Time-management for student works!

It's already autumn on the street and new student year begins. There are a lot of staff occupied students these days: new classes, new impressions, new teachers, new knowledge. It's always difficult to find a minute in the morning for some sleep and nights are short as always. Who knows, maybe it's a best time of our life and that's a good way to enjoy it.

There are some simple tips to get even more this autumn.

Organize Your Time

The more organized you are, the more you will be able to accomplish today. Don't be in hurry and try to avoid doing everything at once.

For a good start you can opt to organize papers on your desk, or keep them in a file drawer. Some options for organization include: Papers to be graded, Papers to be copied, Things to do, Things to File, etc. Whatever you find to be common categories for your personal style of working will be useful in organizing your work.

Use file folders to keep yourself organized. Use one folder for each lesson or unit, and this will enable you to easily know what you need, and what you should prepare for the lesson, and easily file the lesson or unit when you are finished studying it.

Have a list of tasks

If you have a list of tasks and if you can quickly modify this list, either add or remove something, you will not spend a time for seeking what to do next. This will also prevent you from forgetting something important.

Use a small notepad for this. You can simply take it with you in the pocket. Otherwise you can take only one leaf of a paper with all your tasks printed down. (I'd suggest to use something electronic for printing it, for example you can print a To-Do tasks or Daily time plan reports from AcePlanner).

Prioritize Your Tasks

We all tend to get most important tasks done first. However for students there are always so many important staff what it's simply isn't possible to find a time for a lengthy course work required next month. Don't forget to add such tasks to the daily route.

Lunch time

Whenever there is not enough time in the day to accomplish everything that must be done, don't consider using your lunch time. Spend this time with other students, relax and have some meal to power up your brain.

I've got a degree few years ago, so I'm not a university student already, but I'm missing these times...

In any case, enjoy your time, wherever you are.

Psychologists saying about time management

Recently I found a short article "Manage Your Time – Don't Let It Manage You" by Maud Purcell from psychologist community site. I'm quite interesting in their practical knowledge because time management is more about managing ourselves: controlling our mood, identifying when we are most productive, what kind of work we can do in particular time, how to manage stress and prevent external factors interrupting our work, what planning style is more natural for us, and many more other "why" and "what".

Ok, here are some of their answers.

First of all Maud suggests to clarify what time management really is. It's not about doing one hour long task in 5 minutes, but it's about managing our life and saving time for taking some fun from it.

Second, but not less important, she said what we all have our prime time hours when we concentrate best. For most people it's early morning, but there are still people who most concentrated and intuitive late afternoon and even in the middle of the night. She suggests to block this time for most important and urgent activities. In AcePlanner it's A priority. However she didn't describe methods of identifying the prime time and that most productive time on Monday may not match the prime time on Friday. So my couple of words is here. Most time management books and teachers from time management courses suggest tracking emotional state with colors for a week or two. It's simple, just prepare sheet on paper: on the X-axes draw days of week, on the Y day hours, half of an hour resolution is enough. Associate colors with your emotional states and mark it in the sheet if your mood changed. Otherwise periodically stop for a second and reflect your current emotions in the sheet. Our time-management tool also provides this functionality.

Next, she points on time reflection. She suggests to stop for a minute if you find yourself doing some kind of treadmill. Ask yourself if you really need this, if yes, compare it with your priorities and life goals. Yes, this is the central time management tip.

As a psychologist she also points us to a valuable mistake, from time-management point of view, absorbing others problems. As usual we need to think twice before putting the power to resolve it.

She also touched procrastination theme. She suggests to not sit "near the task", just workout it right away. Don't try to do it perfectly. Good is usually better than perfect. Here Paretto principle is also applicable: 20% of work dedicated for perfectness usually eat 80% of time.

Not surprising for me, she suggests to take time breaks for relaxation. This will ultimately help us to be more effective not only in the morning.

These tips are simple but quite applicable for our life and work. So let's save our time for more fun and a better life. Don't hesitate to post comments here. See you next week.

Plain or sequential to-do list

In one of the previous articles we have briefly reviewed various to-do lists. This time we will concentrate on a simplest to-do list: plain or sequential list of tasks.

Let's start with a real example from the life of an AcePlanner customer. His name is Thomas and he is a manager in a small company in München, Germany. In overall he usually has 6-7 appointments per week, 4-5 meetings, and some amount of none-repeating tasks, including phone calls, support tickets and urgent assignments.

