1. How to finish your project on time ?
A.K.A. How to graduate on time ?

2. Know the graduation requirement
Which SCI journal ? / Conference ?
CVPR/ICCV or ACCV/ICIP
PAMI/IJCV or CVIU/CVA
Typically, graduation requirement decrease if you spend more time in graduate school…
3rd year – a lot of good publications
4th year – good publications
5th year – publications
6th year – publications …

3. Timeline for a PhD degree (4th years)
1st year – 2nd year: taking courses
3rd year - ?? Year: working on research project
Keep in mind the timeline of review process
Conference usually takes half year for review process
Journal can sometimes take 1- 2 years…
Before your graduation, you need to spend time to write your thesis
It can takes your several months to half year
Keep in mind that you also need to do job hunting before graduation

4. Why some people can have a lot of publications before their graduation ?
Self-motivated / Hard working ?
i.e. no sleeping, no entertainment
This is one reason, but not the main reason
Luck ?
i.e. Lucky to have “good” reviewers who pass your submission
The is also an important reason, but first, your submission need to meet the bottom line requirement
Friends / Co-authors?
Ask your friends to help for your experiments
Increase your publications with many co-authorship
But, you still need to have at least 1 paper which you are the first author
Work smart !
This is the most important reason

5. Work hard ≠Work smart Don’t waste your time, spend your time wisely !
Some students spent a week finishing a research project while some other students spent a whole year but he/she still cannot finish
Why ?
Some students spent a year working on a research project, and then, he/she found out her project is unsolvable!
Except crying, what else…?
Whose responsibility ? Student / Advisor ?
Who suffered ? Student / Advisor ?

6. Before you jump into a research project
Your advisor ask you to do a research project does not means that you have to do it
Of course, you will make your advisor unhappy at that moment
But, your advisor’s unhappy last for only several minutes, but your unhappy last for several months/year
If possible, ask more details about that projects, as much as you can
Understand the nature of the project, is it just a brainstorm project? or is it a project with long term research plan?
Hint: Never say “yes” immediately, say “I am going to think about it, and I will get back to you on Friday / in a week”
Now, you buy yourself more time to think about the project…

7. What are you going to do in that week ?
Sleeping / Playing / Dating ?
Don’t be stupid, you buy your time by confronting with your advisor and then you waste it
Thinking about my own schedule, e.g. you might have freelance / travel plans / other works
This is a consideration, but this is not the most important thing you need to consider
After you say “no”, your advisor would have other tasks to you. Do not think you are going to be free after saying “no”
What should you do ? After one week, you have to say “yes/no”

8. During that week
1. Do a quick survey about the state-of-the-art techniques !
Collect most relevant papers, read them and understand them
This has to be done in your first three days (Assuming you have 7 days)
Keep in mind, if you lose this golden period to say “no”, you are going to suffer for a whole year
If you say “no” after several months, your advisor would think you did nothing in the last several months
If your advisor has some resources to you, read them and understand all of them

9. During that week
After you do your survey, spend time to think about the problem, the input, the output and the project goal
Try to write down your solution / planning
Do a simple experiment to test the feasibility of the project
If possible, implement one / two previous works
Be open minded, if the direction proposed by your advisor is a dead corner, try to change the direction without offense to your advisor
At the end, your advisor just want to have a publication
This is a busy week, but again, if you waste this week, you will even waste more time in your future

10. After that week Give a presentation to your advisor
Describe the survey you have done
Summarize the pros/cons of previous works
Describe your understanding about the project
Your understanding might not be the same as your advisor. Now, it is the good time to come up with a consensus
If you say “yes”, describe your solution
as details as possible, it should go to the very low level as much as you can
If you say “no”, describe your reason
your reason can be:
This direction has been done, cite the paper, and refers to the survey you have done
This direction is infeasible, if you have done simple testing, show your results
If you found something interesting, but different from the direction proposed by your advisor
This is also a golden opportunity to propose your own idea
If your advisor like it, you can work on it, else, choose other topic

11. Keep in mind
This one week is a golden week, a week that determine your works for the future several months or years
It is difficult to say “no” again after this week
If the direction is wrong, you are going to waste a lot more time than a week
Again, if you work on it for a year and then you fail, you are going to spend one more year for your graduation
It might be good, because the graduation requirement is lower…

12. Now, what should you do after you start the project
Be self-motivated
Keep in mind, this is now your direction, you choose this direction yourself, and be responsible to yourself
Arrange your time wisely
Again, you need to arrange your time wisely
But how ?

13. Understand your project
Divide and conquer
Divide your project into a lot of sub-components
Some components are important, some are not
Identify which component is the most important, and spend your time depending on the importance of each component
Be smart, some components can be “Hack”, e.g. user inputs/corrections
Know how to skip the unimportant task
If there are source codes available, use them. Don’t be stupid to implement everything yourself
If your friends have experiences on some sub-tasks, go ask them
Don’t get stuck in some unimportant task

14. When doing your experiments…
Pick the examples wisely
Start from easy example, after successful on one example, try a little bit more difficult one
Do not pick the examples that surely violate your assumption
Testing on environment variables / parameters
Fix the variables/parameters as much as you can, each time, only change the value of one parameters.
Some parameters are critical, some are not, you will find our after this experiment
If you have many parameters, write a script to test all parameters automatically
Do not sit in front of your compute to test your parameters
Parameter tuning can be the most wasting time process, do it wisely

15. Good luck Be a smart person !