Finding the Time for

Time Management

Time Management

Time really can’t be managed; you can’t

slow it down, speed it up, or manufacture

it.

Time management is really

all about :

MANAGING YOURSELF

Why manage your time?

Is this the picture that represents you in your “normal” state?

Or is it more like…

• We need to manage time because:– ?– ?– ?

• What is YOUR reason?

Understand your time

• Time is your most valuable resource. – Analyze your

time to understand the most efficient way to use it.

To understand the value of time…

• To realize the value of one year: Ask a student who has failed a final exam.

• To realize the value of one month: Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

• To realize the value of one week: Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

• To realize the value of one hour: Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

• To realize the value of one minute: Ask the person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

• To realize the value of one second: Ask a person who has survived an accident.

• To realize the value of one millisecond: Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time waits for no one. Taken from: http://www.worldofquotes.com/

What Do People Have to Juggle Nowadays?

• Education• Job(s)• Volunteer work • Community activities• Family responsibilities• Social life• ??????

Analyze Your Time: What’s Your “LQ”Leisure Quotient?

• Sometimes we just don’t realize how much time we spent in non-productive ways.

• Here are some examples of leisure:

– Chatting/texting– Listening to music– Watching TV– Daydreaming– Playing video games

• What others can you think of?

Exercise: Finding your LQ

• Keep a close record each day of how much time you spend on leisure activities.

• Divide this number by 960* minutes to get your “LQ”.

– *960 minutes equals 16 waking hours per day.

– Leisure activities are important to help you recharge, but too much can be detrimental.

What is Time Management?

• Time management refers to the development of processes and tools that increase efficiency and productivity

• Time management doesn’t “just happen” for

anyone – it is a skill that must be worked on, and that most people find to be a life-long challenge

Time Management Is Critical to Your Success In…

• …getting your school work done and achieving good grades

• …keeping a job (and being able to support yourself)

• …maintaining your mental and physical health

• …investing in and keeping good relationships with other people

The Benefits of Having Good TM Skills

• Allows you to be better prepared for and to get the most out of your life…therefore decreases anxiety

• Helps you to assign time to tasks in proportion to their importance (prioritizing)

• Helps you achieve a more balanced life• Makes you a more productive, successful

person

Early Warning Signs of TM Problems…

• Handing in work late• Submitting work that is not up to your usual

standard• Forgetting commitments• Finding that you often don’t have enough time to

complete a task• Making excuses for why work is not done• Having to let go of activities you enjoy because

of a lack of time to do the things that “have” to get done

Why Don’t We Use Our Time More Effectively?

• Planning out your time seems like more work

• Adds more “structure” to your day – we have enough of this at school or work

• Forces you to look at what needs to be completed – can be overwhelming

• It’s not fun • You are lazy or just don’t care enough

Basic Time Management Principles

• Adjust your attitude• Be organized• Follow a routine• Write down your goals• Be selective• Prioritize• Give yourself extra time• Track what you do• Schedule downtime

Find shortcuts

Adjust Your Attitude

• Being busy is not something that life does to us – we do it to ourselves. Some things are beyond our control, but many things are not.

Be Organized

• Have a place for everything and put things away as soon as you are done using them.

• Put items that are used often in a more accessible location and file everything else away.

• Be ruthless about throwing things away if they are no longer needed. Clutter is a big time-waster.

Follow A Routine

• Make a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual routine and follow it.

• Routines help you make sure you don’t forget to do things.

• Be proactive - stagger periodic tasks so they don’t overwhelm you all at once.

• Make checklists of oft-repeated tasks, so you don’t have to think about them.

• Routines are good for your mental and physical well-being.

Write Down Your Goals

• List specific goals like buying a house, obtaining a certain job, paying off debts, finishing a big project, etc. Include specific dates.

• List general goals like spending lots of time with family, having a fulfilling career, being healthy or contributing something to society.

• Write your goals down and refer back to them often – keeping them fresh in your mind will help you to avoid time-wasting distractions and later regret.

