Planning to work only 30 minutes at a time is a good strategy for keeping focused and productive, and preventing burnout. Too often, graduate students plan to work in two or three hour blocks, which, sometimes, pass without much accomplishment. If you start planning your work in a series of 30 minute blocks, you will find it easier to remain focused and create output that is appropriate for the time and the task. If you have been scheduling large blocks of time, but not getting much done, scale back to a series of 30 minute blocks, and define exactly what you’ll be doing with each 30 minute segment of time. Work for the first 30 minutes, then take a break for 5-10 minutes, and then start on the next 30 minutes, and so on. If you stall out, you only ever risk losing 30 minutes (rather than hours) to procrastination or avoidance.
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