Results & Reflection
One of my main goals in order to improve my time management was to put my tasks in writing. Pretty much every book, blog, journal, you name it, suggested putting your tasks down in ink. There’s something about having it written down that helps you organize your thoughts. Also, if you have a lot of things going on in your head, it can sometimes feel overwhelming and cause a great deal of stress. And for the most part, this is unnecessary stress. So for the past week I created a “to-do” list, in which I’ve used to document my assignments when they were assigned to me, and then when I completed them by. I felt as though this was the best way for me to track my results. Below is a link to my “to-do” list, you will find it easy to follow.
As you can see, I had a rather efficient week. For the most part, I finished every assignment a day in advance. However, I did fail to complete one assignment. I didn’t upload a post to my course journal on chapter 12 for Friday’s class. Aside from the fact that it slipped my mind, I had gotten home from work around 5:15 and sat down immediately to tackle my accounting homework. I knew this accounting assignment was going to be longer than usual because my teacher gave us forewarning. The homework was also on more difficult content than I’d experienced in the class thus far. Anyways the point is, that took me just about three and a half hours of straight work, no breaks. Then, when I was finished with that, I had to comment on two of my peer’s posts for my SW101 discussion board. After that, I was drained honestly and hadn’t thought about my course journal homework until I was basically sitting in class.
In the end, I will say I found the whole “to-do” list technique to be rather useful. I mean it was virtually like having an agenda, except I don’t ever use my agenda so having the list on a spreadsheet on my laptop forced me to open it more frequently. Additional strategies I used included prioritizing my assignments based on their importance and their due date obviously, as well as trying to accomplish as much of one task before moving on to the next. Furthermore, I tried to provide myself with good studying environments. For instance, when I was at school, I spent majority of my time in the libraries focusing on my schoolwork. After this week, what I really came to realize was that we’re only bad or inefficient at certain soft skills because we don’t really put the time in to truly try fixing our bad habits. If we take the steps and practice the strategies needed to excel at these soft skills, you find yourself improving almost instantly. I mean, it only took me a week and I feel as though I am better off. I look forward to seeing how my time management skills change in the future, hopefully for the good.
