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” completing the work you’re supposed to do, when you have ample time to get it done 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?
Here are some specific scenarios:
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.
Get to work as early as you can so you don’t end up rushing later on.
You really want to avoid letting an important task become an “urgent and important” task. You can easily avoid this type of situation by psychologically giving yourself one-fourth of the time to complete the task, which will result in a faster completion time. Therefore, allowing extra time so that you can review and “polish” the final product into something truly amazing.
Not important but urgent. There is a quiz tomorrow but you haven’t studied anything. It counts for 5% but you need every mark that is available.
You should have done this in-between other things when you had the time. Now you will feel stress and anxiety that could have easily been avoided.
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 have a project that is worth 35% of your final mark. It’s due in a month and you estimate it will take you 20-25 hours to complete.
Besides organizing your tasks into realistic groups, you should give each one a time limit and set yourself a target date for completion. Your workload will then be more structured and well-thought-out so that the tasks should be less stressful. Then you can unwind before you again have to get to the focal point of each task.
Important and urgent. Your final exam is in 2 days time and 70% of your final grade depends on it. You have not done enough till now. The amount of new materials to be covered is so great that you are not sure where to begin. You start panicking.
You want to be sure you are spending appropriate amount of time on urgent and important issues that may take more time to resove than some of lifes more mundane problems.
You should always think before you take action to resolve any matter,a few seconds of thinking can greatly reduce your chance of making a mistake that you will later regret.
When you get the balance of urgency, study and researching for projects right and align them with a prioritized time table, in particular the urgent assignments and tests, you’ll have a success formula that will see you through not only your education, you’ll have a valuable skill that will enable you to complete any project in your working life as well.
Tags: self improvement