5 Time Management Tips for Academic Authors

Academic field demands lot of time and dedication from the profound fellows. You have to be completely invested if you are a researcher, a scientist, a professor or a student. Among all other calls, duties and responsibilities, it gets difficult to find some quality time for your thesis work or academic book. Time management is an important skill that you need to learn if you are an academician. Besides your Ph.D. program, on-campus classes, lecturership or instructions, you have to give some time to your writing for your thesis publication, or the academic book that envelops your hard-earned findings. Our daily-time is also wasted in multiple social calls like communication, email check, chit-chat, messaging, texting etc. and we end up falling out of 24 hrs. clock. However, certain tips can guide you towards effective time management such that you meet sure-shot success in becoming an author.

Here are 5 Tips for Time Management which will help you focus on your writing along with your work-

Scheduling- Any successful completion of work requires proper scheduling. Scheduling sets you free, as you know you have allotted time to every work that could be accomplished within a day and you do not deviate from your own routine. Schedule everything like when you go to office, when you go to the gym, when you eat your dinner and when you go to sleep. Definitely, your schedule must have about an hour of writing which you dedicate towards the progression of your thesis.
Use a clock for yourself- Maintain a clock at which you can look to know the time, and which will not be visible to another person. If a meeting goes on beyond its scheduled time, give a break with your polite words, and move to your next task. Many a time, personal conversations with colleagues or students can linger longer than you have expected, but take you off your schedule. When something is happening overtime, walk the person to the door, or at least try to get yourself out the situation. There are conversations that you cannot refuse like if your professor or mentor wants to have a word with you or your boss may be actually distracting you on a regular basis to talk about the weather or a football game, consider that this might be their way of connecting with you. However, use diplomacy to deal with things. Mention a project deadline or thesis publication deadline to hint them that you could talk about this issue later.
Learn to say NO- This is one of the most difficult things to do. Refusing someone on something might seem rude, but sometimes you have to do it to save yourself some quality time for your bigger mission, your writing. You have to turn down offers which won’t bear fruit. The big lesson to learn here is that not everything needs to be done by you. There are other people in your department or faculty that are equally qualified. Sometimes, a task that is tedious for you is exciting for someone else. Someone might joyfully take to the task that you begrudgingly accept because you cannot say ‘no’. You have to say NO to last-moment plans which weren’t pre-informed. You have to say NO to socializing that isn’t meaningful to you.
Email schedule- Wise men often say that check your email only twice a day. Perhaps they never belong to the age to smartphones, iPads and androids where emails and text messages are constantly honking for your attention and it is difficult to ignore them. But if you keep responding to emails and texts at intervals to 10-15 minutes, you will have spent hours in just responding to messages, and you have no time left for your work. Try to respond to all emails at one time. To not keep coming back to your email account. If the same response needs to be circulated to many groups, copy them all and send the message at once. You can respond to general emails later at the end of your day, but sure, there can be some which needs urgent action or decision making, for e.g. your scientific creation has started responding and it needs your approval to go to the next step, then you cannot wait for an appropriate time frame. You have to respond immediately.
Allow yourself some time-cushion- When you are scheduling tasks for yourself, provide some time-cushion to each task, because in reality, certain things take longer than expected. For e.g. Google map shows that you need 12 minutes to reach office, but due to traffic hours, the actual time turns out to be 19 minutes. You cannot plan with yourself on edge; you have to keep the margin to be effectively functional.

Writing along with your regular work is a tedious process, but when you begin your research on something, you tend to finish the same, and there is often a deadline for your thesis publication. Whatever, you do in a day, you need to take out time for your writing and you have to write regularly to maintain the pace and be true to the findings. Scheduling yourself is essential. But you have to remember your health is important. Many people think that sacrificing sleep will add work hours to their day, but studies have found how sleep can impact our productivity. 8 hrs. of sleep are essential for proper functioning of brain, so do not reduce sleep time to finish your writing, as that may interfere with your capability to think. When you are an author, you also need some time to read. Work on finding some time to read everyday at least half an hour.