Keeping yourself on track

• Make a detailed plan with 1-2 week milestones of where you want and need to be by when and do your best to stick to it, no matter what!
• Find a conference submission deadline to aim for and use it as a milestone to have some preliminary results. 
• Give yourself some "demo" milestones where your system will be partially complete.
• Make sure you plan a reasonable amount of time for data acquisition steps where these are required.
• Embrace the fact that you are expected to be the initiator. It is critical that you force yourself to make progress and that you press your advisor weekly with new results and issues to discuss. Bring specific ideas and questions to discuss at weekly meetings. 
• The best strategy is to get a simple version of your entire system working as quickly as possible and then add complexity to components rather than trying to get a complex subcomponent working first and potentially getting bogged down.
• Keep a notebook of what you do/try so you can more easily revisit ideas and track your own progress.

Stephen Intille's Thesis Development and Writing Tips

Last updated: 11/16/04