He told me the story on how to-do list can help. Managing a to-do list is a daily ritual for him. He starts a to-do list in the road to the office. No, he doesn't take Palm or PDA, or a paper and pencil. He thinks about upcoming and non-completed tasks, ideas he is going to work today or this week. In the office he can simply write everything down to the clear page of his copy book. Additionally he has two markers: red and yellow. With the red color he marks time sensitive tasks, like meetings and appointments, and urgent or important tasks.

Completed tasks he crosses out. New tasks he adds to the list. He rewrites his paper planner usually once per 2-3 days to see if it's still accurate. You can imagine what happens with paper document after some crossing and correction. This is very important because a good-looking plan usually adds more positive emotions to our work. His new plan consists of incomplete tasks from the previous version and new tasks. Some tasks are obsolete or can be omitted, some already crossed out, thus will not be added to the new leaf. However time can turn an unimportant task to urgent one. In this case red marker is very helpful.

This method helps him to find few daily recurring tasks. And first time he tried to dedicate a separate leaf of paper for a list of recurring tasks. This was an indication what he is ready to move to an advanced to-do list or electronic planning system.

Well, needless to say that he has recently switched to AcePlanner. We will see if he is happy enough. I hope so.

We will continue investigating other to-do lists in the next post.

If you have your own story of using a to-do list, please share it with the community by placing a comment or drop me an email.

The work-life balance

Balance. It's a nice word but the reality is hard to pin down. It may not even put us on the right track in our 21st century quest for fulfillment and happiness. In this article we will talk about the integration of work and family life, beginning not with the workplace and the employer's role in sorting things out, but with the person and her priorities.

Generally when people talk about work-life balance they mean the challenge of managing their family commitment when they've got children, while juggling the demands of a career. That's the traditional focus, but the concept has evolved quite a bit. There are now many younger people in the workforce, in their late 20s and early 30s, who may not even have children but they want a sense of balance in their life.

Often we are thinking of some sort of perfection, where nothing is out of place, there's no stress, and this of course is unrealistic. It automatically means a trade-off between work and life. If I give more time to my family I won't be able to do my job properly, or if I spend more time on the job my family will suffer. Yet I want to be able to have it all, to do it all, right now.

Let's think about integration, which means bringing the various pieces of our lives into a cohesive whole. We each have many roles, goals, responsibilities and life plans. We have to get it together. The attractive idea of finding ways to bring life into a unity will give us the harmony and happiness we seek.

Experience shows what people who have very clear priorities and their own clear definition of success succeed best at balancing their lives. They know what's most important in their lives. These are people who can say, before it happens: If I have to make a choice, if work and family come head to head, I know what my biggest priority is. People who realize it may have slow their career for a period of time, perhaps while a child is younger, and have a less demanding job so they can have more time at home. And they can be at peace with that, because their definition of success is not necessarily the one that society tells them.

Usually we have to just go through life and let the new promotion or the new demands of the job dictate what you do, to feel you don't have a choice. This is not balanced life road. We need to stop and reflect, communicate more with your husband, your wife, your manager at work, and basically be more pro-active.

The today's truth is that we have too much to do. Technology has changed things and made people accessible 24 hours a day, encroaching on the peaceful time people used to have. Yet some things don't change. We still have 24 hours a day. We all have the same amount of time and how we use it comes down to a personal choice.

The disorganization traits usually come from avoiding the choice and try to do too much. Even a simple thing like, What are we going to have for dinner tonight? can become a huge job if we feel, Oh, I've a lot of work and will not be able to do grocery shopping. Obviously, if we have the knowledge and skills to make something simpler than we're going to gain more time. This is what AcePlanner is built on - using good systems to simplify daily tasks so you don't spend inordinate amounts of time on work.

For balanced life planning and other basic management skills have to be used at home as well as in the workplace. One of the reasons why many people prefer going out to work to working at home is what we're very organized in the workplace, we use time management there, and then we come home and just ride the waves, consuming ourselves with the latest problem that has cropped up.

However there's nothing wrong with wanting to go out to work. We do need multiple interests to enrich our lives and many times we have talents that we need to give to the workplace and to the world. But it is true that work on the job is often more attractive because it is more project-oriented and very linear, and at the end of that piece of work we get the praise and a sense of accomplishment, whereas at home every day it's the same thing.

Human beings have certain basic needs that have to be taken care of every day, and although we can feel a sense of accomplishment that we have organized something at home, it's soon going to be dirtied again, or another meal is going to have to be put on the table. And this means changing your sense of where you get your satisfaction - not just from accomplishing the task or from the process of doing it, but from the motive.

