Some people seem to be naturally better at time management than others. Equally, some time time management methods work better some people than for than others. Make the effort to find out what helps you, and remember that forming good habits takes practice.
Understand your commitments
- Keep a calendar, diary, or wall-planner to keep track of deadlines. Work backwards from due dates to plan when you can fit in the work.
- Record enough detail so you know what, where, when, with whom and how long you need to complete a task. This helps prevent double booking.
- To do lists can help but keep them short and timed – day or week, rather than just a huge long list.
- If tasks are rolling over rather than getting done, examine how you are spending your time to see what you are doing instead.
Prioritising tasks for better time management
Decide on the importance and urgency of your tasks and divide them into four groups.
- Important and urgent – do first
- Important but not urgent – do next
- Urgent but not important –delegate, re-negotiate or agree not to do.
- Not important, not urgent –refuse to take these on.
Understand your relationship with time
- How long does it really take you to do things (underestimating this is a major time management problem) and how long have you got?
- Are you taking too long to get going because you don’t know how to start and need some help?
- Avoid distractions – the library may be a better choice than in your room. See friends after work rather than before.
- Are you taking too long, putting in too much detail, over-researching before getting down to the task? – compare notes with friends and ask your tutor.
Tricks and rewards
- If you find it hard to get going or are putting something off, try the 10 minute trick. Decide to ‘just spend 10 minutes’. There is a strong chance that by the end of 10 minutes you are are engaged and will carry on until you have finished. If you are glad to stop at the end of the 10 minutes you may have saved yourself some time for when you come back to the task.
- Carry out a difficult task first and then reward yourself with easier ones. Try bribing yourself with your treat of choice; chocolate, coffee, phoning a friend for a chat?
- Learn to skim read. You don’t have to read every page, every issue. Scan chapter titles, headlines, read abstracts, introductory paragraphs, cut straight to the summary and conclusions. For long pages of text, read the first sentence of each paragraph or read the page very quickly. Mark-up points of interest as you go – highlight or sign-post things you may want to refer to later. You can re-read important sections later if you need to.
Finally
Work expands to fit the time available and taking more on often means you do get more done overall. Be careful not to narrow your options. However, too many commitments can lead to problems with time management – if you find yourself in a mess do seek help. If you know you are going to miss deadlines talk to people as soon as you can to negotiate for an extension or a reduced assignment. Ask for help with the things you are finding too difficult.
If you want a more detailed approach you could check out the Study Skills in Maths: Time Management page by Martin Greenhow on the MathsCareers website.
This post is from the February 2020 issue of Mathematics Today
Featured Image by Steve Houghton-Burnett on Unsplash
