Strategies to Finish One's Thesis or Dissertation on Time

(by Glenn Geher, PhD from the University of New Hampshire, 1997):

Broader issues:
1.  Don't let yourself consider any alternative other than finishing on time.  Thoughts such as "well, I can stay here and adjunct for a semester and finish it this summer" or "Maybe I'll analyze all the data before May -- but wait for the summer to write it" .... or anything else that allows you psychologically the option of not completing your dissertation on time will work against you.
2.  Carve out very SPECIFIC TIMES for working on specific tasks that are dissertation or thesis-relevant.
3.  Meet every deadline you and/or your advisor create.

4.  BETTER: BEAT every deadline you and/or your advisor creates.
5.  Realize that there's no penalty for finishing early -- in my case, the deadlines that drove my work were fully created by me -- and even if they were weeks or months earlier than comparable, externally dictated deadlines, that fact didn't matter -- my internally created deadlines were, to me, very real deadlines.  That helped -- I never missed one!

Immediate Issues:
1.  Compartmentalize your work -- of the zillion things that need to get done, choose one specific task at a time -- and complete the task before you do anything else.
2.  Advisor-Compatibility is enormously important -- what I like to tell my grad students is as follows:  Matching workstyles and general ways of seeing things is, to me, more important than matching academic interests -- all things equal, ensure that you work with an advisor who you feel fully (or mostly) comfortable with -- and one who you perceive as supportive of (a) your work and, more importantly, (b) the notion of you finishing on time.  That was easy for me -- I worked with Becky Warner.
3.  You can't do everything.  You can't.  You just can't.  With that in mind, set clear workloads regarding things such as your literature review or your results section.  My dissertation results section was 70 pages -- yipes!  However, I could EASILY have spent another year on it and produced another 200 pages of results.

Consider the following kinds of ideas you might have:
-- What if I recompute this variable as a categorical variable -- then I can reconduct my analysis -- but then I'll have to do a MANCOVA instead of several multiple regressions ... to do that I'll have to ...
-- Perhaps I should report both a hierarchical regression and a standard regression -- and while I'm at it ...
-- I should totally rethink my operational definition of the primary predictor variable -- I can use differences between standardized scores as an index of this construct ... then I'll ...

<-- To reduce such cognitive chaos -- which WILL exist in some capacity, sit down once you have your data completely collected, write out your hypotheses, write out the appropriate analysis for each hypothesis – go over your work here with your advisor -- and do what you set out to do.  Of course, interesting alternative analyses will pop up as result of this process -- but realize that you must finish and that you can only do so much.  At some point, utter the phrase "I'm done with my Results section. I'm now going to do something else -- perhaps write my Discussion section."

Consider these hypothetical ideas pertinent to the literature review:
-- Have I fully incorporated all the relevant literature on adult attachment, which is a core construct in my dissertation?  After all, when I type "Adult Attachment" into Psychinfo, 400,000 references pop up – and I've only cited 600!?!?!
-- There are four new books on mate selection written by top social psychologists -- shouldn't I read each of these fully, then find all the pertinent articles described therein -- and then find all the pertinent articles cited in those articles?  In addition to everything I've already done?

<-- Here's the deal -- the literature review should be comprehensive and current, that's right -- but, on the other hand, you can't spend your entire life doing the introduction for your dissertation -- that would preclude you from going to fun parties, bowling, eating pizza, etc.  Again, compartmentalize and set clear parameters.  The point of the introduction REALLY is to tell a coherent story that points convincingly to your hypotheses and makes the reader think "A study really should be done to test these hypotheses!"  Being current and comprehensive helps toward that goal -- but comprehensiveness is an artifact -- a secondary goal – the primary goal is the coherent story and the convincing nature of your argument.  And, separately, you'll never be able to read every article published on Adult Attachment (or just about any current psychology topic).  You just won't!

I hope that helps!