Setting objectives

An important part of managing your research project is setting yourself some clear and achievable objectives. This section suggests a strategy to help you set and achieve these.

What do you want to achieve?

What it is that you actually want to achieve? Look back at your research question or research proposal as this is likely to give you a good starting point. As your research has progressed you may have amended the objectives of the project. You may have also added some objectives which relate to your personal development or career.

Try writing out all of your objectives and then consider  the following:

• Does each look possible?
• Is the number of objectives realistic?
• Do any suggest other objectives or sub-objectives?

SMART: A tool to evaluate your objectives

SMART can help you critically evaluate the objectives that you have set yourself. For every objective ask yourself whether it meets the following criteria.

• Specific: in both meaning and focus.
• Measurable: so that you know when you are achieving progress and can declare success.
• Advantageous: what's in this for you? If you can see no personal advantages, don't waste your time; you won't be seriously motivated towards success.
• Realistic: make sure that you are being realistic:  you can get feedback to help you do this. Setting learning targets in this way will, through experience, gradually improve your ability to manage your own self-development and learning.
• Time limited: set deadlines and 'milestones', times when you will sit down and reflect on and review your progress.

Turning your objectives into a plan

Once you have identified what you want to achieve you need to start the process of turning these objectives into a plan. Look again at your objectives and ask yourself:

• What is stopping me from achieving this objective?
• What/who will help me to achieve this objective?
• Why haven't I achieved it already?
• When should I aim to have achieved it by?

Answering these questions will help you to put together a viable project plan. For more detail, see the project management section.