OpinnäyteohjausThesis supervisionHandledning av examensarbete Virpi Outila 2019-

In creating a writing habit, you may decide where you will write: at home, in the library or in the cafeteria, and which time of the day and which days of the week you will work. It is recommended to have writing goals. Your writing goal may be time-based, that is, you may work a certain amount of time every day. It is also useful to break the time into small units and have breaks between the time blocks.

Pomodore technique helps you to break your work into focused time blocks. Pomodore comes from the Italian word for tomato, kitchen timer. First, you choose a task you need to accomplish (e.g. read an article), then you concentrate on the task for 25 minutes (one pomodoro). You work until the timer rings, after which you take a short, 5-min break. Then you make a new pomodoro. After a few pomodoros, you may have a longer break of 20-30 minutes. You main goal might be 6 tomatoes of work. You may also work for longer blocks, e.g. 45 minutes at a time.

Another way to set goals is to have text-based goals, to write  a certain amount of text each day, i.e. 2 pages.

It is also good to understand that there are days when you are more productive than in some other days. You may have focus day, when you concentrate on productivity. In those days you use at least 80 % of time for activity that is essential for reaching important goals, such as writing, collecting data, making notes on literature. The other days can be buffer days that are devoted for preparation. Then you do things that make the focus days possible, such as meetings, searching for literature, emails, phone calls. You also need free days that are meant for recharging, when you only relax. A recommended weekly ratio might be 3 focus days, 2 buffer days and 2 free days.

In the above link you can read more about time management.