Trying Out Time Strategies

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Time management has never been something I was very good at because I find it very hard to stick to a schedule. However for this class all our tasks for the year are already laid out for us and I feel that knowing whats coming up will be very helpful for me to keep up with my schedule because I know how much time I will roughly have to spend on this class each week. It will also allows me work ahead when I have extra time so that I will have extra time on other days should I need it for other projects.

Luckily I am not the only person who finds it hard to manage my time and so there is plenty of advice online such as the article The Important Habit of Just Starting by Jory Mackay which is all about the disconnect that many people have with being able to see their future and the fear of starting a project,  how just starting can be the biggest hurdle when it comes to any project. But once you find a commitment device that's right for you it can become a lot easier to start projects and therefore a lot easier to finish projects. For example Victor Hugo would lock his clothes in his closet so that he couldn't get dressed to go out and instead had to write.

I have always thought that starting a project even if you don't plan to finish it on that same day makes it easier to continue it another day as it has already been started. While this has worked for me for the most part I still struggled with starting things sometimes but seeing this article about that same idea and how a commitment device can help you with getting things started has given me the idea to find my own commitment device and hopefully use it to start my projects from now on.

However learning how to overcome your procrastination is only one part of the process of time management. You have to make sure that you don't run out of time to complete your projects, to do this you can create a weekly schedule and the article How to build a realistic study plan by Amanda Collins gives you many tips on how to create a schedule that you'll stick to. Amanda suggest that you should first pencil in all the things that you do on a regular day and then find the free hours in-between those things. Then, being realistic about how long different assignments will take you, you fill in the free hours you have with the assignments you have for that week. Most people would tell you to create your schedule the opposite way, starting with when you plan to study. I think that the way that Amanda describes is a lot more realistic.

While these time management strategies are good ones, they unfortunately won't work for everyone and it is up to each individual person to figure out the strategies that work for them.