For the past few semesters I had trouble concentrating on my uni work. Things were getting harder and I was doing more subjects than I should. Along the way I made a few attempts to manage my time efficiently. None of them worked really worked. There didn't seem to be enough time to finish assignments and still revise as much as I would like. At least that was what I told myself.
Upon reflection, I found that when I was doing fun things, time passed very quickly without me realising it. So maybe it is not that there was not enough time before. I just wasted more time than I thought I did. Therefore I will now correct this with the most direct method -- I will schedule what I do everyday.
To this end, I divided all the things I can do into three categories or levels: 1, 2 and 3. Level 1 is the "must do" tasks like work and revision. Level 2 are optional but still "good to do" things such as practising piano, reading a novel, coding (a favourite pastime). Level 3 things are true time wasters which are purely for entertainment purposes. Obvious candidates include TV and games.
At the start of everyday (or back from uni) I work out how much time I have left until the end the day, and divide that into three blocks: one for each level. Currently I am trying to put at least 50% of the time into level 1 -- we'll see as time goes on. In any case, I am not going to dictation "when I will do what", but that at the end of the day I should have used the time as planned. Also if a higher level task requires more time I can take hours off the lower levels but not the other way round. I do that to ensure I do not make excuses and "delay" my revision.
Of course there are some problems. The main one is deciding what tasks fall into each of the levels. Even now, I cannot decide where blogging should go. I said level 3 an hour ago, but I am having second thoughts. ^_^
Despite some ambiguity problems, it works. Yesterday I managed to put in 4 solid hours into learn control theories, and I am in the middle of my holiday! It goes to prove that I can concentrate and there is sufficient time. I just need to stop making excuses.
1 comment:
You're method approximates to a great degree what most books that I've read about time management say in the end, though most of them have a fourth list of tasks that can be done in very short amounts of time, so that you can do them while you are doing other things (i.e. you're waiting for you code to compile and while you're waiting you do one of the short tasks, or you are waiting on the phone to talk to someone etc). Hopefully it will work out as well in the long run as in the short term which is partially fuelled on the optimism that comes from starting something new.
On a totally unrelated note:
You've titled the blog incessant rants, but as far as I can recall you've never posted a rant: you're posts are far too detailed and reasoned to be classify as rants.
-Mo
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