How to finish your project on time ?

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 unhappiness last for only several minutes, your unhappiness last for several months/year • If possible, ask more details about the 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 out after this experiment • If you have many parameters, write a script to test all parameters automatically • Do not sit in front of your computer to test the parameters one-by-one • Parameter tuning can be the most wasting time process, do it wisely

15. Good luckBe a smart person !