Written By Christian Lewis
As a graduate student, time will seem like your most valuable; yet, most fleeting resource. We graduate students have a lot on our plates; research, TA-ing, grading, dissertation writing, and having a balanced personal life. It can be overwhelming at times. Therefore, making the best use of your time through effective time management will help boost your productivity and happiness! Below are a few key strategies to manage your time more effectively. Try a few different strategies and find what works best for you.
Create a Broad Thesis/Project Timeline
As a graduate student at UCI, you are required to create an Individual Development Plan (IDP) which tracks your progress and goals for the upcoming year. This is a very useful way to keep you and your advisor to track your required milestones. You can also create your own personal milestone timeline, curated to fit your projects’ needs. Fine tune the idea of the IDP and create month to month timelines rather than annual. Find the IDP form simply by searching “UCI Individual Development Plan” into Google, and the first link will automatically download the Word document.
When creating a timeline for your project, good practice is to get advice from senior students in your lab group. How long did a similar task take them, and did they meet their timeline goals? What roadblocks did they come upon? This will help you avoid the traps of “the planning fallacy” in which we underestimate the time we need for projects. Check out this interesting episode of Freakonomics Radio podcast that dives into this topic, and how it can help you plan more accurately: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/project-management-rebroadcast/
Plan Each Day
Make use of your Google calendar to plan how you’ll spend your time during the day. This becomes ever more important as you gain more responsibilities throughout graduate school. Block-in when you plan to do each required task, and how long it will take. Make a note when tasks take longer than you think, and plan ahead for that next time. Include meals, breaks, and personal time in your daily block-in! This may seem like over-planning, but it actually helps you organize the tasks you have to do, and save you time in the end. Below is a simplified mock-up of my daily time block:
| 8:30-9:30 AM | Make breakfast & get to my desk |
| 9:30-10 AM | Check emails |
| 10 AM- 12PM | Work on the methods section of my Thesis Chapter 1 |
| 12- 1 PM | Setup my lab for tomorrow’s experiment |
| 1-2 PM | Eat lunch and go for a walk |
| 2-3 PM | Class |
| 3-4 PM | TA discussion |
I find that this blocking-in strategy usually leaves me feeling like I have more time to get everything done, rather than less. Again, fine-tune this idea, and find what works best for you!
Use Project Management Software
Many effective project management softwares are available for free download, such as Asana: https://app.asana.com/. These softwares are well-organized and can help you manage tasks individually and in a team. If you are working on a large experiment or developing a paper with multiple people, you can organize your workflow and keep track of everyone’s progress towards a larger goal. Asana was created by a Google software engineer to improve workflow in the company, and is only one of many types of such assets available (mentioned in the Freakonomics episode linked above). Explore the options!
Learn to Say No
Graduate school can be easily become overwhelming, sometimes, seemingly out of nowhere. We become expert jugglers of many different tasks and hats. Although we can become very proficient at juggling multiple roles, be wary of taking on too much. Be aware of your bandwidth, and be okay with saying no to things that would spread you too thin. This could be small things like going to weekly club meetings, or larger things like taking on a new project. Your personal health is important above all else, and keeping your list of commitments within your bandwidth is a great way to keep productivity high with the tasks you do have!
Protect Your Personal Time
Always budget personal time for yourself into your schedule. Whatever it is that recharges your batteries, make time for that in your daily schedule! Maintaining a good work-life balance is key to your overall productivity as a graduate student.