Understand the Assignment - The ultimate waste of time when writing a paper is to write something that doesn't even answer the question the professor is asking.
Research with Ruthless Efficiency - Once you understand the assignment, you need to start researching. But beware! If you’re not careful, research can be one of the best ways to procrastinate.
Create a Flat Outline - You discover what you’re going to say through the process of writing. The flat outline gives you just enough structure to overcome the dreaded “blank canvas” while still leaving room for discovery.
Create the Perfect Writing Environment - Because after procrastination, the greatest obstacle to writing a paper quickly is a distraction. If you don’t have an environment where you can focus, you’ll waste hours jumping back and forth between the paper and whatever distractions come your way.
Follow a Standard Structure - The way to make sure that you don’t get caught up in the structure is just to pick a standard structure for your discipline and follow it.
Focus on quality over quantity - If it is assumed that the final page count of a paper is 5-7, you may be tempted to write a paper that is 7 or 8 pages long. So focus on quality over quantity.
Draft and Edit Separately - Editing and drafting at the same time is, like all forms of multitasking, inefficient and ultimately impossible. Don’t do it. Write with your full attention and effort, and then edit.
Use a Citation Generator - Adding citations is the worst, especially when you just spent hours writing a paper and are so over it. If you don’t want to spend further hours paging through some arcane style manual, do yourself a favor and use a citation management/generation tool.
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