different that they dismiss what they have learnt. If you’re writing your dissertation, your thesis work should have prepared you. (The same principle applies for writing your first thesis; your essays should have prepared you.)
    2. Note that research writing has some characteristics that are different from essay writing.
  3. Familiarize yourself early with your institution's style guide, writing conventions, formatting, and maximum word count. You will save time if you are very familiar with the style guide before you start writing and, in practice, this means memorizing everything that you will use often.
    1. This is especially important if they are different from those of the institutions where you previously studied. For example, if you are accustomed to APA or Chicago style and then have to learn Harvard style, you might waste a lot of time learning a new set of style rules and then editing your mistakes. (Style manuals often differ between institutions, sometimes between different parts of the same institution, and between undergraduate and graduate schools.)
    2. If you start without knowing the correct requirements, you might have to re-format or re-write the whole dissertation later, or even delete dozens of pages of time-consuming work. (With thanks to Βαrbαrα Rοbsοn.)
    3. Some institutions provide good templates and writing advice.
  4. Find out your institution's rules for using consultants and editors. Some allow it, and have relavant rules, but others do not because they see it as tantamount to hiring ghost-writers. All allow students to have proofreaders. If you can use external editors or consultants, it might speed up your writing process.
  5. Read several dissertations that were done in your department. This gives a very concrete clarification of what is expected.
    ⚠ Be warned that some students feel overwhelmed when reading the final version of a dissertation and think, It's so clever. I could never write something like that. Remember that it is the final polished version, done after many drafts and corrections, and the language has been edited into a flowing form that is (or should be) pleasant and informative to read.
  6. Get good equipment (computer and software). It does not need to be fancy, but it does need to be adequate.
  7. Learn how to write efficiently, because writing takes most of the time. You can save a lot of time if you can reduce the number of drafts. (With thanks to Νils Brααkmαnn.)
  8. Learn how to type quickly and accurately.
  9. Learn how to get the best use of your software. In particular, these features will save you many days of work:
    1. The spellchecker.
    2. The template and styles features, which will automatically format your work.
    3. The automated Table of Contents.
    4. By using search and replace thoughtfully, you can make hundreds of small corrections in only a few seconds. For example, the first thing to do with any document is to replace all consecutive empty spaces with single spaces, that is, replace all • • with •. Here are more search and replace examples:
  10. Consider using software to simplify data analysis and referencing. Even better, start using a reference management software program from the commencement of your degree program. By organizing all your references and summaries in one place, you will save time during your dissertation. (With thanks to Sαm Βεrriοs.)
  11. Familarize yourself with your institution’s rules that affect how fast you can move. For example:
    1. Some institutions give you considerable freedom to plan your own work.
    2. Some institutions have strict stages and do not allow you to progress until you have passed the stage you are on.
    3. Some allow you to use previously done work, some require it, and some prohibit it.
    4. Some institutions actively encourage students to publish journal articles while others have strict rules, e.g. requiring the supervisor's approval.

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Getting a head start

You might be able to do some things before you officially start the dissertation:

  1. You might have already have firmed up your ideas on a topic and a dissertation outline. (See Choosing a topic below.)
  2. In some cases, you can have the data already available, saving you months of time. For example:
    1. If you want to do a literary topic, you might already have done extensive reading and made notes.
    2. You might be doing research in an institution where all or much of the data has already been collected.
    3. You might have already collated your references and source materials.
  3. You might have published journal articles that you will be allowed to use as dissertation chapters.
  4. You might not have your data yet, but you might already have a pool of willing prospective respondents. (Recruiting research subjects from scratch can be time-consuming and hap-hazard.)

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Supervisors

Parts adapted from Your research supervisor Ross Woods, Rev. 2020, '23.

