Career And Education Articles

All too often in life, it seems that the times in which we felt most productive were times when we actually had the least amount of time to spend. What do I mean? Think about that looming deadline set by your boss or that all-too-rapidly approaching final exam.

Do you find yourself not doing the work you’re supposed to do, when you have plenty of time to complete it yet when you’re giving yourself a time table and short sharp bursts of urgent timelines you excel above and beyond what you ever expected?

These are some more detailed examples:

Not important and not urgent. You have a book report to hand in at the end of the semester. It’ll take you 10 to 20 hours to read the book and 4 or 5 hours to write the report. You have 3 months and it’s worth 10% of your final grade.

You should get started as soon as possible so it doesn’t become urgent.

However, how often does this important task turn into and “Important and urgent” task, which is exactly what you don’t want What you need to do is pretend in your own mind that you only have a quarter of the time to get it completed, then you’ll complete it much faster and be able to spend the rest of the time “polishing” the finished product into something really great.

Not important but urgent. You have a quiz tomorrow but you haven’t reviewed anything. It’s worth 5% but you need every mark you can get.

You know perfectly well you could have done this sooner, and more easily, in between other tasks. Now, however, you need to worry about it unnecessarily.

If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, concentrate on the areas that you consider the most weak, work on polishing some of those areas 80 percent of the time, then 20 percent polishing your strongest points.

Important but not urgent. You’ve been given a project with a one month deadline. You estimate you will need approximately 20-25 hours to complete this project. When completed, the project will comprise 35% of your final grade.

On top of chunking it down into bite size chunks you also need to give each bite size chunk a deadline and timeline, so that you have a realistic expectation and understanding of your workload, this will take the pressure off you, so you can relax when you set time to relax and be very focused in the times you allot for each chunk.

Important and urgent. You have a final exam in two days, it’s worth 70% of your final grade. You haven’t put in enough time - there is so much new material to cover you don’t know where to start. Panic starts to set in.

This is a waste of your time. The best strategy is to focus the majority of your time on working on things that are important, but not urgent; the trick is to plan your time to make this possible. Sooner or later you will find this skill invaluable in all the aspects of your life.

The ideal coping method is to take a more objective look at the issue, and take the time to think it over calmly. There is no situation that can be best dealt with in haste; every difficulty needs some thought put into it, and every difficulty can be better overcome if you plan a little before diving into the situation.

Once you get this fine balance right, and at the same time learn how to make the urgency “work for you” with especially the urgent projects and exams, you’ll truly have a formula that will see you through any exam, project or work related task you’ll ever need to complete.

Tags: Education