Managing Your Time Wisely in completing your dissertation journey Alan Glasper and Colin Rees How to Write Your Nursing Dissertation, First Edition. Alan Glasper and Colin Rees. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Managing Your Time Wisely in completing your dissertation journey Sue and Sam share their concerns about fitting in the dissertation and not letting life events take over while at the same time ‘having a life!’ Sue has her family, as well as her work, and there are many events that will occur during the time of the dissertation that will be difficult to ignore. Sam also has family obligations and tries to regularly look after his heath through sessions at the gym and keep friendship ties going.

Managing Your Time Wisely in completing your dissertation journey The activity of undertaking a dissertation must be seen as an opportunity and not a threat. The activity needs to be divided into various stages that can then be allocated a time-frame that will make the whole job seem manageable. You need to seize control of your time and activities so that you can pace the work to reach the deadline with the minimum of extra stress in your life. One of Sam’s friends who recently completed a master’s dissertation towards the end of his dissertation regularly set his wake up alarm to give him two hours before going to work several times a week. Although he became temporally fixated other students not so inclined take a month’s holiday on a Greek Island and take their note book computers and write the dissertation in one hit. Whatever works for you! The former is usually safer than the latter.

Managing Your Time Wisely in completing your dissertation journey It is useful to divide the whole process into a number of sections composed of a number of activities. This allows you put a time frame against each activity and fit it into a space that will allow you to complete it. Together these activities will allow you to complete each section to arrive at the final deadline. The sample dissertation timetable opposite might help. Target date   Action Deadline 1 (write as dates) Select topic, check literature is there to support it. Start dissertation diary to record progress and key decisions and ‘to-do’ list. Write draft rationale/background to the topic. Give dissertation a title in the form of a statement, and an aim that begins, the aim of this dissertation is to...’ send to supervisor and arrange meeting to discuss. Deadline 2 Write plan to follow to search literature including data bases, key words, time frame, inclusion and exclusion criteria. Search literature following plan, adjusting plan or search as necessary. Keep track of hits per data bases and how numbers of possible inclusions are reduced into those finally included in literature. As literature is gathered, quickly read, make notes, decide on section to place it and how it will integrate with other work. Deadline 3 Write Search strategy and draft early section of review. Send to supervisor to check approach. Deadline 4 Complete search of literature section and first draft of review of literature Deadline 5 Complete sections following literature review e.g. change sections, recommendations. Deadline 6 Before moving into final sections such as conclusions, read through work to date and ensure you have a clear idea of the shape of the assignment and map out where it is going in final sections Deadline 7 Complete first draft of whole of dissertation excluding sections before the introduction. Check conclusion matches aim. Check references. Deadline 8 Complete sections before introduction such as abstract, acknowledgements, contents page and check pages in work correspond with those in contents page. Check all tables and boxes have headings and titles and are listed in contents page following main sections under heading ‘Tables/boxes’. Deadline 9 Complete 2 weeks on editing, reading to make sense of everything. Check all headings are in a similar format, all references correct and listed. Check dissertation guidelines and requirements against work completed to ensure nothing missing and everything has been considered. Final preparation for submission, any binding, checking method of electronic submissions Deadline 10 Submission date. Deliver the dissertation according to plan. Celebrate!

Managing Your Time Wisely in completing your dissertation journey You might find it helpful to use another type of time chart such as a Gantt chart as discussed in the introduction to this book. Keep a dissertation dairy or try and allocate so many hours a week to work on the dissertation and set a target of so many words per week or per 10 days. Time for me

Tasks Sample Gantt chart Month 1 Month 3/4/5 Month 6/7/8 Month 9/10 Week 6 7 8 See supervisor.   literature searching Critique papers Write chapter 1 and 2 See supervisor Write chapter 3and 4 See supervisor/write chapter 5 See supervisor with draft thesis Finish

Managing Your Time Wisely in completing your dissertation journey Inspect the sample dissertation which is hosted on the website to this book to judge your own progress Invest time in your dissertation –you are worth it ! I can do it