  1. Choosing the right supervisor or supervisory committee is essential and can be more important than the choice of university. This especially applies to the committee chairperson. Choose a supervisor and committee members who have a reputation for holding regular supervison sessions, being helpful in giving supervision, and getting back to students after they have read student work. If the chair is helpful and the committee members are cooperative, students get through more quickly. (Unhelpful committee members take a long time to respond to student messages, send conflicting messages, tend to critisize more than help, or simply abandon their students. The consequences are general frustration, numerous delays, and higher fees.)
    1. Does the university give supervisors an incentive to help you graduate in a reasonable time? Some get funding or promotion only for successful completions. On the other hand, some have an incentive to keep you going as long as possible because the university can charge fees for every extra semester.
    2. Ask previous students. (Don't rely on student recruiters; they always tell you that staff are wonderful.)
  2. If possible, look for specific standards of what you can expect. For example, are supervisors required to be available to meet with you, and to read your work and return it within a given timeframe? What can you do if a supervisor is not up to the mark?
  3. A change of supervisors or committee members would probably cost you a semester. What are the insitutions's practices on changing supervisors or committee members? Some universities have a policy of not changing them under any circumstances except their death. Others change them frequently on a whim and make the student lose a semester and pay more fees. This is worse if the chair changes, or if the new members don't agree with previous members. In these cases, students are usually quite powerless.
  4. Your initiative will drive the dissertation through more quickly, so you should take control of the whole process. Your supervisors will usually be glad that you are a self-starter. Show your supervisor that you are willing to do the extra work and get it done on time.
  5. Maintain contact with your supervisor, even during quiet times.
  6. Supervisors would much rather check your research than your writing. If you get this right, you’ll also keep your supervisor interested in what you write and you will make faster progress.
    Supervisors quickly give up on unreadable work and are entitled to send it back to you without even reading it. And if your work is unreadable, you’ll have to re-submit it and it will cost you at least a week each time. It also does not help your relationship with your supervisor.
    Proofread any written work before you submit it; drafts don’t need to be perfect, but they do need to be readable.
    1. Check for missing and incorrect references.
    2. Check for errors in typing, layout, spelling and grammar. (Use your software.)
    3. Stylistic blunders also make for difficult reading. I dislike complicated sentences of 100 words that should have been written as simple twenty-word sentences. I find paragraphs confusing when they contain only one 200-word sentence that starts on one topic and ends on another.
  7. Send work in far enough ahead of meetings so that the supervisor has ample opportunity to read it.
    1. If your draft arrives too late, the supervisor might not have time read it. The meeting will be wasted and it will cost you at least a week.
      (I remember a student who showed up for a meeting with his 70-page literature review and asked, What do you think? He'd completely forgotten that it would take me some time to read it.)
  8. When you are asked to revise something:
    1. Take feedback without sulking. Use it constructively to do better. You can ask questions to get more help in how to improve.
    2. Show that you are serious by returning the revised version as soon as you can, but not so rushed that it has mistakes.
    3. Before you send off your draft, check that you have made all corrections suggested since your last meeting. (If you have not made them, you might lose a week or more.) Many supervisors identify only a sample of particular kinds of errors, and the the student must go through the whole dissertation to identify and correct all occurrences.
  9. While waiting for your supervisor to read your work, move on with the next section so that you only have one current version at a time with the supervisor.
    Do not send frequent new versions to your supervisor because multiple versions creates confusion and slows everybody down. Consider this situation:
  10. Prepare for meetings with your supervisor.
    1. Check that the time and location is suitable.
    2. Make a written list of your questions and ideas.
    3. Remember to ask if you have missed out anything.
    4. Prepare a plan of your next steps to discuss with the supervisor.
  11. In meetings with your supervisor, you might need to draw him/her out with questions so that you get the best information.
  12. Make the structure clear to your readers, so that they can see what you are trying to achieve. If your supervisor cannot see your structure, he/she might return your work without even reading it. At the very least, you lose a week. Consider these tips:
    1. Use your word processor feature to create a table of contents, complete with lower level headings. The supervisor can then quickly scan the structure of the whole dissertation.
    2. Check that chapters have suitable introductory paragraphs to let readers know what is each chapter is about. (A reader who is dumped directly into many details without knowing their purpose is unlikely to read very far.)
    3. Most chapters also need suitable concluding paragraphs. This lets the reader know what the chapter has achieved and smooths the transition to the next chapter.

