Time Management in research works “are a set of principles, practices, skills, tools and systems that help us use time to accomplish specific, goal-directed activities, is a skill necessary to maintaining educational research productivity. Furthermore, the benefits of effective time management may extend to improved educational research and stress-related outcomes. Strategies for time management fall into three broad categories: time assessment behaviours, planning behaviours, and monitoring behaviours. Check your project submission deadline. Although it may seem like a long time away, you will need to manage your time effectively to get through each stage of your research project. Poor management of time has made a lot of research works not useful over the years. The major causes of time wastage in research works are poor feasibility studies and non-researchable project topics. Using a variety of personalized strategies in each category is essential to effectively manage time in educational project works.

TIME MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH WORK

There are a variety of approaches to time management in a research work that minimize procrastination, interruptions, and enhance discipline particularly when engaging in educational research activities. Time management involves allocating time to activities that will help achieve goals in an educational research. Approaches to time management include monitoring, setting goals, prioritizing, planning, and analysis of time spent in the research project. Specific examples of these approaches are listed below:

Monitoring

• During the time you have allocated to work on a task, keep a log to identify how you actually use your time (be honest) in your educational research.
• Identify common examples of your habits that lead to procrastination, attending to interruptions, and a lack of discipline.

Setting Goals

• Identify and record all the objectives you wish to achieve in the research project. Each of these objectives needs to include a measurable component for the outcome and a time limit within which the objective will be obtained.
• Determine which of the goals are under your direct control and are realistically attainable within the time limit you have determined in your research work.

Prioritizing

• Once all of the goals to be achieved within the time frame have been identified, arrange them in order of priority.
• Firstly, work on the highest priority goal and consistently until you have achieved the goal or have exhausted the available resources to achieve the goal.
• Avoid “dual tasking” or working towards two or more goals simultaneously.

Planning

Make realistic long-term plans

• An educational project research is a major undertaking that spans multiple months. It is therefore helpful to map exactly what needs be done in your research work over the course of your candidature and create a realistic plan for completing this work. It is useful to display this plan in visual form somewhere prominent (e.g. pinned above your desk) so that you can easily refer back to it.
• Define your objectives – these needs to be specific, measurable, and set within a specific time-frame.
• Define the tasks you need to complete to achieve these objectives in the research work.
• Set deadlines for these tasks (and keep to them!)
• Build reporting requirements (e.g. confirmation report) into your long-term plan.

Set clear and challenging short-term goals

• Good time management also involves short-term (e.g. daily or weekly) planning. Short-term planning is especially important for providing structure for unstructured research time.
• Effective short-term goals are clear; they should specify exactly what needs to be done to achieve the goal. This will often involve breaking down larger tasks into discrete tasks that can be completed in a single work session. They should also be challenging (but still attainable); ambitious goals can motivate us more effectively than goals which are easily met.
• Minimize opportunities for interruptions while working on the project work. Pay attention as to where you are most creative and where you can best focus. (e.g., work in the library or an abandoned office, turn off your cell phone, and disable the Internet).

Analysis of Time Spent

1. If an objective in the research work is not being achieved within the expected time frame, identify possible barriers and work to minimize the barriers in the future.

2. Periodically re-evaluate your habits of procrastination, attending to interruptions, and lack of discipline.

Excellent research works are predicated upon good and effective time management. Effective use of a researcher’s time contributes directly to his or her research project productivity and allows more time to pursue pleasant activities. Procrastination, attending to interruptions and lack of controlling commonly contributes to ineffective time management and result in low levels of research work productivity. The researcher can minimize the negative impact of these inefficiency of research productivity through monitoring activities, setting goals, prioritizing, planning, and analysis of time spent on a task.

Focus on one task at a time: Flipping between different tasks is often an inefficient way to work in a research project. Examples include beginning to write one section of the research work only to be distracted by an incoming email, or leaving a paper half-read in order to locate a source that it cites. It is often more difficult and time-consuming to complete the original task after flipping to another activity than it would have been otherwise. If research students manage their time effectively then there is every possibility of having good grades in the research work and also having a good relationship with the supervisor allotted to them.