The experience of taking doctoral studies for the past 6 months has provided a lot of new learning for me. One of the lessons and experiences that I got was about how to make a research timeline so that I can complete this doctoral study on time, which is 4 years. Right from the start, my daily supervisor said that having a research timeline is very important to know the direction of our research. By having a clear timline , it is hoped that we will be more focused and be able to set our work priorities. Instead, have timelinewhich is not clear is one of the reasons why research projects, whether they are a thesis, or a dissertation, cannot be completed on time. What’s more, a dissertation / doctoral study is very different from the thesis and thesis I did at UI in the past so having a clear research timeline is very important. In this article, I would like to share the lessons I learned from my supervisor in planning or researching my dissertation timeline .
By the way, what exactly is the difference between a dissertation or doctoral research versus a thesis and a thesis research? If our thesis and thesis research generally have a span of 4 – 8 months, then this doctoral research has 3 – 10 years, depending on the field under study. The length of time for this research is because in doctoral research, we must be able to make an original contribution to our scientific field. These original contributions must of course be found carefully and thoroughly, ensuring that no one else has yet done so. So you can imagine research at the doctoral level is research that is marathon in nature: conducting literature reviews, writing journal articles, writing articles for conferences, taking various courses,
Therefore, when last Thursday I got the opportunity for guidance with my new daily supervisor , I immediately asked him a question “how can I graduate on time? How can I focus and do targeted research so that I don’t waste time? ”
Like schools in Europe, I didn’t get the answer, but I was asked back, “How about your own plans?” This question makes me have to think for myself what a good plan or timeline is in my opinion. So that under the guidance, the supervisor and I also conducted a workshop together to determine the timeline for my research. My supervisor prepared sticky notes, flip chart paper , and markers. This technique is deliberately used so that we can easily remove the pairs of plans that we have made.
So then I started writing various timeline plans in my head: starting from when I wanted to write a draft article for the first conference , when would I go forward to the proposal session (GO / NO-GO meeting) so that I officially became a doctoral candidate at TU Delft, when to look up data and create calculation models, when to take Python programming classes, and when to write a dissertation.
After I created my version of the timeline , it was time for the feedback session . In this feedback session , the timeline that I have created was criticized in great detail by my Daily Supervisor. Since the beginning, my supervisor has said that he will criticize in great detail so that my timeline is at least: (1) Feasible to achieve; and (2) “Healthy” in work, paying attention to the aspects of Work Life Balance.
So, what are the important lessons I got?
MAKE CLEAN TIME AVAILABLE TO DO RESEARCH (NET TIME AVAILABLE)
The first thing I learned in creating this research timeline was to reconfirm how much net time I had to do this research. “Clean Time” here is the effective time that can be used for real research.
One mistake in the assumptions that I used in compiling the timeline for this research was that I assumed that I had 48 months to do research . In fact, the 48 months have not been reduced by the time I spent on Eid holidays, summer holidays and winter holidays. This is where my supervisor asks me to have some decent time off, and asks me to really think about the clean time I have. So, if I assume that my year off is roughly 6 weeks, then on a net basis I have about 3.5 years to work to fit everything in. This clean-up time may not have been reduced by sick leave or other incidental agendas.
The first lesson, before making a research plan timeline, we need to determine the clean time that can be used to complete the project. Make more accurate assumptions, one of which is to increase the consideration for holidays. When we know exactly what net time available we have, the plan we make will be more realistic.
STARTING FROM THE END RESULT ( BEGIN WITH THE END )
In the past, when I was a self-development trainer , one of the books I liked to read was 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This book that discusses the 7 habits of successful people tells that one of the things that makes people successful is persistence and focus, while the focus comes from “being clear about the end result to be achieved”. In other words to be successful: start with the end.
That is also what my supervisor pays attention to when giving feedback on the timeline that I have created. While giving feedback, my supervisor asked, “when do you want to start a defense thesis ?”. I started doing simple calculations. If my scholarship is limited to August 31, 2023, then I have a defense or trial before summer vacation. That means, I have to have a trial sometime in May or June 2023. If I want a trial in June 2023, I have to submitat least 6 months in advance, i.e. January 2023 to give the PhD committee the opportunity to check the quality of my dissertation. That means… If I could write a dissertation within 4 months, I would have started writing a dissertation in September 2022! To summarize again, in essence I only have the net research time of 2.5 years – in which half a year is spent on holidays, and one year for the dissertation until the trial.
ENTERING THE CONFERENCE / COURSE SCHEDULE YOU WANT TO BE TAKEN
After I realized that I actually only had 2.5 years of net time for research, my supervisor again “cut” the time I had by scheduling the conferences and courses I had to take. In the context of PhD at TU Delft, every PhD is required to take part in several top tier conferences in their scientific field, as well as take several courses to get 45 Graduate School Credits, a kind of short course credit to improve the competence of PhD students.
Of course, this reduces the time available for research. After we put all these schedules, then we realized that the actual time for this PhD is very limited. This makes us have to maintain the priority of studying and research well .. Because if you slip a little, then our research time will be delayed.
The idea above can also be adopted for those of you who are struggling to complete a thesis or thesis. To make it more interesting, you can use manila paper or sticky notes, as my supervisor taught me during the guidance.
An example of working on a research timeline that I worked on with my supervisor
So, in this way it is hoped that you can compile the timeline for your final project more precisely. The final project is indeed challenging, because we set our own deadlines. In the S3 or PhD range, it is even more lenient, because we are being trained to become independent researchers, so the ability to construct realistic projects and implement them is koentji!