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Schedules and goals

  1. Students get through faster if they have excellent time management. In particular, students need to allow time to polish the final draft, because they often underestimate how long it will take.
  2. Start early in planning how the whole research project will go:
  3. Set yourself goals and deadlines. They will help you even if you hate them.
    1. Most students need monthly and weekly goals. Some supervisors will even help you set deadlines or ask, What will you bring me next week?
    2. Many students also find daily goals helpful; they are small and achievable so that you feel you are achieving something, and they will keep you on track. For example, 300-500 words every day is often realistic if you have good preparation. It doesn’t matter if you don’t always reach your goals, because it is still better to have a goal and not reach it than to have no goal. For example, you might write several hundred words one day and spend the next day tackling a difficult problem and write very little.
  4. Your personal work schedule
    1. Find a schedule that suits you and settle into it. Everybody is different; some like early mornings, some like late nights, and some like to set aside particular days or blocks. The only requirement is that it works for you.
    2. Sleep properly and have a day of rest each week.
    3. If you have a family, make enough regular time for them. Your degree will probably be a sacrifice for them too.
    4. When you need to concentrate intensely, put your energy into your best times of the day. Use other times for work that needs to be done but isn't so exhausting.

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Choosing a topic

  1. Choose a field where you have a strong academic background. This is not the place to start learning a new field from scratch. If you have recent or current field experience, you might have a head start on the complexities in the field.
  2. Does your personal background give you an insight into a particular kind of problem, or access to a particular group of possible respondents? For example, if you have lived in Xyzland for ten years and speak fluent Xyz-ese, you are probably in a good position to do research about Xyzland. (Then, when your dissertation is finished, you should mention your prior experience in the preface.)
  3. Ask others for their ideas on topics. You don't have to accept them, but they might help you to develop your ideas and to choose more wisely.
  4. Choose a topic:
    1. Decide on your topic as early as you can, perhaps even before you apply. A good idea will give you a head start if it is correct. (But don't commit to a topic before you have adequately examined the field. You would waste a lot of time if the topic was somehow wrong and was rejected.)
    2. Choose a feasible topic that you can finish in the time available. Most research is incremental so don’t aim for a Nobel prize right now. But make it ambitious enough to be sure of passing. (In the British system, students who submit dissertations that aren't quite good enough are downgraded to a senior Master degree.)
    3. Choose a topic that doesn’t require long periods of fieldwork and huge amounts of data.
    4. It can help to have several ideas for topics as long as you don't waste time overdeveloping them. It might help if your favorite topic doesn't work out for some unforeseeable reason.
    5. Some institutions expect you to specify a research topic or an area of research interest in your application.
  5. As early as you can:
    1. Narrow your particular topic; this will prevent you spending lots of time on irrelevant points of discussion.
    2. Discuss your topic with your prospective supervisor and get agreement on a topic and outline, even if you have to change it later. This will save you time because you have some assurance that your proposal will be acceptable even before you write it. Caveat: Make sure that your proposal is consistent with the discussion with the prospective supervisor.
  6. Look for topics that test the limits of known generalizations in existing research; your topic can be based on suggestions for further research, a different population or context, stated limitations, or counterintuitive results. This kind of topic lets you build on an existing body of research, gives you a good chance of success, and gives you a good opportunity to make an original finding. However, you have a head start in:
  7. Start with a clear, focussed topic. The sooner you have the final version of the topic, the faster you can start. (This is, however, a double edged sword. If you rush to start before the topic is right, you might waste more time.)

*Pp. 45-47. Estelle M. Philips and Derek S. Pugh. 1987. How to get a PhD: A Handbook for Students and their Supervisors (Milton Keynes & Philadelphia: Open University Press).

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Reading and thinking

  1. Start thinking it through early, and keep thorough notes of your thoughts. (You don't know what will be useful later on.)
  2. You might notice similarities or parallels between very different areas of the literature. Join the dots; it might be an underlying theoretical principle.
  3. Talk to people so you can develop your ideas.
  4. Read widely enough to become familiar with the specific ideas and major thinkers on the topic.
  5. Learn to skim read lots of information very quickly. If your purpose is clear, you can quickly filter out large amounts of irrelevant material.
  6. Read dissertations in your field to familiarize yourself with the style of dissertation writing and the nature of research expectations.
    1. You'll get ideas on defining your topic (assumptions, hypotheses, research questions).
    2. You'll get leads for your literature review.
    3. You'll get ideas on suitable kinds of academic language.
    4. You'll get ideas on research methodology. Researchers should describe their methodology in enough detail for someone else to replicate it. You will also see any adjustments they had to make.
  7. Read journal articles on your possible topics. Besides the advantages above, you will find suggestions for further research at the end of many articles.

