Time Strategies

Time Strategies

For this class, I intend to break up my schedule to do 3 hours on Sunday, accomplishing Readings A and B and then the story. Then, on Monday, I plan to do 1 hour of blog comments. Then, tentatively scheduled for Friday but, in all actuality, I will tackle it the first day I have time, I will spend 2 hours to do the project and project feedback. I decided to remain flexible for the final day of the week but to still schedule it for Friday because I am in multiple clubs and my weekly schedule varies greatly Monday through Thursday. However, scheduling in time Friday should make certain that I am able to get through everything in the Indian Epics class.

I read articles from Professor Gibbs's list and selected "How Checklists Train Your Brain to be More Productive and Goal-Oriented" by Lauren Marchese and "How to Beat Procrastination" by Caroline Webb. Both articles suggested that it is better to break large items in a checklist up into much smaller items. I don't think this advice is applicable to most of my tasks while at college as the tasks involve readings or assignments, but I do think this idea of breaking tasks into smaller tasks will really help with any projects I have within the semester and after college. One piece of advice I'd like to follow is trying to reward myself by completing items on a task list. I could maybe do this by downloading an app that shows percent completion for my weekly tasks or by using an Excel spreadsheet that shows a percent completion bar to help make my brain understand I am getting somewhere. 

I think that the biggest issue is that professors can randomly determine when homework is due, so it is very hard to plan more than a week in advance at any given time. Also, some homework assignments can be completed in thirty minutes while others can take up to 4 hours. This will be hard to plan for and understand just how much work I have left to do, but I think I can accomplish good time management if I consistently try to implement better time management strategies throughout the semester.

Image from NeedPix.com depicting a to-do list on engineering paper.