Mp3 Script for Time Management: Awareness of Values and Habits

Managing Your time at University
By Learning Strategies Development Queen’s University, Kingston

This presentation focuses on HOW you can improve your time management. 
Most strategies are simple and take a short time to implement, help you organize your schoolwork, and also help you achieve a healthy balance in your personal life. 

We’re grouped our strategies around four central themes: 
·        awareness of your current habits and values 
·        goal setting and prioritizing
·        organization 
·        procrastination. 

The themes follow in a sequential order, but you can also view the themes individually according to your needs.
So, let’s begin with our first theme of becoming aware of your current habits and values. 

Before you begin, reflect on the following questions:

Why should I use time management skills in my life and in my academic setting?
Am I having trouble organizing and managing my time?
If so, do I want to improve my time management skills?

If you answered YES to the last question, this presentation is for you!

So how much time do you have?
Did you know that there are 168 hours in each week to do EVERYTHING, including sleeping and eating.
Take a  few moments to see how you allot your time each week. 

You may wish to go to “Time Management” module in either the pdf form or the text-only version and scroll down to the TOOLS section. In there you will find the “Weekly Schedule” to assist you in this task.

[Alternatively, click on the hyperlink in the Powerpoint to take you directly to a “Weekly Schedule”.]

After you’ve finished, ask yourself: “Am I using my time the way I want?”

Calculating Study Time

Once you have a better sense of where your time goes, determine how much time you need for studying. 

The basic minimum is around 1 hour of homework for each hour in class. So that means for a 3 hour lecture class, I’ll need a minimum of 3 hours of homework. 
 
Of course this ratio will shift up perhaps even as high as 3 to 1. Nine hours of homework for a 3 hour lecture for courses which are: 
difficult, require a lot of reading and research, and where your background knowledge is not as strong as you want.
It’ll also reflect your goal for the course. 

So you can see, school is in fact a full time job!

Our next step is becoming aware of your current time management habits.

We all develop personal habits that may help or hinder our efforts at using time effectively. 

So what is your current approach: 
* Is it a structured approach or do you prefer flexibility? 
* Do you find deadlines helpful or not helpful? 
* Do you prefer to work independently or are you accustomed to being directed?
* Do you need pressure to perform or would you rather work over a period of time?

An Awareness Approach

Here’s a 3 step strategy to help you become more aware of your time management style: 

1.      Monitoring: How is my time used? What are my time usage patterns? 
You might wish to go to “Time Management” module in either the pdf form or the text-only version and scroll down to the TOOLS section where you’ll find the “Time Monitoring Form” to assist with this task. 

[Alternatively, click on the hyperlink in the Powerpoint to take you directly to a “Time Monitoring”]

2.      Analyzing: When am I the most productive? Is this style working for me? Should I change or modify what I am doing now?
 
3.      Revising: Given what I know now, what do I need to change?

Last is your values. Before you can set goals, you need to know what your values are.

What is a value?
Values are those core ideas you have about the worth of something, and also the judgments you make about what is important. 
E.G. You might VALUE being a responsible student.

The values you form help determine how you use your time. 
E.G. If you VALUE being a responsible student, you will put a high priority on studying, finishing assignments, papers etc which means you’ll spend more time on these activities. 

If your values and actions match, you’ll feel on track and motivated.
On the other hand, if your values (e.g. being a responsible student) don’t match your actions, (e.g. chronically handing in papers late), you will feel conflicted. 

Before you continue to the next theme “Setting and Prioritizing Goals”, we suggest taking time to reflect on what your values are and how these values affect your decisions about managing your time.