Time Management For University Students

Time Management For University Students

The grand tour of your time begins here and now. You as a student have special time concerns and unique perspectives on various aspects of time management. Many of your activities are scheduled for you as lectures, tutorials and lab times are. You may find though, a substantial chunk of your time is flexible but must still be allocated to things like homework, commuting, a part-time job, some recreational time and some social time with friends. After all is said and done, many of us find ourselves disappointed with our ability to plan, stay on track and get things done. To address this and other concerns regarding your time we would like you to consider the following questions:

Have you set your goals? Within this first question we would like you to consider things like: why are you here? what do you want to learn? and what do you want to do after you graduate?

The second main question is What is your time perspective? Within this question consider things like do you procrastinate? If you do, why? Do you do things because they are easy or because they are necessary? And, how much time are you really using well?

A third main question to consider is What sort of planning is involved? Consider things like how do you plan? Do you get things done on time? Are they done to your satisfaction? Do you feel comfortable with the pace of your work, or do you feel rushed?

The fourth consideration is Have you ever had a time shift? This question entails things like have you ever been engaged in an activity where time seemed to just fly by, or the opposite where time just dragged on and on. Or, have you ever found yourself doing one thing while thinking about how you really should be doing something else?

If you have ever asked yourself any of these four questions you already know how perplexing good time management can really be. Not to worry, we will be working through all four of these questions throughout the course of the handout starting with "Have you set your goals?"

Have You Set Your Goals?

By engaging in a program of study in a university you are embarking on a journey of discovery. But unlike a journey across distances your journey is through time. During the course of your journey you will be manufacturing your own reality. Your future depends on your decisions and actions of today more than anything else. That's why it is so important to clearly determine what you are trying to accomplish. The more clear and specific you are about your future plans and the activities of today that will get you there, the more likely it is that you will make them happen. So, to start yourself off with momentum, take a few minutes to write down your top three short term goals. These are goals that you should be able to accomplish within a year. While you consider these think about some of the things that you would have to change in your life to make them

work. To help you in clarifying your goals we have provided a goal setting sheet for this exercise toward the end of this package.

Once you have completed writing out your top three short term goals, write out your top three long term goals. While you write keep in mind that the more clear and detailed your goal statements are, the more likely it is that you'll succeed. Be warned that if you have not completed the goal setting exercise the remainder of the exercises will be much less effective. After all how can you manage time when you don't know what you want to be doing?

Goal Breakdown Now that you have taken the time to write out your short and long term goals, consider

all of the component parts that the goals are made of. Quite often goals can be convergent problems; that is, they require you to work on a whole bunch of activities that eventually converge as you reach the goal. Consider for instance the goal of obtaining

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your degree. This goal can be broken down into four sub-goals. Each sub-goal is the successful completion of one year of your program. These sub-goals can be further broken down into individual courses within each year. The courses can be broken down into tests, exams, term papers and such within the course, and finally down to your homework for tonight. There is an unbroken path between the homework that you do tonight and your convocation ceremony. The trick is to stay on the path.

As an example of how to break goals down into their component parts consider yourself as a first year student in Introduction to Microeconomics. As part of your larger goal structure you want to achieve a B+ in this economics course. All of the work for the course has been completed except for the final examination and your current average is a B+. So, all you need to do is get a B+ on the final and you get a B+ in the course. How do you prepare for this final? Well, consider breaking down the work into logically separate units. Three possible components might be:

completing a review of the first term's work

completing a review of the first half of the second terms work

complete the review problems and practice test that your professor distributed in class.

The point here is not to prepare you for a microeconomics exam but to demonstrate the breakdown of a sub-goal into smaller, more concrete activities. Generally speaking the smaller the chunks, the more easy and productive your planning will be.

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By now you are probably wondering what all of this breaking down of goals has to do with? Well, glad you asked! The purpose of the breaking down of goals into sub-goals and their component parts is to be clear about what you should be doing. We are constantly bombarded by opportunities and options of what to do with our time. Most of our time believe it or not is spent in trying to decide what to do next! Vague goals are often at the heart of the most dreaded of time management no-no's - procrastination. But if you have clarified your purpose in advance you can get to it. The next section will describe in detail how we can get sidetracked into doing things that aren't really that important.

What Is Your Time Perspective?

Earlier, we talked about how you define your reality by the decisions and actions of today. Your time perspective is part of that reality. Have you ever noticed how people who have goals and are serious about their future take great care to use their time well? These people seem to consider time a precious commodity and resource to be allocated to appropriate ends, and only after careful consideration. This is in sharp contrast to the wandering masses of people who are confused, lost and unfocused. These people do not consider time as a commodity or a resource but simply as a measurement of how old something is or when something is going to happen. These differing viewpoints are both generated by the goals or lack of them of the people in question. Developing a personal sensitivity to the value of your time is easy. It's a natural outgrowth of having goals.

