Fast Company | Business + Innovation: Want to use your time better? It’s a common goal for the new year, and fortunately, getting started is straightforward: you need to know how you’re using your time now.
If you track your time for a week (using an app or a basic spreadsheet), you’ll likely discover all kinds of things about your life.
5 comments:
This was an interesting article to read, since I personally have been trying to find better ways of managing my time. There were a few things that particularly caught my attention. First, the "purposeful breaks." I found last semester that one of my biggest problems was that I would sit down to knock out an entire project, but find every excuse in the world to delay both the project and the appropriate alternative (eating, sleeping), causing me not only to lose quality in my work, but also in the eating and sleeping that would have been the only reasonable excuse from the work. What I have been doing now is setting goals in what I'm working on, and setting a reward for when I hit that goal. For instance, if I am working on a ground plan, I'll say "Okay, as soon as I finish Wall A and these two doors, I will take a five minute break and walk around the room." This is a good way for me to keep my goals in mind and take breaks that will not delay my work. Also as mentioned in the article, I've found that more "active" background, as in the type I can interact with (people talking, songs with lyrics), is dangerous for me. I typically like to interact with whatever is around me, so to keep from being distracted I listen to musical overtures. That way I have some audio, but I'm not singing along in my head instead of reading the handout I'm looking at.
One thing the article mentioned that I am interested in trying is the time breakdown of certain tasks. I would like to see how I may be able to plan my days out with the tasks lined up by time required.
Having better time management was one of my New Year’s resolutions because I found that last semester I was staying up late a little too often. I was always tired and it affected my work because I was not able to focus as well. It may take a lot of time to get all of my work done, but not nearly as long as it should. If I did not procrastinate or lose focus as much, then I would finish my work sooner and get more sleep. The people around me easily distract me and I often like to talk or walk around the room to see how everyone is doing. I need to put my headphones in and block out everyone else more often. Listening to music that is more upbeat sometimes motivates me more to work more efficiently. I also would like to set small goals for myself to work on projects more gradually, instead of doing most of it the night before it is due. Timing my breaks will be helpful, so I do not waste too much time.
Time management is very important, especially in a program like this. But what the article is saying about a way to approach time management is actually very helpful. The idea of tracking your time would actually be very effective in seeing how much you need to work on managing your time. Because sometimes, there are times in the day where you could be spending time more effectively, and that would not be easily noticed until it is written down and looked at very analytically. Like the last example in the article where the woman wanted to work out, but didn't think she had time. When she tracked her time, she found out she could rearrange her schedule to fit in a twenty minute workout break. Something she didn't even see possible beforehand.
Time management as a skill is a useful tool that we as a society speak so highly of but always seem to fail to achieve. The first step to solving any problem is admitting you have one, and what better way to realize you have a problem then by tracking where your time goes. The fact that we constantly overestimate the time we spend doing this come as no surprise. But I was always taught that multitasking never works, because you are constantly causing your mind to start a project, then shortly after stop that project to focus on another, to then again stop to go back and start the first one. The constant stopping and starting doesn’t allow anyone to reach their focus zone where they are and can be most productive. What I didn’t agree with the article was that it stated that people are under valuing the amount of free time they have; 47 hours. That number does not take into account the amount of time to prepare food, eat food, general hygiene, and travel time.
Time management is such a buzzword, but it really is a thing that pretty much everybody can still improve on. I think that my time management is ok, but certainly has lots of room for improvement. I have a pretty easy time meeting deadlines, but sometimes I definitely have to push myself at the last minute to finish up the last 10-15% of the project. For a while now, I've been trying to get myself in a place where the night before something is needed or due, I am fully complete. Regarding this article, I found tip #5 and #7 to resound pretty loudly with me. I always have a hard time taking advantage of small chunks of time. I get a 5-20 minute gap in something coming up, and I always write it off as a break, since it is too small to "do anything meaningful". With that kind of time, I could do any number of things really, such as commenting on this darn blog...
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