WRITING AT 2 A.M.: SELF-REGULATION AND TIME MANAGEMENT AMONG WORKING INDONESIAN EFL THESIS WRITERS

Fahrus Zaman Fadhly (Universitas Kuningan, Kuningan, Indonesia)
Yayan Suryana (Universitas Kuningan, Kuningan, Indonesia)
Dadang Solihat (Universitas Kuningan, Kuningan, Indonesia)
Marwito Wihadi (Universitas Kuningan, Kuningan, Indonesia)
Harun Al Rasyid (Universitas Kuningan, Kuningan, Indonesia)
Nur Fathiyya Zahira Mujahidah (Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University, Niğde, Türkiye)
Magdalena Ngongo (Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana, Kupang, Indonesia)

Indonesian EFL Journal
Vol. 12 No. 2 (2026)

Thesis writing demands sustained, self-directed effort over an extended period, a challenge compounded for Indonesian EFL students who must simultaneously manage substantial employment, business, or family obligations alongside their writing. While existing research treats self-regulation as a general disposition measured through survey instruments, few studies document the concrete, day-to-day practices working thesis writers use to protect and sustain writing time. This study addresses that gap through a qualitative, multi-case analysis of interview data from Indonesian EFL thesis writers, focusing on three informants who combined thesis writing with full-time teaching, independent business ownership, and university lecturing respectively, alongside a contrast group of non-working writers. Analysis identified three core time-management strategies — a fixed pre-dawn writing block, deadline-triggered bursts of activity, and session-based writing tied to a teaching schedule — whose severity scaled with the intensity of each writer's competing obligations. Beyond these core strategies, five further mechanisms proved central to sustaining writing under pressure: religious and spiritual anchoring of writing time, progress-tracking that served either social accountability or private efficiency depending on circumstance, active renegotiation of institutional schedules, family support functioning as practical infrastructure rather than only encouragement, and emotional regulation treated as an integrated component of time management rather than a separate concern. These findings suggest that self-regulation for working EFL thesis writers is not a single, teachable trait but a composite practice, often improvised out of necessity and scaffolded onto pre-existing routines and relationships. The study concludes that supervisory and institutional support would benefit from inviting working writers to describe and build on the systems they have already assembled, rather than offering generic time-management advice.