You will need to be clear about your dissertation and how you will go about the different parts. You want to be clear that you will complete all of the necessary and different tasks that you have, but you really don’t want to be confused about what you need to do and when as this just won’t help you.
If you have a clear deadline of what you want to have completed each week, and even each month, then you will be able to plan your time better and hopefully result in a better planned and executed dissertation paper. Having this schedule in front of you all of the time will remind you of what you need to do and if you are not doing it, then why you need to do it.
For example, if you are working, or supposed to be working, on your literature review and searching for secondary sources to critique and review for you actual dissertation, then there would be little point attempting to start you actual primary research. This is because you will have had little time to have a good understanding of your topic and thus will need to develop thinking. You don’t want to get half the way through thinking about your research before you discover someone else has actually covered the same topic last year. Therefore, if you have a clear understanding of the topic and the different types of research that have been conducted then you will know you can move on to the next stage.
This type of schedule will also help you when you are looking at making sure your dissertation research paper is handed in on time. If you don’t, then it will mean that you will lose marks for late submission and thus could affect the overall mark/grade that you receive for your degree course.
This isn’t something that is going to be good either, as my friend did this whilst we were at university and it was only a day late, but she dropped classification because of it and only just. She has consistently handed in late but was a great writer – just comes to the point that they wouldn’t give her the benefit and then she took the hit for her own failings in not scheduling her dissertation project properly.