TIME MANAGEMENT WORKBOOK

Time Management Workbook



Time Management Workbook

Introduction

One of the first things that graduate students (and college students too!) learn is that there is never enough time in the day. How can you keep yourself sane when you're overloaded with courses, research, teaching, and a life? Begin with using an academic calendar to keep track of your days. Time management entails more than keeping a calendar, however. It is requires identifying your obligations, carefully considering their importance, and making choices about how to use your time. 

Discussion Analysis

Use Multiple To-Do Lists

At this stage in your life it is likely that one to-do list isn't enough. Use multiple lists to organize tasks by topic or context. For example, you might maintain separate lists for each area of your life, such as home (for grocery lists, bills, and household tasks), social (for lists of friends and family to call, email, or contact on Facebook), and school (obviously, for maintaining lists of school-related tasks, like assignments and meetings with professors).

Break Each Large Task into Actionable Easy Tasks

The trick to making consistent progress on your tasks, especially academic tasks, is to separate each task into all of the smaller component tasks. For example, many students have an item on their academic list called: Write a Paper for X Class. That's one big task. Each time you look at that task it may seem overwhelming, so you glance over it and move on to the next easy task. What's an "easy" task? It's an actionable task - one that has a specific beginning and end and consists of no smaller steps. Easy tasks are less overwhelming because they are clear cut. To make sure that you tackle the big tasks, like writing a paper, it's essential that you break it into small "easy" actionable tasks, such as:

Review the course textbook for paper ideas

Run an Internet search on each idea to weed out inappropriate topics

Choose two topics

Meet with professor to discuss each topic

Make a decision

Brainstorm search phrases and topics for your library and Internet searches….. And so on

Prioritize Your Tasks

Once you prepare your lists you may find that you have much more to do than you ever realized - and feel pressured for time. Breathe. Relax. You don't have to do it all now. Some of it can wait a little while, more of it can wait even longer, and some of it may never get done. That's ok -- if you prioritize your tasks.

What's truly important to you? School work is important, but some tasks are more important than others. For example, suppose your professor assigns weekly short papers. You might feel pressured to complete these small papers before working on your large term paper for the same class. Prioritize! How much are the weekly papers worth to your grade as compared with the term paper? Many students spend a lot of time working on tasks, like short weekly papers, that account for a small percentage of their grade, for example 15%, over working on term papers and big projects that ...