Research
Research projects differ in many ways, but they usually have at least two important things in common: the pressure of time and the tendency to forget, in your natural concern to produce a final product, what you have done day-to-day on the project.
Calendar: Keeping Track of Your Time
The schedule you drafted in your proposal was only an estimate of how long your research would take. As you begin your project, set up tentative intermediate deadlines that will remind you daily and weekly how much work you have left. You will probably have to adjust these deadlines as you go along, but even the process of adjusting them will help you know how far you have to go. One way to keep track of time is to use a monthly box-calendar that includes major research work points during the term, deadlines in your other courses, and important events in your personal, family and work life.
Stay on schedule by checking your calendar regularly. If you see that the project is getting too large or too complex for the time you have left, ask your adviser to help you subdivide it and subordinate pieces that you will not be able to treat in depth.
Research Log: Keeping Track of Your Work
Although the pressure of time may force you to meet your deadlines, it may also cause you to forget what you did, how you did it, and what you thought and felt about it. For this reason, many researchers and scholars keep a research log — a long-term memory bank and creativity tool. With a complete record of what you did and thought, you may review your work periodically to see how your ideas have developed and discover new ideas or new directions for research. You may want to use a double-entry process log: Use left-hand pages for work notes, right-hand pages for personal responses to your work.
On left-hand pages you might describe what you did, when and where you did it, and why. You may quote passages from your reading that seem interesting, useful or suggestive; draft sentences or paragraphs that may find a place in your proposal or final thesis; and list books and articles you have consulted or plan to consult.
Right-hand pages contain an informal record of your personal experience while working on your project. This is the place to carry on a running conversation with yourself about what you are doing: your hunches and guesses; your off-the-wall ideas; any questions that arise in your mind; your plans, doubts and hopes; and your reflections on passages you have read or on those you have quoted on the left-hand page.
Maintaining a double-entry log of this sort takes only a few minutes a day. But its value, as the material accumulates, extends far beyond that small investment of time.