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The literature review

  1. I recommend a simple system for writing the literature review. It is a two-stage process of writing notes as you go that you put into an annotated bibliography. It’s then a simple editing procedure to make it into a literature review.
  2. Keep good notes of the literature you read, with all bibliographic references. Some things that appear unhelpful at first might turn out to be very helpful later on. As your thoughts develop, you will probably want to refer back to sources, so you will save time if you can easily locate them again. Depending on copyright, you can keep copies. Some of these will become the basis of your annotated bibliography and then your literature review.
  3. You want to find an article again quickly, and you know you saved a soft copy in a folder with many other articles. You have kept some notes so you know the writer's name. Use the search feature of your operating system. If an article has multiple authors, choose the name that is least common. (You could also try using a very unusual vocabulary item.)
  4. Log journal articles into a matrix so that they are already organized when you start writing. This is most helpful when the number of articles and range of topics becomes confusing. In other cases, it can be more helpful to group articles simply according to topics in an outline.
  5. Don’t get sidetracked into reading lots of very interesting articles that are irrelevant to your topic. This takes fairly strict self-discipline; it is easy to lose weeks or even months on irrelevant topics.
  6. Make sure you use only primary and secondary sources. If you waste time on unsuitable sources, you will might have to delete dozens of pages representing many weeks of work.
  7. Ryαn Dεschαmρs offers this tip to keep it simple: Your literature review should ultimately say something like this: 'The main papers worth reading in my field have asked the following questions and came to these conclusions. One thing they did not ask or are wrong about is X. For this reason, I am asking this (or these) questions, and have formulated the following hypotheses that will guide the rest of my thesis.'
  8. AI can do some tasks very quickly and will save you time. However, it is not permitted for some roles. AI can now write literature reviews, but this will probably be disallowed.

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Personal work habits and attitudes

  1. More quickly means working smarter and more efficiently, not taking lazy short-cuts. If you are a full-time student, getting finished faster means focused, productive work for at least 40 hours per week. Don’t count time spent worrying, procrastinating or time that is simply wasted. In contrast, if you choose the easiest possible project and the simplest possible methodology, chances are that your supervisor will quickly see through your ruse and reject your proposal before the proverbial ink is dry.
  2. The people around you.
    1. Have a writing buddy or group with whom you can discuss and develop your ideas.
    2. A supportive cohort will also be helpful, especially if you can make friends. (Some students find very competitve cohorts to be unhelpful.)
    3. Don't compare yourself to others. Some students see others working harder and feel that they need to work harder. Just because they couldn't take the weekend off doesn't mean you can't. Being refreshed and happy usually translates to better more efficient performance in your work. Sometimes a little time off compensates for itself.
    4. Imposter syndrome slows people down. The sooner you get over it, the faster you will progress.
  3. Keep focussed and get rid of distractions. Don’t procrastinate. Find a place where you can concentrate for long periods without interuptions.
  4. Your data and notes:
    1. Store your data safely and back it up, preferably with version numbering.
    2. Keep all your notes organized. Put your data and your drafts into a file structure with folder and file names that you will enable you to find things easily. (Everybody seems to come up with their own system.)
  5. Your program
    1. Familiarize yourself with program procedures and forms.
    2. Observe department seminars and learn how people in your field give presentations.
    3. Use any coursework and seminar components to support your dissertation.
  6. If you are sharing a laboratory, your supervisor will probably monitor your workload, so learn how to appear over-worked without lying to your superiors. The appearance of being swamped slows the rate at which they give you extra work.
  7. Being a Graduate Teaching Assistant as a part-time paid job outside the PhD it can take large amounts of time. Avoid it if you can, unless your finances require it or you need it on your CV.
  8. The PhD is easier if you have full funding or scholarships for food, supplies, occasional fun, and adequate housing. (Loans often increase financial stress because you eventually have to repay them.)
  9. ⚠ Be prepared for the emotional crunch. Most students get frustrated and overwhelmed at some point. A dissertation is a test of tenacity, not just academic ability. Mostly it's showing up and getting things done even when you feel you are failing, or not doing well, or want to quit. Keep aiming for your goal and believe that you can achieve it.

