The Modern Student

What is time? For our purposes, time is potential – potential to do anything. You can use that potential to have a great time with your friends or family, do something that you really enjoy doing, or to invest energy into achieving you’re short or long term goals. Thus, time is one of the most valuable resources that you can possibly have.

The bottom line is this – save time. You do this by managing your time, as if it is a precious commodity. As soon as you start doing this, you will no longer be wasteful with your time.

So let’s get into how you manage your time.

Firstly, let’s have a look at something called the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. This means that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs with surprising frequency. You may be surprised to find that roughly 20% of your tasks eats up roughly 80% of your time, and 80% of your efforts yields you only about 20% of the results.

20% of your subjects may cause 80% of your work volume, in some cases. 20% of your assignments and projects takes you 80% of the time to do. 20% of what you do may cause you 80% of the negative feelings. 20% of the people you interact with causes 80% of the drama in your social circles. For some people, they use 80% of their time to complete 20% of their work. The examples are endless.

The essence of the art of time management is to be as efficient AND effective as possible in whatever you do.

Concentrate on results, not on being busy

In the end, time management comes down to choices. Good choices lead to better results, while poor choices lead to wasted time and energy.

Here are 10 guidelines for you to use in managing your time.

1. Write things down

A common time management mistake is to try to use your memory to keep track of too many details leading to information overload. Using a to-do list to write things down is a great way to take control of your projects and tasks and keep yourself organized.

2. Prioritize your list

Prioritizing your to-do list helps you focus and spend more of your time on the things that are really important. Rate your tasks into categories using an ABCD prioritization system.

3. Plan your week

Spend some time at the beginning of each week to plan your schedule. Taking the extra time to do this will help increase your productivity and balance your important long-term projects with your more urgent tasks. All you need is fifteen to thirty minutes each week for your planning session.

4. Learn to say NO

Many people become overloaded with too much work because they over commit; they say yes when they really should be saying no. Learn to say no to low priority requests and you will free up time to spend on things that are more important.

5. Think about what you are giving up to do your regular activities

It is a good idea to evaluate regularly how you are spending your time. In some cases, the best thing you can do is to stop doing an activity that is no longer serving you so you can spend the time doing something more valuable. Consider what you are giving up in order to maintain your current activities.

6. Identify bad habits

Make a list of bad habits that are stealing your time, sabotaging your goals, and blocking your effectiveness and efficiency. After you do, work on them one at a time and systematically eliminate them from your life. Remember that the easiest way to eliminate a bad habit, is to replace it with a better one.

7. Keep a goal journal

Schedule time to set and evaluate your goals. Start a journal and write down your progress for each goal. Go through your goal journal each week to make sure you are on the right track.

8. Don’t be a perfectionist

Some tasks don’t require your best effort. Learn to distinguish between tasks that deserve to be done excellently and tasks that just need to be done.

9. Beware of “filler” tasks

When you have a to-do list filled with important tasks, be careful not to get distracted by “filler” tasks. Things such as organizing your bookcase or filing papers can wait until you tackle the items that have the highest priority.

10. Avoid “efficiency traps”

Being efficient doesn’t necessarily mean that you are being effective. Avoid taking on tasks that you can do with efficiency that don’t need to be done at all. Just because you are busy and getting things done doesn’t mean you are actually accomplishing anything significant.

Efficiency

We’ll start off by looking at efficiency. Efficiency is simply getting the best results with the least amount of effort. The results are often quantity or quality based. The effort can take the form of physical activity, mental activity, a duration of time, or many other things.

If you complete a college assignment in three days, and one of your friends completes it in a week, but both of you deliver the same quality assignment, you are far more efficient then he is at completing the assignment – it is very logical.

Make it your aim to be as efficient as possible in whatever you do, with the goal of being resourceful with your time. Efficiency relates to how you do something.

Effectiveness

Effectiveness is simply what you do. To demonstrate the importance of effectiveness or the lack there off, imagine that you have exams coming up in a month’s time, and you have lots of material to study. In an effort to organize your time for studying, you make long lists of what and when to study which material. It takes you 4 days to do this, and now you can start studying. Your desk is in a bit of a mess, and it will help you concentrate better if you clean it up, which you spend another day doing. You also want to study in a neat room, so you clean your room as well. After all this hard work, you need to relax for a day before you seriously hit the books. You start off by making notes about the subject matter in order to summarize them, even if you already have them. Doing this doubles your study time, but you feel it will help you remember better. Congratulations, you have wasted a week or more worth of study time. This is one pitfall that I used to fall into time and time again while being in school.

What you do is as important as how you do it. It doesn’t matter how efficient you are at something, if it does not help you work towards achieving your goals, you are being ineffective.

Make it your aim to be as effective as possible in whatever you do, with the goal of being resourceful with your time. Efficiency relates to what you do.