Improving Time Management - Research Paper Example

Improving Time Management When I woke up this morning, I faced a common problem. The alarm was going off like mad trying to keep me from oversleeping after working too late the night before. I couldn’t sleep in because I had classes to attend and I couldn’t take a nap during the day because I had a paper to write. I needed to study for a test after school, but I’d also promised a friend of mine that I would help them with a project. I needed to get home for dinner by 7 or my dad would be angry, but another friend wasn’t going to be working that night and she really wanted me to keep her company. At the same time, there was a movie coming out that night that I really wanted to see (and my friend didn’t) and if I didn’t do my laundry that night, I wouldn’t have anything clean to wear tomorrow. In looking at my schedule and realizing that there just wouldn’t be enough time in the day for me to get it all done – again – I realized that one of my biggest problems in life is a lack of time management. One of the first steps in trying to solve this problem was to determine what kind of information I needed to gather in order to solve the problem. Some things were very concrete, such as my class and work schedule. You could say my dinner schedule was pretty concrete, too, except my dad would make exceptions to the rule if I just talked with him ahead of time. Other things, such as how much time I would need for homework, were flexible by someone else’s standards. In other words, it depended on my instructors to determine how much homework they were going to hand out each night and when we were going to have tests. However, the syllabi that they handed out at the beginning of the term could give me an average amount of time per week that I would need for homework. Even less predictable was the schedule I worked out with my friends, when I would see them, what we would do and how long we would hang out. This would be the hardest bit of information to figure out. Finally, there were the things that I had to do, like laundry and sleep, that were necessary for my welfare but that I usually forgot to plan. These kinds of things could just be listed out and approximate times given, such as I know I like to have 8 hours of sleep at night and I know it usually takes me about 4 hours to get my laundry done when I finally get around to doing it. Once all this information is gathered together, it is necessary to evaluate it and bring it into some form of organization. With my class schedule and work schedule in front of me, I can chart out the days and times each week that I have to be in each place. To do this, I will make a big chart with a single row of seven squares, one for each day of the week. I will write my class times and my work times down, leaving space any time there are gaps where I don’t have to go to work straight from school. I will pencil in family dinners on every day that work and school don’t get in the way. Using the syllabi from my classes, I will attempt to determine just how much time each day I will need to finish my homework and then try to find time in this schedule for study. I know things like sleeping and laundry take a set amount of time, so I will also pencil these in because they are flexible – I can sleep a little less if I need to and I can do the laundry on another day if necessary. The time left in each day will be the time I have available to spend with my friends, since this is both the hardest to pin down and the least important of my activities toward my future success. By using this chart, I will be able to take better control of my life and make sure that I get everything done that needs to be done. I did run into some problems in trying to apply my ideas, such as when I tried to figure out how much time to schedule for homework. One of my friends who gets straight As told me that she usually tries to plan an hour of homework for each credit hour for each class per week. This seemed like an easier way to go. Using this formula, I figured out that I need to schedule 12 hours into each week for homework or study time. I also figured out that most of my tests are on Thursdays or Fridays, so I tried to fit in most of this study time in the first part of the week on my chart around class and work with some time also scheduled on the weekends because papers were usually due on Mondays or Tuesdays. I had entire blocks of time scheduled for things like laundry before I realized that I could throw in a load of laundry before dinner that would be finished by the time we were done cleaning the kitchen or that I could study while the washer was going and this would free up more time for me to hang out with my friends. By seeing my schedule written out so clearly on a weekly chart, I didn’t feel so overwhelmed with all the things I needed to do and I could see how I kept getting myself into trouble. As I continue to work on the schedule I’ve developed, I’m sure I will refine it more, but I think time management just became something I will pay more attention to in the future. Life is much easier when you’re not constantly running around trying to figure out how you’re going to get everything done and you spend your time actually doing it. Read More