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Methodology

  1. During your reading stage and literature review, learn about other researchers' methodologies so that you can choose the most appropriate one for your work. This includes the best way to do some things, what kinds of factors you should anticipate (and what to do about them), what not to do, and how a basic method can be modified. It will be helpful when you design your own methodology and give you ideas on modifications.
  2. Your reading might also save you lots of time if an existing method or instrument has already been tested and proven to be suitable, and you can borrow it for your own research.
  3. Choose a methodology that you will be able to do well. Unfamiliar methodologies can result in time-consuming mistakes.
  4. Early in the dissertation process, take the time to design your research well and get help if you need it. The less that can go wrong later, the faster you will finish.
  5. Get the alignment right early. The problem, the question, and the methodology must line up, as well as the hypothesis if you use one. Alignment is most often a delaying factor at prospectus stage when students don't get it right.
  6. Some methodologies can take much less time, although you should avoid quickie methods that lack rigor.
    1. Focus groups and interviews are relatively fast.
    2. If you already have access to a suitable dataset, you can progress very quickly.
    3. In experimental fields, choose topics where experiments don’t take a long time. When an experiment goes wrong, which it will, starting over might cost you only a few days rather than a few weeks or months.
    4. Documentary studies and more philosophical topics can be done completely in the library. But beware; they might be extremely complex in other ways.
    5. Whatever you do, avoid all longitudinal studies.
    6. Ethnography and action research normally require long periods in the field. These require a longer period.
    7. If your method is program evaluation, do you already have minutes or reports of reviews?
  7. Consider using research assistants for fieldwork. You are still responsible for what they do, and training and supervising them is part of your methodology.
  8. If you use interviews, transcription software will speed up the process of transcribing them.
  9. Specialized software can speed up data analysis.
  10. Some software, especially surveys, will collect data in digital form, so that you can go directly to expression and analysis without transcription.
  11. Some survey software will do much of the work of converting results into usable statistics.
  12. You can save time by having a lower number of samples or respondents; it is not always possible, but helpful when it is. Find out the minimum number of samples or participants you need and then add only a few more. Make sure that you can defend that number with certainty, because you will get asked several times.
  13. Ryαn Dεschαmρs, obviously talking about quantitative research, advises to keep it simple: Your methodology should say something like this: "Given the questions asked in the literature review, we need to measure the following things, collected using the following dataset, which can be analyzed using the following approach(es).' The same simplicity should apply to qualitative research.

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Ethical approval

By federal law, US institutions have an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to check that planned research will not ethically compromise individual research subjects. Follow instructions carefully; failure to do so can result in long delays.

You also have several ways of getting through the IRB more quickly Most IRBs probably want to see an application anyway so they can issue an exemption, even though, strictly speaking, it is not necessary. In fact, the IRB might not even want to see your proposal:

  1. Many scholarly activities do not have human subjects at all.
  2. The IRB regulations define some activities as not research. §46.102 (l):
    1. Some scholarly and journalistic activities (e.g., oral history, journalism, biography, literary criticism, legal research, and historical scholarship), are not classified as research even if the collection and use of information focusses directly on the specific individuals about whom the information is collected.
    2. Some non-PhD doctoral dissertations contain professional projects that are not research, that is, their purpose is not to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. These dissertations are more like a kind of practicum.

Some topics are eligible for an expedited review, which can be done quickly by only one person. It avoids a full IRB assessment of the proposal.

Many research methods are also eligible for exempt status, which will save you lots of time and work. However, the IRB must evaluate them to determine the exempt status:

  1. Low-risk commonly accepted educational settings, that specifically involves normal educational practices
  2. Educational tests, surveys, interviews, observation of public behavior (if conditions are met)
  3. benign behavioral interventions
  4. Research on pre-existing data or biospecimens (if conditions are met)
  5. Projects approved by a federal agency
  6. Taste and food quality evaluation
  7. Storage or maintenance of data or biospecimens for secondary research (if conditions are met)
  8. Secondary research of pre-existing information subjects have approved that information to be kept.

