PART 3 – TIME MANAGEMENT

"If I spent as much time doing the things I worry about getting done as I spend worrying about doing them, I wouldn't have time to have anything to worry about."
Beryl Phizer

Something to Think About… If you fail to plan, you’re in effect planning to fail.

What techniques will enable you to get more done in less time with better results? Read on.

This "question and answer" survey may help you spot where you might start to improve your time management. Take a few minutes to read through each question and just check either the YES or NO column. Be HONEST!!

• Take responsibility for yourself: Responsibility is recognition that in order to succeed you can make decisions about your priorities, your time, and your resources
• Center yourself around your values and principles
  Don't let friends and acquaintances dictate what you consider important
• Look to continually challenge yourself

Reviewing how you spend your time:

There are 24 hours in one day. How much time do you have left for studying?

The first step to successful time management requires that you evaluate how you spend your time and where you might be wasting time. It is crucial that you break habits that waste time.

The Time Log

The time log is a daily diary that tracks your activities and enables you to determine how you spend your time. A sample time log sheet is shown below. You should keep track of your time everyday for at least one week and up to two weeks. This may seem time-consuming itself, however, the benefits will far outweigh the time spent. You could log your activities every ½ hour, but every fifteen minutes would be more helpful (especially for the time you spend outside classes or during lunch)

After collecting information, you need to evaluate how much time you are spending on your primary responsibilities. Label these as either high priority (HP) or low priority (LP)

• Identify areas where you spend too much time (TT)
• Identify areas where you do not spend enough time (NT)
• Identify major interruptions (I) that keep you from doing what you want to get done. How can you eliminate them?
• Identify tasks you are performing that you could delegate to someone else (D)
• Look for crisis situations (C). Were they caused by something you did or did not do? Do you have recurring crises? How can you plan to help eliminate recurring crises?
• Look for habits, patterns, and tendencies. Do they help or prevent you from getting the job done? How can you change them to your advantage?
• List your five biggest time wasters (W). What can you do to eliminate them?
  

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF PLANNING

The KEY to any form of time management is to ORGANIZE EARLY and REVISE REGULARLY

There are four steps you can take to manage your time more effectively starting with setting long-term goals right to planning your hours in the day. For each step in the triangle, you should prioritize your goals and objectives from most important to least important. We usually do not have time to do everything we want to do, yet there is always time to do what is really important.

Many people fail tests or exams because they start their organization and revision too late rather than because they lack ability. The reason for this seems to arise from the many other pressures put upon you. Lessons, practical work, coursework, homework, friends, family, other responsibilities, etc., etc., all eat away at valuable time.

LONG-TERM/SHORT TERM PLANNING

• Pick up a copy of the school's semester calendar
• Develop ONE calendar of important dates for your classes:
  Tests, papers, projects, assignments, quizzes, readings, mid-term and final exams, holidays, breaks, study days, etc.
• Enter important dates for your social and family life

DO THIS NOW USING THE BLANK COPY OF THE MONTH OF JANUARY.

WEEKLY PLANNING (see attached sample weekly planner)

You should plan every week. Start by listing the objectives you want to accomplish during the week (i.e. class assignments). These should be non routine things. After setting a few major objectives, list major activities necessary to accomplish each objective. Priorities should be ranked as high, low, or medium. Identify the day on which you will accomplish each task, keeping in mind the amount of time the task will take and other things you must also do that day.

With experience you will learn if you are too optimistic about how much you can plan for and accomplish in one week. Keep in mind that planning too much is frustrating and causes stress when you cannot get everything done. On the other hand, if you do not plan enough activities, you will end up wasting time.

Planning your week should take about 30 minutes or less.

START YOUR WEEKLY PLAN USING THE TEMPLATE GIVEN ABOVE. YOU WILL HAVE TO CONTINUE THIS ON YOUR OWN TIME BUT TRY TO HAVE AT LEAST ONE OBJECTIVE AND FILL IN THE ACTIVITIES REQUIRED FOR THIS.

DAILY SCHEDULING

• At the end of each day you should schedule the next day (or you could schedule your day first thing in the morning). This should take 15 minutes or less.
• Don't set a goal as vague and large as ... "I am going to spend all day Saturday studying!" You will only set yourself up for failure and discouragement. Set a reachable study goal. (for example: finish reading 3 sections of chapter seven in my science text, or complete one math problem, or write the rough draft of the introduction to my English paper, etc.)
• Begin by scheduling the activities over which you have no control, such as class times, dinner, extra-curricular events, etc.
• Don’t be too optimistic; schedule enough time to do each task
• Include uncompleted tasks from the previous day as well as new tasks.
• Prioritize your tasks. Schedule high priority items or things you find more challenging during your “high energy time” when you perform best. Do routine things at other times.
• Focus on only thing at a time
• Begin with subjects you like first…this can get you started OR start with subjects you find most difficult and get them out of the way
• Refer to this list often and revise regularly – KEEP AT IT!!!!
• Evaluate your schedule in the evening. Did you accomplish everything on your list? If not, why not? Was the schedule unrealistic or was your time management ineffective? What adjustments can you make in the future to make your schedule work better for you?

