Chapter 16: Time Management Skills
Amy Baldwin
Questions to Consider:
- How can I use time-on-task estimates to improve time management?
- What behaviors can help or hinder when it comes to managing time?
In this next section you will learn about managing time and prioritizing tasks.
ANALYSIS QUESTION
Read each statement in the brief self-evaluation tool below, and check the answer that best applies to you. There are no right or wrong answers.
| Always | Usually | Sometimes | Rarely | Never | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I like to be given strict deadlines for each task. It helps me stay organized and on track. | |||||
| I would rather be 15 minutes early than 1 minute late. | |||||
| I like to improvise instead of planning everything out ahead of time. | |||||
| I prefer to be able to manage when and how I do each task. | |||||
| I have a difficult time estimating how long a task will take. | |||||
| I have more motivation when there is an upcoming deadline. It helps me focus. | |||||
| I have difficulty keeping priorities in the most beneficial order. |
After you have decided your best response to each statement, think about what they may mean in regard to potential strengths and/or challenges for you when it comes to time management in college. If you are a person that likes strict deadlines, what would you do if you took a course that only had one large paper due at the end? Can you set a series of mini deadlines that made you more comfortable and that kept things moving along for you? Or, if you have difficulty prioritizing tasks, does it help you to make a list of the tasks to do and order them, so you know which ones must be finished first?
How to Manage Time
The simplest way to manage your time is to accurately plan for how much time it will take to do each task, and then set aside that amount of time. How you divide the time is up to you. If it is going to take you five hours to study for a final exam, you can plan to spread it over five days, with an hour each night, or you can plan on two hours one night and three hours the next. What you would not want to do is plan on studying only a few hours the night before the exam and find that you fell very short on the time you estimated you would need. If that were to happen, you would have run out of time before finishing, with no way to go back and change your decision. In this kind of situation, you might even be tempted to “pull an all-nighter,” which is a phrase that has been used among college students for decades. In essence it means going without sleep for the entire night and using that time to finish an assignment. While this method of trying to make up for poor planning is common enough to have a name, rarely does it produce the best work.
ACTIVITY 16.1
Many people are not truly aware of how they actually spend their time. They make assumptions about how much time it takes to do certain things, but they never really take an accurate account.
In this activity, write down all the t