6 tips to write your research project FAST

(Last updated on: 10/12/2020)

There may be times when you need to write your research project fast. Whilst this is not something that I advocate (see my post- ‘How to plan your time for a research project’), I understand that there may be times when you need to get the work done as quickly as possible. In this post, I will give you some tips on how to write your research project in no time at all!

Tips to write your research project FAST

#1 Manage your time well

You might not have a lot of time, but if you want to write your research project quickly then you need to manage what time you have as best as possible!

Work out how many weeks/days/hours you have any how much time should be dedicated to each chapter of your research project. DO NOT spend most of your time on the literature review, only to find out you are out of time for the rest. Handing in unfinished work or a research project with sub-standard chapters will likely lead to a fail, or at least a low grade.

I have a free research project plan template that you can use to help, you can download it here- FREE research project plan template.

#2 Motivate yourself

Give yourself a reason to finish your research project fast. It might be a well-deserved glass of wine at the end of the day, a midday treat for lunch or a Netflix binge on the weekend. Have something to look forward to and to motivate you to finish your research project fast!

#3 Don’t underestimate down-time

None of us are robots. We all need some down time. It is important that you don’t work too hard as this will only result in burn-out. Plan your time so that evenings are free or so that you have a couple of hours break away from your research project in the day.

#4 Only do what matters

It might be ideal to read everything and anything in the area of your research project, but the reality is that you need to write your research project as quickly as possible. You simply don’t have time. Use some of my skimming and scanning techniques to select what is relevant to read and what isn’t. Don’t waste your time working on this that won’t make the final cut.

There are also some really useful books that you can use which explain things simply. I also recommend that you use some of the excellent research methods books available to you- I recommend Social Research Methods by Bryman and Research Methodology: A Step by Step Guide for Beginners by Kumar.

#5 Use technology

Research projects can take a long time to complete, especially when there is a lot of data to analyse. There are various technologies that you can use to help write your research project fast. I recommend Excel or SPSS for quantitative data analysis and NVIVO for qualitative data analysis.

#6 Get paid help

If all else fails, pay somebody to help you. No, I do not mean pay somebody to write your research project for you- this is academic misconduct and could lead to you being kicked off of your course! What I mean is pay somebody to help with transcribing interviews, proofreading or formatting. The research project must be created and written by you, but you can employ help along the way with other elements.

So, these are my top tips to write your research project FAST. Do you have any other tips? I’d love to hear them!