Thursday, March 25, 2010
12 Ways to Find More Time
WebWorkerDaily: "The return of daylight savings time often brings with it a flurry of complaints about losing something web workers treasure most: time."
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11 comments:
For us, as college students, internet is highly distracting. Facebook, myspace and other sites are highly addicting, and further enforce procrastination. It doesn't help and further pushes our necessary school work to the back of the bus. As I write this now I have facebook open, and know I am guilty of this. It is a good distraction.
Supposedly there has been a study done to show that not having a facebook, increases attentiveness and grades. Not sure how true this is, but I sure know it could help.
While lots of college claim that they train people for the real world, it always seems that the practices people pick up while making it through higher education contradict lists like this since the idea of "after-hours" and delegation are not really possible despite their importance in the real world. I know it's possible to schedule your time to have a concept of "after-hours" but given that school can obligate you in weird ways and at weird hours, it's hard if not impossible to have a concept of the day ending.
I enjoy that #11 of this list is to carry a book with you, so that even when you have free time you can be taking advantage of it. I feel like my problem with this would be that if the book suddenly became very good, I wouldn't be able to put it down, and my 'idle' time would suddenly become a waste of time. I feel like this list is one of the more helpful lists regarding how to control time.
Many of these, while helpful, are very unattainable for college students. While I would love to delegate a task to someone else, that would be called cheating, only I can do my homework. Other items like hold conversations at a better time or save time in your calendar seem impossible with everyone being so busy, meetings can only happen at certain times. After-hours is also a strange idea when in college, as you are always working, either in a class, on crew, or doing the next assignment for a class. If only, all work had to stop at a certain time.
A few of these seem like they're some of the first things that one might think of when trying to cut down on the time that they spend aimlessly. However, things like reviewing your meetings may not be as clear-cut as some of the others. I know that now, one of the things that a lot of people still spend a lot of time is either just being idle while talking with people or spend it aimlessly on facebook or other social networking sites. Networking is good but, it cannot take the place of work: you need both.
Obviously, there are several points I need to refer to in this article. The most striking to me is “Change direction when procrastinating or distracted”.
While I have been working on my thesis, which totally I have to make my own pace, I find it is really tough to efficiently assign time to the work in a regular class work.
Procrastinating is definitely different type of devil I have to fight, from distraction. Doing other work would be good way to get around when I am distracted by something. But to overcome procrastination, I have to bring up a very strong motivation.
I must say that I am a particular fan of the "carry a book" tip. In high school, where there was a significant amount more wasted time in class, etc, i would always have whatever book i was reading with me. The most obvious tip on this list though is that which Bryce has keyed off on- the internet and social networking. Finding ways to decrease time on that is difficult, and we are all guilty of spending too much time on it. Now to work on attaining that decreased time....
This article is totally right in some of it suggestions. When they talk about people needing to control the time that they spend on the phone while working to save time they are totally right. I find people always talking to much on the phone and then they whine about having no time to do anything. They also talk about spending to much time on the internet and wasting your time away that way. They are totally right I find myself getting lost on the internet and then it is an hour later and I have nothing done. I hope to take some of these things to heart and try to be conscious of how I spend my time. Freeing up time instead of wasting time.
This article has some really good points. Many of us use the internet as a distraction or procrastination tool, but also controlling time on the phone is also good. As Katherine said, some of the ideas on this list are unattainable as college students, as there really isn't after-hours time per say in college. Still, things like carrying a book around you (whether it be academic or for leisure) is a good idea, and is useful when you're stuck waiting for something.
This article definitely points out a lot of good things. I totally agree with always bringing a book with you (or something of that sort). The down time one wouldn't necessarily expect is a great time to get work done. When I was in high school, I took the subway for two hours each day to get to school. This was one of my most productive times, and whenever I would take the subway, I would make sure I had a book with me, or something to work on. I also really like the idea of blocking time out in your calendar for projects that you need to work on. Not only would that make you feel better about saying you have something scheduled at that time, but I think it would also make you more likely to actually work on that at the time, since you scheduled it.
I agree with Bryce that, maybe especially in college, the internet is extremely distracting. Even when I'm using facebook to check in with group members for a class project, I get pulled into checking the newsfeed, and then recent pictures, and before I know it, I've wasted 45 minutes. I think a lot of these suggestions are really good. I do agree that "after-hours" is hard to manage, but it is possible. We have to protect some sort of after-hours schedule in order to maintain some sort of healthy sleep schedule--and as a result, stay healthy so we can be at our best in class. I also really like the suggestions of taking a book with you and blocking out time to work on projects. I always get pulled into conversations, or helping someone, or just hanging out when I should be working because I don't schedule out time to work, and time to relax. The one thing I do want to say about procrastinating is that, at times, it's a useful thing to do. When I'm so stressed about a paper I'm writing that I'm just frazzled and can't think, I'll take 15 minutes and check facebook, or my email, or play a game on my phone to just unwind, and then get back to working again. Sometimes that works better than just moving on to the next assignment, because I'm still so frustrated and focused on the last one that it takes me even longer to start working productively on the new one.
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