MMMiii!

I attended the first night of the UPIS Leadership Camp and the talk that night was about Time Management given by the CA EMA department head Professor Christopher M. Reyes.Here’s the summary:

1. Goal-Setting
2. Overcoming Procrastination
3. Action Plan
4. Prioritized To-Do List
5. Effective Scheduling

---

1. Goal-settingBeing busy doesn’t always mean being productive. The time you spent on something is not as important as your end goal. Your end goal is the most important. And you have to look at the bigger picture whenever you’re setting your goals. This isn’t just something like what you want to have done by tomorrow. What is your goal in having that something done by tomorrow?As an example, let’s use my life. This is an example only, okay?My goal is to go to Japan or somewhere else. Soon. Finishing my lesson plan by tonight is not an end-goal. It is just a step in reaching my goal.

2. Overcoming Procrastination

Know your body and your mind. What drives you? What gets you going? What keeps you going? What slows you down?

Admit it. The things you don’t like to do does not motivate you. Sometimes, you choose a pleasurable activity over an important activity. It doesn’t always happen that your important chore is an enjoyable.

Another is choosing urgent chores over important chores. What’s the difference?

For example you receive a text message and you want to read and reply to it as soon as possible. But you’re writing a paper or something. You still choose this urgent task of reading and replying to that text message. If you add up with all these little interruptions of replying to your text messages, then you end up not being as efficient as you are supposed to be.

I can’t remember what else, so the last one is doing things later and later. If you notice that on your to-do list or reminders you have the same entry everyday because you keep on moving it, then you’re procrastinating. Filipinos have this Manyana habit or “later habit.”

Let’s use Mi as a concrete example once again. I choose blogging over checking my students’ papers because it is more enjoyable and that it is urgent. If I don’t blog this thing about time management, I’ll forget and I won’t ever be able to talk about it again and my blog will never have useful content ever again. THAT is Time Mismanagement. *rolls her eyes* I’ll check those papers later.

3. Action Plan

For achieving your goal, list down everything you need to do and have to accomplish. In order. What’s the first thing you need to do? What’s the second?

If my goal is to go to Japan, what do I need to accomplish?

1. Graduate
2. Get a job
3. Study again
4. Collect contacts
5. Go to Japan

That’s my life’s action plan. You can also make an action plan for the year, the semester, the month, the week, the day–stuff like dieting, or something can fit in those.

4. Prioritized To-Do List

This is no ordinary to-do list. It is your PRIORITIZED to-do list.

Let’s look at my to-do list of the day:

• exam questions for King Arthur
• check papers
• blog
• spend time with daddi
• catch up on journals

my prioritized to-do list of today:

1. exam questions
2. check papers
3. catch up on journals
4. blog
5. spend time with daddi

And then when you’re done, you could cross out what you’ve finished. Like this:

1. exam questions
2. check papers
3. catch up on journals
4. blog

Ok Ok… I never said I was a master of time management….I at least got this far, right? Currently, I’m blogging…. So you know what I haven’t done yet….

5. Effective Scheduling

Why “effective?” You have to allot enough time for your important tasks, as well as interruptions.

Example again… my to-do for today:

[TABLE=2]

And it’s obvious that I won’t be sleeping tonight again…. Well… I slept a long time anyways.

So… Yes, I fail in Time Management. But at least I try. I have a to-do list. Lately, I’ve been asking Matt to get a paper and write down my to-do list and his task is to remind me whenever he notices that I’m starting to do something else.

Last week, I told him that he distracts me and I needed some time off away from him. I just mean voice chat. I couldn’t hear myself think… but I guess I’ve become dependent on him. The frustrations of the day seem to be harsher, heavier, more painful…

So last Tuesday, we read King Arthur and His Knights together, with me reading it out loud and him taking note of where I stopped because I get lost sometimes and read a whole 2 or 3 paragraphs back. After a chapter, we review what happened and talk about it for a bit. Wasn’t that nice?

So back to Time Management…. Prof Chris said that…

It’s okay to fail with managing your time. What matters more is that you tried.

And another thought to ponder on:

The best way to be late is to have too much time.

I can SOOOOo understand this.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!