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Other letters and permits

Many researchers need different kinds of letters and permits for their proposals to be approved or to get ethical clearances. For example, you might need a letter from a school principal to collect data in that school, and another letter from the school district. Their requirements will include compliance with their policy on research and data collection.

Some organizations give oral approval but are very slow to issue formal letters that your institution requires. In some cases, the person with whom you talk must navigate a system of internal approvals, which can take a long time. The best solution so available so far is as follows:

  1. Do your groundwork early. The earlier you clarify your topic, purpose, and methodology, the earlier you can start other processes.
  2. Find out exactly who will issue formal letters, then do any necessary meetings with them to discuss your research (topic, purpose, methodology, etc.) and to get their organizations to do their internal approvals.
  3. Keep in contact with letter-givers. When you need those letters, it should (hopefully) be a fairly simple matter to get them without further delay.

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Outlines

  1. Plan a good first outline, even if it takes longer than you thought. Not only will it make life easier, Jessicα Ραrker suggests it will also reduce the number of revisions of the final manuscript that you will need to make. In experimental and fieldwork, the outline is generally a standard procedure. Outlines in philosophical studies and analysis, however, can be quite different, and you will probably develop a unique outline according to the main ideas. Watch your outline as you go; you might need to change your entire outline if you change your interpretation.
  2. Some kinds of research are well suited to a standard kind of outline. These will help simplify your planning and minimize the number of outline errors. They also enable you to do your research in stages, and a proposal can be an early version of the introduction, literature review, and methodology chapters.

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Writing

  1. Write detailed notes from which to write your first draft. Make notes as whole sentences, so you don't go back and think, What did I mean by that? If you keep good notes as you go, you have some early draft writing and only have to type and edit it, check the flow, and add transitional paragraphs. This is especially important for anything that you might easily forget. It applies to:
    1. fieldwork,
    2. laboratory work,
    3. adjustments in methodology made in the field,
    4. unplanned or unexpected observations, and
    5. ideas that you have when you are not in writing time.
  2. Write often, perhaps even every day, even if it is only the quality of a rough draft. (It is easy to improve something that has already been written.) To leave all writing and editing to the end can be disastrous.
  3. Keep writing over breaks between semesters.
  4. Keep working even while your supervisors are reviewing your drafts. Some supervisors are very slow in getting back with comments, but you can still use this time effectively.
  5. Use a good word-processing template to make the layout easier, and learn to use its “styles” feature.
  6. As you go, periodically use your word processor's tools to check your spelling and grammar.
  7. Get to the point when you give the background to the research problem. This can save you a lot of work; imagine deleting 10 pages of information because it is not directly relevant. You don't need to go a long way back and give lots of information that is well-known, or not really useful, or could be given in only a sentence or two. *With thanks to Μαrtιn J Ριtt.

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Editing

  1. When you think you have finished a draft of a chapter, put your work away for a few days, or even up to a week. Then pull it out and read it. You will see lots of mistakes that you didn't notice before. The reason is that, when you write, you see only what you think you have written, not what is actually on the page. When you depend only on the page later on, you see errors that you didn't see before.
  2. When getting someone else to review what you have written, consider asking someone from outside your field. Jessicα Ραrker suggests that their questions will probably be more detailed than you expect and reduce the number of edits you need to make.
  3. Some students find it easier and faster to check for errors on paper. If printouts help you, make printouts of major drafts when you have done other kinds of checking. (For some reasons, errors can be more difficult to spot on a computer screen.)
  4. When you think you're nearly finished, use specialist software to check your spelling, grammar, references, and language style.
  5. You can save time by editing work (e.g. the proposal, a chapter) fairly well before you hand it in. This can reduce the number of times you submit each item, thus reducing the amount of time spent waiting for comments.
  6. Finish editing. Although you need to get the details right, don't let perfectionism or lack of confidence prevent you from graduating. It is always easy to do one more edit or to look for one more journal article. However, you have to draw the line somewhere. It is better to have a dissertation that is not completely perfect and to graduate, than to have a good dissertation that never gets submitted. (Some students are so obsessed with perfection that they have difficulty finishing. In order to graduate, they have to learn that A good dissertation is a done dissertation. Adapted from Part 4. From fieldwork to submission by Ross Woods.

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Stuck? Don't waste time on it.

