Time Management For University Students
My thoughts after reading books written by gurus in post-doctoral research and C Level Executives.
We live lives where we are forced to adopt to circumstances which no-one could have guessed, on a daily basis. This is a huge problem. If you can’t predict what your day will look like, how can you know that you can achieve that massive milestone in your life a few years from now?
3 Quick Ways to reclaim your time
In his book “Deep Work”, Cal Newport discusses the importance of focus to achieve the task at hand. He discusses that companies, rather than embodying deep work principles, are now discouraging it with new open offices and Instant Messaging. He argues that the only way to achieve great insights is to put our distractions aside and concentrate for long stretches of time.
Whether or not you agree with his principles, we can all agree that a rejection of some alternatives here would lower our stress and increase productivity. Here are some of my techniques for doing just that:
- Reduce Stimuli: How many times in the last hour has your phone vibrated due to some notification? Turning my phone onto constant Do Not Disturb mode (not even vibrations) has significantly increased my focus. I no longer get distracted by IM notifications. Remember to whitelist apps such as your calendar which help you keep track of time.
- Set a goal to work Monday to Friday 9 to 5: Recall that when we discussed motivation, we set up small actions and committed to doing just those? It’s tough, I get it. Something is always delayed and takes up the whole weekend. But this is just one of the “do something” actions that you can adopt that will create further inspiration for yourself. By committing yourself to work at the same time every day, your brain creates a habit loop, which are really difficult to break out of.
- Work ‘in a flow state’: Most people work ‘busy and anxious’. This is because they are constantly reacting to stimulus. When you are in a flow state, you will be indifferent to stimulus, since you will be constantly achieving your targets. This is how emergency respondents are trained. They are able to listen for important information, rather than constantly responding to the most urgent stimulus.
You might be thinking to yourself right now, all these concentration development tactics are great and all, but how do I actually put them into practice? As a student, this question has also been a focus of mine, so let me take a few moments to highlight my strategy (as suggested by Cal Newport) and the reason for each step. You will see lots of the strategies that Cal discusses, as well as some improvements that I have made.
The Student Samurai
Soon, you too could be knocking tasks out like your favourite cartoon character. Let me show you exactly how:
- First, we need to know what we need to do, and by when. Use your favourite to do list, be it digital or paper and pen, to do this.
- We then need to condense this information into a calendar, so you can plan to do certain tasks in certain sections of the day
- Finally, make sure trivial tasks such as taking the trash out, minor cleaning and planning meetups are clumped together and done in one part of the day. This way we can focus and get these done as fast as we can.
Why Have A Todo List?
The reason that we create a huge todo list first is to give our brain the freedom to list out all its desires. Then, by prioritising this onto a calendar we are setting a clear goal for ourselves which we will strive to achieve. This is much better than, say, just checking things off as you do them. Finally, clumping minor tasks together allows Deep Work to take place, so that we can truely focus on the main tasks in the main parts of the day.
Common Pitfalls
Some major problems with this method are that predicting timing of each task can be a challenge. I normally address this with a technique called Kaizen, which definitely deserves its own blogpost. However, in short, Kaizen is the practice of repeatedly enforcing small positive changes based on the outcome from a previous decision, which in this case would be whether you went under or over time, and you would base future predictions on that task accordingly. There’s a lot more to Kaizen, and I really suggest reading “One Small Step Can Change Your Life” to find out more about this technique.
I‘m sure you’ve learn about the techniques that I use to prioritise tasks, but, you’re probably more curious about the tools that I use to achieve productive feats. I’ll however, have to answer that question with another question…
What do you currently use?
Its more than likely that the tools you use currently have the basic functionality already baked in, to do what I described previously. Yet, we are constantly looking for new tools because we think that the tool can be a method to innovate drastic change into our daily schedule. However, tools are just a means to an end. Remember, Kaizen warns us against doing such drastic changes and discusses focusing on short term incremental goals, which would be much more achievable.
It’s not enough to do exactly what I do to achieve good results, you must also embody a positive mindset and philosophy. However, since some people will still ask for it, here is a brief snapshot of my Systems:
Trello
Trello has so far been my best “to-do list” type tracker. I have organised my trello on a weekly basis where I put in what needs to be done for which subject. I use trello for both individual and group projects.
### Google Calendar
Calendars are useful only for what they got made for, Time Management! Measure how much time you spent on each task and never lose track of the future tasks. Please do not turn your calendar into a todo list, since there could be many other ways you could categorise tasks other than its due date!
Google Drive
This is your go to all-in-one, unlimited free usb storage that you cant lose again! Trust me, so much hassle saved when trying to plug the usb into the presentation computer, only to turn out that it was in a different usb.
I hope that helps you guys!