Be Selective

• Make a mental list of criteria for accepting a new task and if something doesn’t fit your criteria, say “no”.

• Don’t try to please everyone, or you may end up pleasing no one.

• Try to get people to answer their own questions. • Ask people what their timeline is and how crucial

their needs are – don’t just assume that every new request is an emergency.

• Remember that not everything is your responsibility - don’t be afraid to delegate.

Prioritize

• Once you have a list of things to do, schedule them according to their importance.

• Sometimes it may make sense to do a bunch of small tasks first, to clear your mind for a bigger task.

• Other times you may have to just ignore the small stuff to get the big projects done.

• If you are more alert at certain times of the day, do harder tasks then and save the more menial stuff for another time.

Give Yourself Extra Time

• Allow for the unexpected. If it takes 15 minutes to get to work, give yourself 30.

• Be prepared - check the weather forecast ahead of time so that you’ll know if you need more time to get to work.

• For time-critical things like catching a plane, give yourself lots of extra time. The cost of being an hour early is much less than the cost of being even a second too late.

Track What You Do

• Keep a detailed log on occasion to see how you are really spending your time.

• Write a daily journal to help yourself remember why you made certain decisions or how you fixed something. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

• Evaluate yourself on a regular basis to make sure that the way you are prioritizing tasks is in line with your goals.

Schedule Downtime

• If you don’t make time for downtime, you may either never get it or end up sacrificing something you shouldn’t because you’re going crazy.

• Schedule specific times to spend with family or friends on a regular basis, and keep the appointment.

• Don’t sacrifice downtime for work – your work will end up suffering in the long run.

Find Shortcuts

For the super-busy person:• Learn to speed-read.• Take notes in shorthand.• Take reading materials or note cards with you

everywhere - you can read them on the bus, while waiting in line at the bank, etc.

• Don’t do things at the same time or in the same place as everyone else.

• Batch related tasks – save up several errands that are in the same part of town and do them at the same time.

• Learn the flow and schedules of people and places around you, and adapt yourself to them.

Three Key Steps to Good Time Management

• Developing a Weekly Schedule – to provide an overview of free and committed

time• Writing a Daily To-Do List

– to provide daily reminders to assure key tasks are not forgotten

• Preparing a Long-Term Plan – to promote overall organization and

future planning

Step 1: Creating a Weekly Schedule

• Can use a weekly schedule template, an agenda, or a computer program

• Will allow you to: – Organize your regular activities– Determine your available free time– Look at hours spent on extra-curricular

activities– Know how and where you tend to waste time

Step 1: Creating a Weekly Schedule (cont …)

• Fill in the weekly schedule in this sequence:– Personal Maintenance (i.e. eating, sleeping,

getting ready, travel)– Your classes / work commitments– Other Commitments (volunteer, extra-curricular

etc.)

THEN fill in other OPTIONAL commitments

Step 2: Daily To-Do Lists

• It’s even more effective to actually create a daily schedule and block out the time when events will happen

• It’s important to tick things off on your daily to-do list as you complete them – gives you a sense of accomplishment

• Try to put down a little more on your list than you think you can realistically accomplish

• Breaking down large projects into smaller tasks that you can accomplish in small chunks of time is one of the most effective TM strategies

Step 3: Long-Term Plans

• Best to use a monthly calendar• Important to be able to look ahead by at least 4

weeks• As soon as you are informed of deadlines put

them on the calendar so you can ensure that you’re able to do some long-range planning

Time management and Organization Tools

• Agenda

• Calendar / Email

• Highlighters/Colour coding

• PDAs/Smartphone

• Cell Phones, watches, etc.

Procrastination: Enemy of Time Management

• While procrastinating may give immediate gratification because it delays working on an important (but sometimes undesirable) task, it also brings:– Anxiety– Reduced sleep– Illness– Lower grades– Poorer quality of work– Less learning as a result of being rushed– A personal sense of disappointment

• In the end, it hurts you more than it helps you!

