Time Management – How to do Better Work and get Better at Working

This post is pretty ironic. I’m writing about time management, and I haven’t been great at that so far in terms of my blog. I’ve gotten a day behind on posting (even though I’m working on it every day, so I’m still achieving my five minute goal), so I thought to myself, “What better way to get back on track with time management than writing about it?”

In my last post, I wrote about how preparation helped me perform better academically. Although that was a major factor in the improvement of my grades, it wasn’t the only reason. With an increasing workload, I knew my time management needed to get better, and it did.

Part of the reason I got a little behind on blogging is that I haven’t had a whole lot on my plate this summer besides work. So when I had to prepare for an interview, do work for my job next semester, and blog, on top of my internship, everything piled up on me. This weekend is much needed in terms of getting myself back on track. So how do I get there?

My sister and a cousin are going to be freshmen in college in the fall, and one of the best pieces of advice I could give them is to figure out how to manage their time. Before last semester started, I took my agenda book and wrote in the due dates of everything: papers, projects, tests, homeworks, quizzes, meetings, and anything else I needed to get done. That way, everything I had to do was in one place, which enabled me to prioritize each assignment and budget my time in ways that allowed me to consistently give my best effort. I haven’t been doing that this summer, so that’s one way I can improve.

Another exercise that really helped me when I did it consistently is blocking out my day based on what I’m doing that day. One of my close friends does this every day, and he’ll be starting medical school in the fall after graduating with a 3.9 GPA. I’m not saying you’ll suddenly morph into a wizard by planning out each day, but it will certainly help. Consistently updating your Google Calendar is a perfect place to start. If you have an iPhone, you can just pick up your phone and slide to the left to view your calendar, making it easily accessible and an immediate reminder of what you need to be doing and how long you need to be doing it. I started something else last semester but stopped doing it towards the end of the semester, and while it didn’t necessarily affect my grades, I still wish I maintained it because it was a really strong and productive habit.

If you haven’t heard of the app called “Flora,” here’s a basic run-down: it helps you stay focused by planting a tree, which takes 25 minutes to grow. If you go on your phone within that 25 minutes, the tree dies. If you stay productive and pay attention to the task at hand for 25 straight minutes, just 1.73% of your day, a tree grows. Keep growing trees, and you grow a forest.

Here are some facts that I found disturbing: the average person gets one interruption every 8 minutes, or 50-60 per workday. The average interruption takes 5 minutes, which sums up to roughly 4 hours or 50% of the average workday. Finally, 80% of interruptions are rated as having little or no value, creating approximately 3 hours of wasted time per workday.

Think about that. If you work for 8 hours per day, you waste 3 of them on stuff that doesn’t really matter. Three hours? Think about everything you could do in that 3 hours. Better yet, think about everything you could do in just one hour. The source I hyperlinked to above has another stat: by allocating one hour per day for learning about a specific topic, you can learn at the rate of a full-time student. Following this logic, in 3-5 years, the average person can become an expert in the topic of their choice, just by spending only one hour per day learning about it.

How can you eliminate these interruptions? Write down the due dates for your tasks so you know when they need to be done. Then, plan out your day so you know when you’re going to accomplish those tasks. Finally, ensure you’re working, undistracted, for at least 20 or 30 minutes at a time. Besides purely accomplishing more, by being focused for longer periods of time, you’ll become more immersed in your work, which will create a better finished product.

In other words, time management is no joke. And I need to get back at it, especially with fall semester starting soon. Hopefully, writing about it not only gets me back to where I need to be, but it gets you where you need to be too.