School Advice

[Enigmatism415]

I'm working on my postgraduate thesis but it seems unimaginably daunting (I'm defending in December). Any tips on how to budget my time and structure the entire process? I keep getting distracted by other stuff...

Come on, I know there are some postgrad students around here somewhere...

[TheSelfishGene]

What kind of thesis is it? I had to do a scientific thesis; but it was in the structure of introduction, methods, results, and discussion.
If you have to work to something like this, I'd say properly write out your methods, then your results. This way you can then introduce what you'll be talking about with respect to your results in the discussion.
Even if you don't have strict things like that, what I've written isn't a bad way to start writing. By defining the scope of what you have to do, it can make it a bit less daunting. If you have to rely on figures make sure they are relevant and the figure legends are clear and informative. If it doesn't add to the message take it out - messy figures are just confusing and I've seen a whole lot in my career.
Hopefully you've kept a good library of references and sources for your citations. Don't underestimate how long it takes to have everything referenced well, as well as formatting the thesis.

As for other tips, there's other students I'm sure you're going through it with, so talk to them. Also take time for yourself and plan breaks. I found working from home most days better, as I'd save 2 hours a day just in travel time. Realistically I didn't use this time to work, but it allowed me to pace my days out more, and work more comfortably. I probably got the same amount of work done each day (as if I'd have gone in) but over a longer (but more relaxing) period. The other side of the coin is the 1 or 2 days a week that I did go in (during writing time) to see supervisors/use the library or whatever; my days would be much more productive and focused because if I didn't get what I'd planned done, it'd be a few days before I came back on campus.

I work as a scientist now and sit through a lot of technical talks. A lot by practicing students but also more experienced scientists. There's no substitute for time invested. You can tell which students have been playing table tennis in the tea room all year and cobbling together a talk in 15 minutes and they don't know their stuff, compared to students who put in a lot of effort and do a lot of extra reading.

Another thing I can recommend is asking people if they can help you. Posting here is a good start. Over the past couple of days I've been discussing with a student at work about images she's taken on the microscope. She didn't know I have a background in this area, and we only started discussing because I asked her what kind of stuff she was imaging. Turns out she'd make a whole lot of mistakes. Saving in the wrong file format, at too low a resolution to be useful, and other common mistakes. I picked up on the errors she was making. Luckily she only had to redo about 4 hours work (which was only about 15-20% of what she has to do totally) and do the rest properly. Even though I'm not one of her supervisors, I could still offer her some good advice. And having worked in a few places, you'd be surprised as to how helpful and forthcoming people can be. When I was looking for a job last year it was useful having contacts in a multitude of university departments too ;)
If you're going to ask people for help make sure you want to learn. Nothing is worse when someone comes to me for help and just wants me to do something for them, and has no inclination to improve themselves. I usually don't think much of people like that. And will generally not help in the future.