START A TO-DO LIST FOR TODAY OR SET UP A SCHEDULE AS SHOWN ABOVE. CHECK OFF THE ITEM ONCE IT IS COMPLETED. REMEMBER THAT YOUR WEEKLY PLAN SHOULD COINCIDE WITH YOUR DAILY PLAN. Weekly and daily schedules only work if you follow them – so be realistic

OTHER THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN SCHEDULING STUDY/HOMEWORK/LEARNING TIME

Use daylight hours

Research shows that 60 minutes of study during the day is equivalent to 90 minutes of study at night

Review Material Regularly

Retention and understanding are aided by a review of your class notes and practicing with homework immediately after class. One study showed that students who wrote a 5 minute review test following a class remembered one and a half times as much material when tested 6 weeks later as students who did not review, when tested the NEXT DAY!! Research has also shown that if you don’t recall or review or work with what you have learned on a given day, within 24 hours your will forget 50 – 80 % of it.

Start Long Jobs Ahead of Time

This avoids cramming and the resultant poor quality (If only I had more time….)

Keep in mind, the sooner you get things done, the more time you have for yourself. This lessens stress because you no longer need to thing about completing the task. This helps eliminate procrastination.

Be Flexible!

Try doing things in advance. Doing things ahead of time, allows more flexibility, and allows you to handle interruptions or emergencies if something important comes up. Remember that you can only plan so much of your life.

Learn to Say NO

Such a small word, but difficult to say. Learning to say NO allows you to have more time to do the things you need to do. To do this, you must set you’re priorities straight. Remember some things are more important than others, and you cannot always do everything you’d like. Unreasonable requests may stop you from completing things on your list ath must be done in order for you to succeed academically.

Don’t be a perfectionist, but confidant

Don’t worry about everything needing to be perfect because you only set yourself up for defeat. Be confidant in everything you do and do it.

Maintain a POSITIVE outlook

Be kind to yourself and don’t criticize yourself all the time.

Reward yourself!

Being organized and being an outstanding person does not mean you need become unsocial. Take time to relax and spend time with family and friends.

Planning helps you to be on top of things and manage your time more effectively. Managing your time will eventually become a habit!

Ten Survival Tips of Studying

1."I Don't Know Where To Begin"

Take Control. Make a list of all the things you have to do. Break your workload down into manageable chunks. Prioritize! Schedule your time realistically. Don't skip classes near an exam -- you may miss a review session. Use that hour inbetween classes to review notes. Interrupt study time with planned study breaks. Begin studying early, with an hour or two per day, and slowly build as the exam approaches.

2. "I've Got So Much To Study . . . And So Little Time"

Preview. Survey your course outline, reading material, notes, and homework. Identify the most important topics emphasized, and areas still not understood. Previewing saves time, by helping you organize and focus in on the main topics. Adapt this method to your own style and study material, but remember, previewing is not an effective substitute for reading.

3. "This Stuff Is So Dry, I Can't Even Stay Awake Reading It"

Attack! Get actively involved with the text as you read. Ask yourself, "What is important to remember about this section?" Take notes or underline key concepts. Discuss the material with others in your class. Study together. Stay on the offensive, especially with material that you don't find interesting, rather than reading passively and missing important points.

4. "I Read It. I Understand It. But I Just Can't Get It To Sink In"

Elaborate. We remember best the things that are most meaningful to us. As you are reading, try to elaborate upon new information with your own examples. Try to integrate what you're studying with what you already know. You will be able to remember new material better if you can link it to something that's already meaningful to you.

Look for better solutions to problems
For example, if you don't understand the course material, don't just re-read the material. Try something else! Consult with the teacher, a tutor, an academic advisor, a classmate, a study group, a mentor, or guidance

5. "I Guess I Understand It"

Test yourself. Make up questions about key sections in notes or reading. Keep in mind what the teacher has stressed in the course. Examine the relationships between concepts and sections. Often, simply by changing section headings you can generate many effective questions. For example, a section entitled "Chemical Change" might be changed into questions such as: "What is chemical change", "What are the clues of chemical change?", and "What are some examples of chemical change?"

6. "There's Too Much To Remember"

Organize. Information is recalled better if it is represented in an organized framework that will make retrieval more systematic. There are many techniques that can help you organize new information, including:

Write chapter outlines or summaries; emphasize relationships between sections.
Group information into categories or hierarchies, where possible.
Information Mapping. Draw up a matrix to organize and interrelate material. For example, if you were trying to understand the causes of World War I, you could make a chart listing all the major countries involved across the top, and then list the important issues and events down the side. Next, in the boxes in between, you could describe the impact each issue had on each country to help you understand these complex historical developments.

7. "I Knew It A Minute Ago"

Review. After reading a section, try to recall the information contained in it. Try answering the questions you made up for that section. If you cannot recall enough, re-read portions you had trouble remembering. The more time you spend studying, the more you tend to recall. Even after the point where information can be perfectly recalled, further study makes the material less likely to be forgotten entirely. In other words, you can't overstudy. However, how you organize and integrate new information is still more important than how much time you spend studying.

8. "But I Like To Study In Bed"

Context. Recall is better when study context (physical location, as well as mental, emotional, and physical state) are similar to the test context. The greater the similarity between the study setting and the test setting, the greater the likelihood that material studied will be recalled during the test.

9. "Cramming Before A Test Helps Keep It Fresh In My Mind"

Spacing: Start studying now. Keep studying as you go along. Begin with an hour or two a day about one week before the exam, and then increase study time as the exam approaches. Recall increases as study time gets spread out over time.

10. "I'm Gonna Stay Up All Night 'til I Get This"

Avoid Mental Exhaustion. Take short breaks often when studying. Before a test, have a rested mind. When you take a study break, and just before you go to sleep at night, don't think about academics. Relax and unwind, mentally and physically. Otherwise, your break won't refresh you and you'll find yourself lying awake at night. It's more important than ever to take care of yourself before an exam! Eat well, sleep, and get enough exercise.

Click here to read up on Part 4 - What Have I Learned?