A magic of a to-do list

We usually find ourself so busy, so many things needs to be done. This relates to job, social activities, and personal life. This leads to frequent need of choosing a next item to do. Sometimes we even have two or more tasks which needs to be addressed very quickly. A simple to-do list can help.

The goal of a to-do list

To get most of a to-do list technique let's think about its goals. We all know that it's hard to concentrate if our mind is busy something else. Can you remember a situation when you worry about an upcoming event or about a meeting speech. This rarely supports completion of other tasks and usually significantly increases required time for the task.

Let's imagine a magic which can help us to skip worrying about anything except the current task and to stay concentrated. Do you think it can help? Consider writing tasks into a to-do list. Think about it as a magic for temporary forgetting about anything except the current item. Isn't it our desired goal of using a to-do list?

To conclude the idea of a to-do list: let "to-do list" worry about upcoming tasks and necessery time, release your mind to finish the current one.

Types of to-do lists

To-do lists are widely used. It is so natural that many people do not require any special training or a manual. However some education can help. Everyone is unique and approaches of using a to-do list can be different. Let's highlight three commonly used to-do list types:

1. Plain or sequential to-do list

Everyone at least once did use this kind of to-do list. It looks like a numbered list of tasks to be done. Such to-do list user works on these tasks starting with most important first. Every completed task marked with a check or simply crossed out.

2. One day to-do list

This type of to-do list is used for collecting most important and time sensitive tasks. This includes meetings, phone calls and events. People usually write these tasks on sticky notes and place them in a visible location. In addition to task title it has a scheduled time or timeframe.

3. To-do list software

This list is probably the most effective. User can benefit from an additional information, forecasts and reports. Software can use a data for generating timesheets or comparison tables of planned time versus time spent. Don't get me wrong, but AcePlanner is a good example.

Effective to-do list is not just a plan of things to be done. It is a tool for collecting tasks and picking most important to work on in a moment.

We will come back to software to-do lists in next posts.

I'm looking forward to hear your questions and comments.

Balanced life questionnaire

We often hear a term balanced life. But that does it mean? How to understand where is a balance and what is the shortest way to get it?

There is no simple answer that fits for all, because everyone is unique. Here is a set of possible questions that can help to understand a style of keepping up a balance.

1. Write tasks that you most likely do in the next day or two. Set importance of each task using ABC or Covey's scheme, where A - tasks that must be done, and very soon; B - important tasks as A, but can wait a bit; C - tasks whose require an immediate attention, but can be skipped without a risk; and D - nice to have tasks.
2. Sometimes we do our work in any order but not as logical ABC priorities suggest. It does make sense to freeze for a minute think about the current actions and adjust ABCs.
3. Are there tasks essential for your personal or professional goals?
4. Do you plan to learn something new?
5. Is there a time for breakfast, fitness, maybe relaxation? Do you usually have regular breakfasts and meals?
6. Try to estimate percentage of your tasks which will produce a value for your company, colleagues or for your boss, maybe someone else, but not you. Is there a space for your own goals?
7. Do you have a time for D-tasks?
8. Imagine, if tomorrow is a holiday. Do you have A, B, C or D tasks in your list for this case?
9. Here is a space for your personal tasks, maybe for the next holiday? How many of them include family, friends or hobby?
   
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There is always a place for more questions. Try to figure out more tests suitable personally for you to keep your life balanced. Do it regularly, e.g. every Monday. This list is like a book with a new content every time you read. Continue asking yourself these questions and find your balance and happiness.

Please don't forget to leave a comment.

The Way of Positive Thinking

During my student years I've seen many people who go panic once they face difficulties of any kind. Other people experience kind of an adventure in similar situations. These people usually feel themselves happy. The secret is probably a positive thinking.

Becoming a positive thinker is not so hard. Just remind yourself one of the following phrases in case if something goes wrong or unexpected:

• I know that bad things will not assist me always.
• Wrong things happen only to help me to understand real goodness for me and show my real goals.
• This is not my failure; this is only one more step to my success.
• This one difficulty is just another exercise to keep me in a good form.
• Do you feel uncomfortable? Yes, I do. Is there a space for worse to come? No. That's good! (Well, Space is infinite :)
• The item is broken. That's good, I'll use released parts for something else. Or even better: this will free up more space in my room.

I've covered only few examples of positive thinking tips here. But best results we can expect with our own positive thinking ideas. Try to write yours on the scratch or better in the comment here.