Quarter Plan

Why Quarter Plan

Research is a marathon. But year-long plans are too long — structural drift goes unnoticed. Week-level schedules are too short — they cannot hold strategy. 90 days is the unit at which structural drift surfaces early enough to correct, while strategy remains plannable (Lab OS 08: Grade-Specific Goals).

A second reason: a student's year is not made of research alone. Entrance exams, interim reviews, thesis submissions, graduation presentations — fixed external events compress research time. Plans must be designed not by accumulation, but by backward calculation from fixed events.

The most important point: Quarter Plan is not a progress report for your advisor. It is a document for making your own thinking structure visible to yourself. Putting your current position into words without waiting for your advisor — this repeated practice builds an autonomous researcher.

Three Roles of the Quarter Plan

1. Backward-design blueprint — Design 90 days backward from fixed events. Set the Quarter Goal, break it into monthly milestones, and write out the success criteria. Research not going according to plan is normal — the value is in making the drift visible.
2. Fuel for one-on-ones — Quarter Plan is the starting point of your individual meeting. The plan is what makes the conversation deep. Do not come empty-handed. The meeting asks just one question: "Where are you headed?"
3. Reflection device — At the end of each quarter, write honestly: what you achieved, what you did not achieve and why, and what new discomforts emerged. This end-of-quarter reflection (Section 0) becomes the bridge to the next quarter. Discomforts are the seeds of inquiry (Lab OS 01).

Template Structure — Six Sections

Title format: "Name Year_Quarter" (e.g., Anna Suzuki M1_Q1). Write the following six sections.

Notice that the Phase entries and habit log items use exactly the same language as Paper Card and Research Log. Quarter Plan is not a standalone document — it places the Lab OS tools on a 90-day timeline.

Usage Rhythm — Linked to One-on-One Meetings

1. Fill it in yourself and submit by the day before the meeting — The purpose is to put your current position into words without waiting for your advisor's input.
2. The meeting focuses on Sections 2 and 3 — Together, review and revise the validity of the Quarter Goal and the backward-design milestones. This is a decision venue, not a reporting venue.
3. Write Section 0 (reflection) at the end of the quarter — Honestly record: achieved, not achieved, carried over, new discomforts. This becomes the starting point for the next Quarter Plan.

One-on-ones are held quarterly. What they are for: confirming research direction, reviewing growth, career design, checking state (uncertainty, load). What they are not for: technical discussion, detailed manuscript review, day-to-day progress reporting — those belong in Team Meetings (Lab OS 09: do not mix the purposes of different venues).

The Annual Rhythm — Four Quarters

Dividing the year into four 90-day blocks and designing backward from fixed events — this rhythm is itself the implementation of "running a marathon with sprint design," from the Lab OS.

Roadmaps — Quarter Goals Do Not Come from a Blank Page

The first reference in Section 1 of every Quarter Plan is the grade-by-grade roadmap. A roadmap is not a progress tracker. It is a map for understanding the structure of "when, why, and what" — confirm where your quarter sits on this map before setting your Quarter Goal.

🗓 B4 Roadmap — The Year You Experience the Full Picture Once

The goal for B4 is not "perfect research." It is experiencing the full arc of research once. Design backward from fixed events: TOEIC registration (early May) → Graduate school application (early July) → Entrance exam (August) → Thesis presentation (February) → Thesis submission (March).

1. Q1 (Apr–Jun): Touch the topic, search for a question — Engage with the theme and accumulate discomforts. Write out "what seems wrong" without evaluating. Write a first draft of the Core Question (perfection not required). Do not forget to register for TOEIC.
2. Q2 (Jul–Sep): Entrance exams + forming hypotheses — During exam prep, do not "kill" your research: schedule at least one day per week to touch your research, and decide now what you will do in the first week after the exam. Start serious data collection in September.
3. Q3 (Oct–Dec): Build figures, test your claim — Design empty figures first; use preliminary results to look for "where the claim breaks." Do not go in trying to prove things. Have the first batch of primary data by end of December.
4. Q4 (Jan–Mar): Thesis presentation and submission → into M1 — Write in IMRAD. Get the first draft done early. Present in a state where you can say "I pursued this question," and carry forward into M1 the questions and hypotheses that remain.

Common collapses: stopping research completely "because of the entrance exam" / going silent when stuck / waiting for a perfect figure before doing anything. Quarter Plan is built to prevent these.

🗓 Master's Two-Year Roadmap — Design in M1, Run to Completion in M2

M1 is the year for design. The mission is to complete Framing and reach a state by the February interdisciplinary seminar where you can communicate the value of your research to people outside your field.

• Q1 — Convert discomforts into a question. Narrow the comparison targets for "Compared to X, we Y" to about three papers; write the Core Question first draft and rewrite it every week.
• Q2 — Fix Framing. Bring the Core Question to a state where it no longer moves; design the Story Map and empty figures.
• Q3 — Run the experiments and analyses corresponding to the empty figures; verify with preliminary results whether the claims hold.
• Q4 — Communicate the value at the February seminar, then immediately after perform the M2 annual design (backward-design from thesis submission).

M2 is the year for completion. No excuses. Backward-design from thesis submission (end of January) gives hard deadlines:

End of July: Figures frozen → End of August: Draft-A → End of October: Draft-B → End of November: Interim review → End of December: Submit to team → January: Thesis submission → February: Presentation

Common collapses: still trying to add figures (→ ask "can existing figures substitute?" first) / prioritizing experiments over writing (→ the day after figures are frozen, start the Draft) / not looking the timeline in the eye (→ update the backward-design table monthly and see the gap with reality).

🗓 Doctoral Three-Year Roadmap — Define, Prove, Articulate and Submit

The mission is distinct for each year of the doctorate.

1. D1: The year to "define" your axis — Write "I explore question X by method Y" in 1–2 sentences. Do not expand. Create a list of topics you will not pursue and seal the impulse to expand. Moving into D2 without a defined axis is building papers on sand.
2. D2: The year to "prove" your axis — Demonstrate externally, in the form of papers, that your body of work has a coherent axis. The greatest risk is being unable to cut noise papers. The test: "If I removed this paper from the dissertation, does the axial claim still hold? → Yes = noise." Write down now the conditions under which your most important paper will be submitted this term.
3. D3: The year to "articulate and send it into the world" — The mission is cut, articulate, and submit. Do not add. Rewrite the dissertation spine (3 sentences: problem → approach → contribution) every month. Aim for the November pre-defense → early January submission and presentation. Write down now the definition of "submittable but not perfect" — and do it without waiting for perfect.

Common collapses: experiments advancing while the axis is still undefined (D1's biggest trap) / putting off submission decisions and cutting (→ "the harder something is to let go of, the more likely it is a candidate for cutting").

What Stays Constant Across Every Year

Every roadmap carries the same habit table. These are not task-management items — they are habits for maintaining the posture of inquiry (Lab OS 10).

Section 4 of the Quarter Plan (Habit Log) is the place where you check, once a quarter, that these habits are running.

Get Started

Lab members: Quarter Plans are managed in the Notion database. At the start of each new quarter, create from the DB template, change the title to "Name Year_Quarter," and fill it in. The rule is submit by the day before your individual meeting.

* Viewing and editing the DB requires lab membership login. Full grade roadmaps are also in the lab Notion.

Outside the lab: The structure is exactly as described on this page. "Backward-design from fixed events" · "90-day Goal with monthly milestones" · "honest end-of-quarter reflection" — these three points are the essence, and any tool can reproduce them.