Have you noticed that there are people who seem to have more hours per day than we do? They quickly manage to do everything that we often need several days to do.
This can be said about students who combine study with work. The thoughtful planning of their time is a key to success of such people. Ben Spencer, the Pro-Papers management expert asserts that time planning includes not only the strict organization of the planned cases, but also greater self-discipline.
“This is a serious and deliberate path, embarking on which you should weigh your priorities and critically evaluate your own actions and preferences”, – says Ben Spencer.
Personal time management is the purposeful and consistent application of management methods and techniques tested by science and practice in daily life in order to make the best use of time and abilities, to consciously manage the course of life, skillfully overcome external circumstances. Time management is based on certain rules, adhering to which any person, regardless of the type of his/her activity,
can distribute his/her time as efficiently as possible.
The Pro-Papers team selected several rules that are most appropriate for the student, clear and easy to use. The first rule is to “Think on paper.” The essence of it is that you should set out your goals and steps necessary for their achievement, in writing. This helps to set a clear-cut goal, plan in detail how you will achieve it, and eliminates the need to constantly keep all your plans and important things in mind.
The next rule is “Plan ahead every day”. Planning your day will take you a maximum of 10 to 20 minutes. But this small “sacrifice” will help save 100 – 120 minutes of wasted time and otherwise wasted effort throughout the day. On the evening before, at the end of the working day, make a list of things planned for tomorrow, and include what you might not have had time to do today. So, you do not have to spend time drawing up a plan in the morning, and overnight your list will undergo complete absorption by your subconscious mind.
The 80/20 rule. This rule states that 20% of the work you have done provides 80% of your results. Those 20% of cases are, as a rule, the most important and at the same time the most complex, they often cause indecision and are put into a cold storage. Your task is to be able to select these most important matters from the entire list and immediately start to carry them out, avoiding delay.
The rule “Think about the consequences”. The consequences of the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of any task determine the importance of this task for you personally. It is necessary to focus on the future, on the prospects that open before you, when you achieve any goal, and on the negative consequences that may be caused by failure to fulfill your duties. And the more remote consequences you
can calculate, the better. The “ABCD” method. The essence of this method is to prioritize between the
things you have planned. Not all of them are equally important. A, B, C, D and E are the letters that you will place in front of each item on your to-do list to indicate their importance.
• Tasks of type “A” are those tasks whose fulfillment is most important, urgent
and necessary, and their non-fulfillment will entail serious negative consequences. If
there are several such tasks in your plan, then rank them according to their
importance: “A1”, “A2” and so on.
• Tasks of type “B” are tasks that you should perform, but their non-fulfillment
will not lead to serious consequences.
• Type “C” tasks are something that would be great to do, but this business will
not entail significant consequences. These are such things as calling a friend, a
personal matter, performed during working hours, and the like.
• Tasks like “D” are the work that you can delegate to someone else.
• Tasks such as “E” is something that you cannot do at all. This may be a task
that was previously important, but has now lost its relevance.
“Prepare yourself carefully before you begin work.”
Before starting work it is very important to have everything you need at hand. Tidy up at your workplace so that there is nothing left that is not related to the task that you are going to do. Remove all unnecessary. Then surround yourself with the materials you need. It is desirable to do so in order you would not then have to get up, leave the room and so on. Arrange everything so that you are as comfortable as possible.
Cut the task into slices. If you are faced with a very large and laborious business, it often seems to be
practically unachievable, forcing you to delay its implementation. Facilitating this task is not difficult – you only need to divide the upcoming business into clear, logically completed stages. You should only cope with your task gradually, in a few tricks. So, we have reviewed several key rules for personal time management. These are the rules that are most easily applicable in everyday life, which allow you to save your time, effectively allocate efforts, go straight to achieving your goal. In any case,
whatever your goals are, act and you will certainly be successful!
