About the workshop

A doctorate is a major undertaking yet many people spend more time planning a weekend away than they do planning the next three years of their life. This generally leads to missing deadlines, running overtime, regular crises and lots of stress. If you want to finish on time and enjoy the process along the way then it is important to have a good plan.

You need some very specific skills and tools to plan a doctorate. This workshop will introduce you to a planning toolkit and by the end of the workshop you will know how to use it to plan your doctorate.

Learning outcomes

You will learn how to:

• create your big picture thesis plan
• unpack your thesis down into logical parts
• create tasks lists for each stage of your thesis
• estimate times and schedule tasks
• create a Gantt chart for your thesis
• keep on track as you implement your plan
• plan your writing
• manage the finances -identify risks and deal with setbacks

Speaker profiles

Hugh Kearns

Hugh is an internationally recognised expert on the topics of procrastination, over-commitment, distraction and perfectionism. He lectures and researches on these topics at Flinders University and is in high demand as a speaker at universities all over the world. He has developed award winning programs for academics and research students across Australia, NZ, the United States and the United Kingdom. Over the past 15 years he has helped thousands of research students to complete their theses faster and with less stress and shown large numbers of academics how to increase their rate of publication. He is the co-author of six books that have sold in large numbers, as well as peer-reviewed articles and commentaries in the journal Nature. He specialises in taking the very best research in psychology and education and applying it in an engaging way to help high performing people achieve their goals.

Who should attend

Doctoral students