I’ll do that later…

• Not keeping up with work can have a snowball effect, what you need to do continues to build and build, making it harder to get caught up

• Tips to avoid procrastinating – a common problem

– Break big jobs down into smaller steps

– Give yourself a reward for completing your work

– Make a list of things to do and cross off the items as you complete

them – it helps give you a feeling of accomplishment

– Take control of your study environment, lessen distractions

It’s All about Endorphins - The Feel Good Hormone

• Develop a conditioned response to the tasks you procrastinate

• Set a goal to complete a task/project

• After completing the task, reward yourself with something that is pleasurable for you

– The body releases endorphins- the feel good hormone

• Over time with repetition, you will come to associate feeling good with completing a task/project

• You won’t procrastinate as much

Expect the Unexpected

• Unexpected problems may arise that can affect your time management

• Try to be prepared and be able to deal with any problems that may occur

• Common problems:

– Mechanical / technical / computer– Illness– Family/friends– Love interest– Underestimated time

What If I Get Off Schedule?

• It’s important to prepare for the unexpected – things will always come up that you didn’t plan for…even after great planning!

• When your plan is thrown into chaos:

– List each necessary activity you need to complete– Define time limits for each activity– Set priorities within the list– Tackle assignments in that order

The Importance of Setting Priorities

• At any one time, you may have 10 tasks that ideally you should be working on – it will be impossible to do them all!

• Setting priorities means making a value judgment on each task you need to complete based on it’s worth and when it must be completed

• In short: the tasks that are worth the most and due the soonest should be completed first

What If I Just Have Too Much Going On?

• If you find that you have very few hours left in your day, week or month to relax, spend time with friends or family, or pursue your own interests, it’s time to re-evaluate your commitments!

• If you spread yourself too thin, you won’t fulfill any of the commitments in your life to your level of satisfaction

• Again, be sure to prioritize and don’t feel guilty if you need to drop an activity or two – your health and well-being is always your #1 priority!

Is Not Sleeping A Solution?• Student lag… like jet lag

• Are you creating the equivalent of jet lag by keeping an inconsistent sleep schedule?

– Do you get up at about the same time each morning?– Do you almost always get 7-9 hours of sleep per night?– If you answered NO to any of the questions, you are

compromising your body’s efficiency.

Symptoms• Feeling tired; not rested• Mood changes

– Irritability– Affective liability

• Impaired Cognitive Functioning– Poor concentration and memory– Decreased attention– Calculation problems– Difficulty in making quick, correct decisions

• Inability to reliably estimate your own alertness due to above symptoms

Decreased Sleep• Cumulative sleep loss can lead to decreased waking alertness, impaired

performance and worsened mood.– Bonnett, 1985; Broughton and Ogilvie, 1992

• Decreased performance related to sleep loss has been implicated in some major disasters.

– Exxon Valdez

• Sleep deprivation is equivalent to the effects of alcohol intoxication– Fatigue Among Clinicians & the Safety of Patients, David M. Gaba, MD and Steven K. Howard, MD, New England

Journal Med; Vol.347 No 16; 10/17/02

• 24 hrs of sustained wakefulness is equivalent to 0.10 % Blood Alcohol Concentration.

– Dawson and Reid , 1997

• “Surgeons awake all night had 20% more errors and took 14% longer to complete the task than those who had a full night’s sleep.”

– Lancet, 1998

In Summary…

• Time management is a skill that EVERYONE must work on in all areas of their life (personal, academic, work)

• Successful time management requires self-evaluation and the desire to improve

• Effective time management will require you to do things you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do them – you have to push yourself!

• The pay-off of good time management is ALWAYS worth the effort

Time Management and Philosophy…

• A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items on the table in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, about 2 inches in diameter.

• He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

• So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks.

• He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

Time Management and Philosophy…

• The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

• He then asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “Yes.”

• “Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

• The pebbles are the other things that matter – like your job, your house, your car.

Time Management and Philosophy…

• The sand is everything else. The small stuff.”• “If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued

“there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life.

• If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal.

• Take care of the rocks first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”