If you get quite stuck, it is your responsiiblity to work your way out of it. Try the suggestions below, but if none of them get you moving, ask for help so that you don't lose time.

  1. Use the best hours of your day for the most difficult tasks that need most concentration. Don’t get distracted with unproductive busywork, which wastes time, distracts you from more important tasks, and inhibits progress.
  2. If you are tired, feeling flat or completely uninspired, or if it's not your best time of day, do simple tasks that are quite necessary but don’t take a lot of energy. They are productive uses of your time but they take less thought. Examples include:
    1. editing,
    2. writing descriptions of things that are familiar to you but necessary for your readers, and
    3. reporting things that you have already thought through in detail.
  3. If you get writer’s block, break the next writing task into small tasks to get something written even if it’s not very good. Then it’s easy to edit and improve your notes. For example:
    1. Write an outline of the section you want to write.
    2. Write down your rough notes of topics under each section heading. (It's really a game of fill in the blanks.)
    3. Put your rough notes in a logical order.
    4. Turn your rough notes into sentences.
    5. Still have writer's block? Perhaps you're tired and need to treat it as not your best time of day. See above.
  4. If you feel overwhelmed, choose a small, achievable goal and work on that until you are ready to do more.
  5. Some problems are easier to solve if you can define them more accurately. In fact, defining the problem might be the main challenge rather than providing a solution. Try these steps:
    1. Ask yourself, “What is the problem (or problems) I’m trying to solve?”
    2. Write it down, even it it's not quite right yet.
    3. Then improve your statement of the problem or question. You might make it better structured or focussed. You might add or delete factors as you assess their relevance, or improve the definitions of terms. You might even divide it into several separate problems.
    4. Talk it over with someone. The simple act of articulating the problem to someone else might help you to figure it out.
    5. Still stuck? Put it on hold and do something else that's productive. Then come back when you're fresher. Don't waste time going in circles.

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About publishing papers

In some institutions, producing publishable papers is a major measure of accomplishment, and some supervisors are unofficially more interested in published papers than anything else. In some fields, the only measure of whether something is research in the academic community is whether it is published in a refereed journal that is indexed in a credible source. (Fortunately, researchers in other fields are not so narrow.)

  1. Write and publish journal articles that will fit into your dissertation as chapters. The reviewers will give you helpful feedback. (However, be warned that some journals take a long time to process and publish articles.)
  2. Although supervisors never admit to this, pumping out papers fast is very helpful, so choose experiments and design them so you can produce papers faster. Caveat: Some supervisors much prefer that students publish a small number of papers in higher-ranked journals and get more citations.
  3. Go to conferences and, if you can, present some papers. This might help you to publish papers on the topic. In fact, some conferences publish “conference papers” or “conference procedings” without separately publishing them as journal articles.
  4. Reviewing papers requires no data collection or experiments and can be published if you have said something worthwhile and there haven't been any recent reviews on the topic. Find topics that fit this category and write reviews.
  5. The fastest way I know to create a dissertation is by assembling a series of significant, already-published resarch articles that you have written, then adding an introduction and conclusion to the collation.
    1. This is slight of hand in that you must have already done all the research.
    2. The final dissertation must meet all requirements; the articles must add up to a conclusion that is a contribution to knowledge in its field. That is, it can't be a random collection of papers, no matter how good they are.
    3. Another variation is that many insitutions allow students to use an already-published paper as a dissertation chapter, as long as it has not been submitted for academic credit elsewhere.

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But even then ...

Even if you have done everything above, some things can still hinder progress. For example:

  1. It can be difficult to get some significant publications, especially if they are rare and relatively unknown.
  2. Someone might publish research on your exact topic, stealing your opportunity to make an original contribution. The risk increases when you take longer to finish. For example, if your research takes only one year, it is unlikely that someone else will publish research on your exact topic, stealing your opportunity to make an original contribution. However, if your research takes five years, it is much more likely that someone else will publish research on your exact topic. You will then have to accommodate that research and consider how you might still make an original contribution, perhaps creating further delay.
  3. Supervisors sometimes see a problem in a proposal or draft chapter but can’t quite define it. The bits somehow don’t hang together right. At the very least, this kind of problem will slow you down. Here's how it sometimes rolls out:
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