A fragmented project outline

When we are putting together a project plan, we need to be really careful about what words we chose. We need to ensure that the language we ...

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Create a simple research plan in 5 steps

When undertaking ANY research project, our first step should be to plan. I tend to start with a pencil list on paper, and then consider what...

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Research project skills

Ah: the things we don't know until we see how someone else has presented them! I have been reading Machin et al's (2019) book, ...

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Three blocks in student research projects

Hokusai's Under the wave off Kanagawa (1831) I have written previously about students who just absolutely don't get what a resea...

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SMART Goals

I have written before about where SMART goals come from ( here and here ), but I have just realised that I didn't ever write an artic...

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Keeping it Real

When we start doing a research project we really need to think realistically about how much time we have got. An article or a report can e...

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Using Kaizen to build habits

There is a piece of 1980s thinking that can really help us tackle difficult tasks. It works well when we are trying to build new habits, t...

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Recovering project enthusiasm

I was talking to my research students the other day about the doldrums; that patch of equatorial still air, where sailing ships stalled i...

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Effective planning

Rolf Dobelli writes, in his book "The Art of Thinking Clearly", about Roy Baumeister and his team of researchers who explored wh...

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Regaining momentum when lost

What contributes to us losing our way on a research project? The 'monsters in our box' are a lack of planning, a lack of planning ...

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Getting to Grips with Planning

Seriously, the MOST important thing you can do right now is to get on with planning your time. By this, I do not mean that you plan ever...

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Building a Research Planning Timeline

I went looking for a plan online - a yeast starter, if you will - for planning my PhD a few weeks ago. What really surprised me was that...

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The Classic 4 Step Approach to Strategic Planning

Have you heard of the classic 4 step strategic planning model? I heard about it from an old management lecturer of mine, and the model was...

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Research Planning Tips

I have been starting my PhD planning, so I went looking online for a comprehensive list of project tasks. I was hoping to borrow the sk...

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Planning for Action Research Data Collection

Sagor (2000) suggests that tabulating your research questions and aims can help you think through more specifically about what data you ne...

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Micro-action planning

Many PhD scholars try to create large periods of time to work in, but, as most of us don’t plan that well, and scholars often have far t...

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