TIME MANAGEMENT: A BALANCING ACT

TIME MANAGEMENT: A BALANCING ACT Dr. Holly Brown-Wright 9/24/08

Do You Feel Like Overwhelmed? • Do you feel like there are not enough hours in the day? • Do you feel like you can never get it all done? • Do you feel like you waste time? • Do you feel constantly stressed out?

Control Your Life by Controlling Time • By taking control of your time you can: • Be more productive • Reduce your stress • Improve your self-esteem • Achieve balance in your life • Conquer multitasking • Establish an important career skill • Reach your goals

Stay on Time to Reach Your Goals • Set Completion Dates • Set Goals and Sub goals • When writing a term paper, work backward from the due date reserving enough time for each step assigning a completion date to each step • Revisit goals regularly….are you track????

Plan for the Term, Week, and Day • Choose the Right Planning Tools • Paper-and-Pencil Planners- good for short-term planning • Electronic Planners- good for long-range planning • However, hand-held devices such as iPhones and Palm Pilots can be used for all sorts of time-management tasks

In Your Planner…… • Write in vacations and holidays • Write down dates for exams, quizzes, assignments, and papers • Consider color coding different courses

Allocate Time for Studying • In a national survey, the more hours students spent studying or doing homework, the more they liked and stayed in college…..and got into graduate school • Are you studying enough???

Allocate Time for Studying • Two strategies for getting the most out of your weekly plan: • Swiss Cheese- poking holes in a bigger task by working on it in small bursts of time or odd times • Set Time- set aside a fixed amount of time to work on a task (6 hrs wk for Bio reading, M,W,S 4-6pm) • Plan for tomorrow by setting priorities and using to-do lists!!!

Defend Your Priorities • Unplug the Phone • Turn the Cell OFF • Get an Answering Machine • Hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door • Tell visitors you are too busy to talk and you will have to get back to them later

Tune into Biological Rhythms • Are you a “morning person” or a “night person”? What time of day are you most focused? • Respect that; work with that • If you are a night person, take afternoon or evening classes and study at these times • If you are stuck with an early class, get a good night’s sleep, eat a good breakfast, and get some exercise

Procrastination • We procrastinate in many ways: • Ignoring the task, hoping it will go away • Underestimating the work involved in the task or overestimating your abilities and resources • Spending endless hours on computer games and surfing the Internet • Deceiving yourself that a mediocre or bad performance is acceptable

Procrastination • Substituting a worthy but lower-priority nonacademic activity • Believing that repeated “minor” delays won’t hurt you • Dramatizing a commitment to a task rather than doing it • Persevering on only one part of a task

Procrastination • Becoming paralyzed when having to choose between two alternatives

Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination • Put a deadline on your calendar • Get organized • Divide the task into smaller jobs • Take a stand • Use positive self-statements • Build in a reward for yourself

TIME MANAGEMENT: A BALANCING ACT