Time Management

Through high school I/we avoided time management like the plague.

This was partly due to natural inclination -- laziness, or at least desire to focus purely on my own priorities, with the (I think correct) perception that "time management" would at that point result mostly in inflicting other people's goals even more painfully on me.

It was also I think due to complete lack of need. I got A and B grades without much effort while doing notoriously little homework (I recall my HS Chem teacher, reading the class grades aloud to the class, reading "B" for me and pausing to add, "and we all know where that could have been made up!"). I scored at the National Merit Scholar level when the PSAT came around, but as a Canadian wasn't eligible for the award.

I did twice actually exert myself academically.

Once I actually wrote up book reports on most of the books I read one semester -- the teacher promised 0.1 grade point per report. I think I turned in 32 or so without particularly exerting myself, only to have a retroactive cap imposed, which is to say most of my effort discarded post facto.

Another time I actually made an effort to do a good report. That nearly got me suspended from school -- the teacher accused me to my face of cribbing it from an encyclopedia, since obviously no schoolchild could write that well. How does a schoolkid demonstrate the absence of his paper from all published encyclopedias?

So I learned that it is better to be mediocre than punished. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down," as the Russians have it.

This was in the Mercer Island School District, where the overwhelming majority of the students (70%? 90%?) went on to college, second-richest in the Seattle area after Bill Gates' one across Lake Washington, so rich that in fact it had its own computer -- heaven knows what mediocrity enforcement was like in the the more mainstream Seattle high schools.

In college, however, I/we carried on in much the same vein, which resulted in flunking a number of classes I'd rather have passed due to procrastination. I/we do well at focussing our time on the one thing we really want to be doing, but not at keeping secondary tasks from starving for lack of timeslices.

Cribbing shamelessly from the Dartmouth Academic Skills Center:

Time Tips

1. Count all your time as time to be used and make every attempt to get satisfaction out of every moment.

2. Find something to enjoy in whatever you do.

3. Try to be an optimist and seek out the good in your life.

4. Find ways to build on your successes.

5. Stop regretting your failures and start learning from your mistakes.

6. Remind yourself, "There is always enough time for the important things." If it is important, you should be able to make time to do it.

7. Continually look at ways of freeing up your time.

8. Examine your old habits and search for ways to change or eliminate them.

9. Try to use waiting time­­-review notes or do practice problems.

10. Keep paper or a calendar with you to jot down the things you have to do or notes to yourself.

11. Examine and revise your lifetime goals on a monthly basis and be sure to include progress towards those goals on a daily basis.

12. Put up reminders in your home or office about your goals.

13. Always keep those long term goals in mind.

14. Plan your day each morning or the night before and set priorities for yourself.

15. Maintain and develop a list of specific things to be done each day, set your priorities and the get the most important ones done as soon in the day as you can. Evaluate your progress at the end of the day briefly.

16. Look ahead in your month and try and anticipate what is going to happen so you can better schedule your time.

17. Try rewarding yourself when you get things done as you had planned, especially the important ones.

18. Do first things first.

19. Have confidence in yourself and in your judgement of priorities and stick to them no matter what.

20. When you catch yourself procrastinating-ask yourself, "What am I avoiding?"

21. Start with the most difficult parts of projects, then either the worst is done or you may find you don't have to do all the other small tasks.

22. Catch yourself when you are involved in unproductive projects and stop as soon as you can.

23. Find time to concentrate on high priority items or activities.

24. Concentrate on one thing at a time.

25. Put your efforts in areas that provide long term benefits.

26. Push yourself and be persistent, especially when you know you are doing well.

27. Think on paper when possible-it makes it easier to review and revise.

28. Be sure to set deadlines for yourself whenever possible.

29. Delegate responsibilities whenever possible.

30. Ask for advice when needed.

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