Imagine you had one more day to live. Wouldn't every minute suddenly become cherished and unwasted? Since none of us really knows how much time we have it would make sense to consider our time to be of limited supply and great value. Being of limited supply, our time should be spent on some things while other things should be avoided. To know which is which, we'll discuss a few crucial spectra of time use including importance and urgency, effectiveness and efficiency, and the Pareto Principle.

Importance and Urgency

A helpful strategy in clarifying your present time perspective is to think of your activities in terms of importance and urgency. The diagram, displaying a grid of four quadrants, represents different blends of important and urgent activities.

The lower-left quadrant for instance represents activities that you engage in that are

neither important nor urgent. As the urgency increases (towards the lower-right) we

often find ourselves doing things

faster and more hurriedly. Be

careful though. That does not mean that these things are more

Important but Not Urgent

Important and Urgent

Importance

important.

The upper-left

quadrant contains things that are

high in importance and low in

urgency, and the quadrant in the

upper-right corner represents activities that are high in both

Not Imprtant nor Urgent

Not Important but Urgent

urgency and importance. Let's

briefly consider each of these quadrants in turn.

Urgency

Not Important Nor Urgent

You are probably asking yourself why anyone would engage in activities that are neither important nor urgent, but you would be amazed to find out just how much of your time is really spent in this quadrant. If you find yourself engaging in such throw-away tasks as sleeping in, watching game shows for hour after hour, playing video games, or chatting on the phone - be careful. You might be engaging in activities that have nothing at all to do with your goals. Doing things that are neither important nor urgent does not make sense.

Not Important But Urgent

Engaging in tasks that are urgent but not really important is a potentially dangerous behaviour. Imaging feeling rushed and pressured to get something done while you think about how useless the task really is. Advertisers love taking advantage of our natural tendency to act on urgency. They tell us to "buy now and save!" or to "shop soon there are only a few days left!" The unfortunate tendency is to misinterpret urgency for importance. But there is a simple solution to this problem. If you are feeling hurried, stop for a moment and ask the following question: What would be the consequences to me if I don't do this? The answer to this question will put the activities importance and urgency into perspective. Urgency has a personal dimension and it is crucial that we understand to whom the urgency really applies. Often, the consequences to you are so small that it seems ridiculous to continue to do the activity.

Important But Not Urgent

The activities that fall into this quadrant tend to be tricky. Quite often we put off until tomorrow a very important activity only to engage in something less important and more urgent. Let's be honest, one of the most important activities students face is studying for exams through regular reviews, but how many students do it with lots of time to spare? The very best time to start studying for a final exam is the first day of class, but many students find a third re-run of a situation comedy on television more compelling. It's your choice to make as to which quadrant to be in, but be sure of your reasons for doing what you do.

Important And Urgent

Activities that are both urgent and important are readily acted on by most students. In this quadrant we find things like studying for exams a few days before class, typing up a major term paper the day before it is due, and trying to finish the lab assignment before lab time ends. For many students it is the urgency of the activity that prompts them to do the work. Some believe (as one student has said) "I do my best work the day before it's due." The sad reality for many of us is that the day before the due date is when we do any of the work. The work was not done when it was not urgent. Strangely enough, the importance

I do my best work the night before the due date. Why change my method, it got me this far hasn't it?

It may be true that the focused determination that you show the night before the due date of an important assignment or exam will produce results. But it is very unlikely that it is your best work. As time goes on and your assignments become increasingly complex and involved you will recognize that the `night before' approach will fail. It becomes more and more difficult to do an entire term paper at the last minute.

of the activity has never changed, only the urgency has. Waiting until something

becomes urgent makes less and less sense as something becomes more important. Take for instance two real-life examples; financial planning and marriage. Would it make any sense to begin your retirement savings plan a few weeks before you turn 65, or how

about trying to get to know your fianc?e a few days before getting married? These two examples display how strange it seems to try to cram months and years of activities into a

few days. Not only would you retire without enough money to live, but you would marry a virtual stranger. If these examples make sense to you, you will realize how foolish it is to try to cram your studies too.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

Let your imagination wander for a moment and imagine that you are the director of an expedition of explorers making your way through dense jungle. Surrounding you on all sides is the deep green foliage and the whistling and chattering of thousands of birds and monkeys. You begin to think about how fortunate you are to be leading this expedition when suddenly you hear "Stop! Stop your advancing!" It's the expedition navigator. He is approaching you from the back of the line. "It has become apparent in the last few days," he says "that we have veered drastically off course!" He motions to the north-east

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