A new season, a fresh research plan

Hi Reader,

There is something about September that feels like a new beginning.

Gretchen Rubin has called September “the other January”: a point in the year when routines shift, calendars change, and it can feel natural to take stock and start again.

For academics, that feeling is especially literal. A new semester or quarter changes the shape of our time. But even if your work does not follow an academic calendar, the beginning of fall can be a useful moment to look at the months ahead and ask: What do I actually want, and have time, to get done?

One thing I do at the beginning of a semester is make what I think of as a research syllabus.

Not a syllabus for a particular research project. A syllabus for my research across the semester.

In my book, Project Management for Researchers, I call the broader semester plan that brings together my research, teaching, service, and personal goals a strategic plan. The research syllabus is one part of that larger picture.

I start with the weeks I actually have.

I mark the things I already know will shape those weeks: teaching, grading, travel, conferences, major service commitments, holidays, deadlines, personal commitments, and anything else likely to affect how much research time I realistically have.

That part matters. The research syllabus or plan does not live on its own. It has to live alongside teaching, family and personal commitments, service, meetings, travel, and whatever else is already part of that period of your life and work.

Then I look at the research projects I am carrying and ask what might reasonably move during that period.

Maybe one article needs a revision and resubmission. Another project needs analysis. A book chapter needs a first draft. A newer idea may only need some reading and notes. Not every project needs to move at the same pace, or even at all, during every season.

I find the syllabus analogy useful because when I plan a course, I would never assume that every week is identical. Some weeks are simply more crowded than others. Breaks and deadlines matter. What happens in week three affects what is possible in week four.

Research deserves some of the same realism.

Try this

Choose the period that makes sense for you: a semester, quarter, fall, calendar year, grant period, or simply the next few months.

Put the weeks in front of you first.

Mark the weeks that are already crowded or constrained, and then notice the ones that seem more promising for substantive research time.

Only after that, bring in the projects.

What could realistically move during this period? What needs concentrated attention? What can make slower progress? What might need to wait?

Once you have a draft plan, compare it with the calendars of the people your work depends on. If you have collaborators, a supervisor or PI, research assistants, students, or others involved in the project, this is a good time to make sure your timelines are reasonably compatible.

It is also a useful moment to communicate clearly about what you can and cannot take on. A plan is much easier to manage when the people involved have a shared sense of what is realistic, what is urgent, and what may need to wait.

You do not need to account for every hour or produce a perfect plan. In fact, I would be suspicious of a plan that assumes every week will go exactly as expected.

The point is to give the work somewhere to live.

A suggestion

Plan around the time you usually have, not the time you imagine you will have when everything goes perfectly.

I have to remind myself of this too. It is easy to build a semester around an ideal week with no interruptions, no unexpected meetings, no extra grading, and unlimited energy. Those weeks are lovely when they happen. They are not a very reliable planning unit.

At the same time, I do try to “touch” my research every day, even if that touch is small. That does not mean doing heavy work every day. Sometimes it means reading or editing. I’ll elaborate in a future issue of The Project Log.

And, as with most of the approaches I’ll write about here, this takes some trial and error. Your research syllabus or plan may turn out to be too ambitious. Or too cautious. That is fine. The goal is to find a way of planning the work that actually works for you.

One question for your research: Looking at the season ahead and given your goals, what do the weeks you actually have make possible?

Happy projecting,

Shiri

P.S. I imagine there are plenty of tools that can do this now, including AI tools, but I use this syllabus maker to chart out my semester both for my teaching syllabi and my strategic plan!