Completing your master's thesis is crucial as it means you can graduate on time. This is even more true if you are one of those students who wait until the very last minute to get things done. The key to completing your thesis on time is being consistent and keeping a schedule.
Writing your thesis should be broken into a series of good habits. What does this mean? It means making it a task that gets incorporated into your daily habits. A thesis is a major goal that should be broken down into smaller and more manageable chunks. For example, you can decide to write one to three paragraphs a day.
This would be a much more productive approach than waiting for the last week before the thesis deadline. A master's thesis can be described as one of the most challenging forms of academic writing. In this article, we break down how you go about making completing your thesis on time a practical and reachable goal.
1. Don't rely too much on your supervisor or advisor
The first thing you should realize as a master's student or PhD is that it's your responsibility, not your advisor's to graduate on time. True, many advisers don't provide much help and support and may not be quite good at their jobs.
However, ultimately, it is your responsibility to complete your thesis and graduate time. Even before you get a supervisor or advisor, you should at least have a good idea of the topic that you are interested in. The job of your advisor is to support and facilitate your growth as a scholar and researcher.
In another article about how to write your master's thesis, I even suggested that you write your proposal even before meeting your advisor! They are not responsible for holding you by the hand and walking you across the finishing line.
Your master's or Ph.D. program is the chance to prove yourself as an independent and mature researcher and scholar. In fact, master's theses and more frequently PhD dissertations are transformed into published scientific papers.
2. Treat writing your thesis like a job
One of the most unfortunate things about your master's and Ph.D. is that it often fells like a job that you don't get paid for. This is worse at the Ph.D level. However, you should try to see this from a new perspective. For those of us who have jobs, you know that you need to show up even if you don't want to.
You should apply the same principle to your academic work. Don't think of your thesis as "school work". Instead, treat it like a professional project that your life depends on. We have talked about this in a previous post about hacks to increase academic productivity.
Decide a schedule for your thesis. This means figuring out what time you should you work on it and for how long. And make that schedule regular. Perhaps, you only have time in the morning.
Then, you should wake up early at five AM and work for one to three hours: whatever your time and ability allow. Even spending one hour a day to write at least a dense paragraph for your literature review over time could lead to incredible results. You may even end up impressing yourself.
3. Write your master's thesis in chunks
A thesis is a major and difficult project. The key to achieving it is by breaking it into manageable or actionable units. One of the worst things you can do is to wait last minute to do a mad dash to complete your thesis in a week or two or even a month.
Many graduated students appear quite proud of their ability to have finished their thesis just on time. However, there are probably many more students who had to spend an extra semester, and all the costs associated with doing so, after failing to finish that mad dash.
Your thesis is likely the most important document that you will ever write in terms of its impact on your career and life. It would be best if you treated it as such. To do so, treat it as a major goal that should be broken down into manageable components or objectives.
Make a timeline. Decide what parts of your thesis should be completed in what order, and give yourself a specific amount of time to complete related tasks. This would mean that you end up breaking your tasks into manageable units or chunks.
If done well, you will end up knowing exactly how much work should be completed in a month, week, or day. This could eventually mean something like a paragraph a day.
4. Make use of Gantt charts
Gantt charts can be useful tools in completing your thesis on time. Gantt charts are used across all industries. They are awesome because they provide you with a roadmap of where you are in terms of your goals and where you should be.
A Gantt chart is a tool used in project management that visually depicts work completed over a period of time in terms of how that work was originally planned. It can include the beginning and end dates of various tasks, milestones, and more.
The advantages of using a Gantt chart include:
Visualizing where you are with your thesis project
Making your thesis seem like a professional project instead of just "schoolwork"
Seeing where tasks overlap and depend on each other
Practicing better time management
Creating a sense of accountability to yourself
There are a number of software tools, many of them open and free, that you can use to create your Gantt charts. Most Gantt chart software is intuitive and easy to use. Lastly, they are also flexible. You can adjust your Gantt chart to take into account changes and unplanned developments.
5. Write intensively and frequently
Completing your thesis on time requires intense concentration and a schedule of regular and frequent writing. In short, thesis writing should be made into a professional habit that is practiced every day.
As we mentioned earlier, never wait until the last minute to write a whole book-length thesis in a week or two. A paragraph a day is way better than a chapter a week. What would that look like?
A good approach would be working according to a specific unit of time without any distractions. By distractions, we mean making sure that your phone and social media apps are all off.
An intensive hour of writing and analysis without any sort of distraction could lead to impressive results, and as mentioned earlier, you would end up impressing yourself. This type of work is called deep work, which I spoke about in a previous post.
Final thoughts
Writing your thesis is a major professional milestone. So, you definitely would want to get it right. It should be approached with seriousness. The key to completing your thesis on time includes treating it like a professional project, developing a roadmap with tools like Gannt charts, and writing regularly and deeply.
This approach may help make completing your thesis seem like something less impossible. Your thesis represents nothing less than you launching your career into the world of academia. Umberto Eco once said, “Your thesis is like your first love. It will be difficult to forget.” It should be treated as such.
Cite this Eminent article |
Antoine, M. (2024, August 17). How to Complete your Master's Thesis on Time. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/complete-your-master-s-thesis-on-time |
Comentários