Time

It's not easy for you to talk about getting the thesis done if you isolate it from its context. It has to be considered in relation to your whole life and you need to assess realistically how much time you can devote to your PhD work. Most PhD students have many other commitments, including family, friends and full or part time jobs. If you are a full time student, you need to commit yourself to your PhD study as you would to a full time job. If you are a part time student, you have to plan to find the necessary time and be realistic about the time you actually have.

Understand the work entailed in a PhD

Then, to organise how you are going to do your work, you need to know what the work is. First, therefore, you need to have a holistic view of your thesis and know where it is going. Here we assume that you have done the whole intellectual conceptualisation of it and the basic designing of your work. If not, then this is your first task and it's a good idea to give yourself a time limit for it. Once the overall concept is pinned down, this may identify the tasks ahead in fairly specific terms, which is often the case in the sciences. In the humanities, however, this can be more elusive and, indeed, settling on the method of analysis could well be the whole focus of your research. Nevertheless, you do need to identify in broad terms what specific tasks need to be done to get you to where you want to be at the end. Not only do you need to know the sequence of the tasks, you need to know when you are going to do them and how long they are likely to take.

Outcomes at the end of specified periods

Now that you know where you are going and the broad tasks involved, you need to plan where you will be ideally by the end of each year. Once you have this overall structure, then there is a need to break down the tasks and the time further. For some people, having a vision of what will happen over the next month is enough; others need to plan on a weekly or even daily basis. You have to see what works for you and don't just adopt a plan that works for someone else. For example, if a colleague works every Monday on the Literature Review and analyses data the rest of the time, that might work for that person but be a strange thing for you to do.

Not only does your plan have to work for you and not be someone else's but, even when you have settled on your plan, you need to be flexible enough to change it if it's not working. Don't become a victim of your own plan. Remember, a plan is just another of the tools to help you reach your goal. Some people think they don't need a plan and others spend all of their time planning. Avoid both of these pathologies and find a level and type of planning which suits you and works.

Planning

There are two basic types of plan: one focuses on time and one focuses on things to be done. For example, some people focus on time slots and then allot tasks to available time slots, whereas others operate from 'to do' lists put in order of priority and do the tasks as time becomes available. Within either approach, whatever you plan to do has to be quite specific. For example, 'working on literature review' is too general; rather, have the tasks within this specified: 'compare White's and Brown's views on x' or 'find out what followed from Black's proposed framework for y'. Regardless of style of plan, it still is a good idea to set time limits for tasks as they can stretch and lead you in various interesting but irrelevant directions. It is necessary to review how you are going, to see if you are still 'on task', and, rather than drifting aimlessly, to make a conscious decision about whether what you're doing deserves more attention. At times, it may be beneficial to allow yourself a finite period to browse and just take what happens. If this is part of the plan, then there's no guilt!

To avoid burnout, you need to build into your plan rest, recreation, fun, spare time and even 'catch up' time. As with most things, planning involves trial and error. You are unlikely to get it right the first time. You need to think about what worked and what didn't work for you, modify your plan, trial it again, and continue the process. And, of course, circumstances change through transition to another stage of your work or because of events in your life. Your plan will have to change too.