One day is all it takes to start your thesis or dissertation

When you start to work on your thesis, or dissertation, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the large amount of work that is ahead of you. This may prompt you to delay starting your research. When we are approached by students who are procrastinating, we recommend five key actions you can do in one day:

1. Book a day with yourself. Take a full day out of your busy schedule to focus entirely on preparation for your thesis journey. Tell family and friends to keep away, lock your door, turn off your phone, and sit with your computer, paper and pen.
2. Spend the first couple of hours making yourself aware of your institution’s guidelines. Most universities and colleges have a website, web pages, a handbook or online videos that describe what is expected of you during your thesis journey. The advice varies greatly. Some simply lay out the rules and regulations for completing your thesis, others have step-by-step guides to what you should be doing each week. Regardless of which your institution provides, make sure that you take note of the guidance. For instance, record such items as who the important people are (supervisor, librarians, etc.) and how to contact them, key dates for delivery of drafts and final submission, formats allowed or recommended, referencing styles, and so on.
3. After a short break, spend about 90 minutes mapping any relevant material from your research proposal into a template thesis in a word-processing document. It is likely that you will already have invested significant time in preparing a proposal that sets out your research statement, questions (or hypotheses), and aim and objectives. This information can form the basis of a ‘first-draft’ template for your thesis document. Take on board any feedback you have already received. In some cases, your institution will provide you with a template for your thesis document. If they do not, we suggest you visit the library, or go online, and look at 10 copies of previously submitted theses and generate your own template based on them. Before you even begin your research proper, you may be able to create a title page, a draft table of contents, a preliminary introduction, and so on. Even if you end up with blank pages, these will prompt you that, for example, at a later stage you need to write a section called ‘conclusions’.
4. After a lunch break, spend a couple of hours developing a detailed project plan, or Gantt chart, in a spreadsheet. This should give you a clear idea of the ‘what, who, when, where, and how’ for your secondary and primary data collection process, choices to be made, access to be gained, etc. Work forward from today, and backwards from the thesis submission date. Avoid the temptation to try and get it 100% ‘right’ at this stage. An overview will suffice for now. You can always revisit it and complete the detail at a later stage.
5. After your final afternoon break, spend the last hour by going back to the template document. Focus on the first two sections, for example, the introduction and literature review, and develop an outline structure and format for both. This can be in the form, for instance, of a list of possible headings, draft text sections that set out what you plan to write in plain English, or a mind-map.

Over the course of one day of planning and preparation, you will now:

• Know what is required of you.
• Have a detailed plan and know where to obtain further advice.
• Have a template or ‘first-draft’ of your thesis document.

Now, all you need do is fill in the blanks! To help students to fill in the blanks, we wrote Doing Your Thesis – A Practical Guide. This most popular book is an invaluable downloadable digital publication (92-page PDF). It contains 90 pages of easy-to-understand information and straightforward explanations to help you research and write a compelling thesis. Buy now for immediate use.