Changing Our Lives With Proper Time Management
Changing Our Lives with Proper Time Management
This is my second semester at Thomas Nelson Community College, and it has been a rough one. Not because it has been extremely hard, I actually love being a student. It’s because I’ve failed to prioritize and properly manage my time. Failing to do this up to this point has left me feeling like my life is one big stressful mess. Unfortunately, I even cut out the things that once kept me sane because I felt like I didn’t have time for them. Luckily, I now know how to get back on track and be a successful student while still doing the things I love. With proper time management, it is easy to build a working schedule to fit my lifestyle.
In the Education Week article “Studies on Multitasking Highlight Value of Self-Control” by Sarah D. Sparks, we learn that today 13-18 year olds use on average more than six different kinds of media all at the same time. These include different kinds of technology and social media. This makes concentrating on any one thing entirely more difficult since researchers have shown that the brain cannot in fact be in two places at once. Trying to do two things at once actually takes longer than doing one thing at a time. When trying to focus on more than one thing at a time, a person can add a millisecond or longer just switching between tasks while their brain readjusts. Even when tested, multitaskers perform poorly in comparison to those who choose to focus on only one task. For example, answering text messages has a poor effect on test taking because a person has to completely redirect their focus and then figure out what they were doing again. The same goes for when a person is reading. The famous “Marshmallow Test” shows similar results. In the “Marshmallow Test,” the test group that avoided distraction for a greater reward of two marshmallows instead of one, showed to perform better in life while the test group that wanted the immediate satisfaction of one marshmallow did not do as well. This shows that if we ignore the gratification of constantly checking our social media accounts while doing school work, we will perform better in school (Sparks). I know for sure that I am not a multitasker and nobody truly is despite what they might say. People should not be taught to multitask. In fact they should be taught quite the opposite. In this day and age we are surrounded by so many distractions, and it is far more important for people to be taught to ignore these distractions and excel at one thing at a time.
Some people find time in their schedule to do many important things because they have to, things like having a job while going to school. People have families to take care of and have to do both in order to survive. I admire those people because I was never able to do that. This is not my first time as a student at TNCC, but it is the first time I have attended without also having a job. My success rate now compared to previous attempts has made it abundantly clear how incapable of multitasking I am. Previously, I was working full time in a restaurant kitchen while going to school. I would get out of school and go right to work bringing all of my books along with me hoping I could find time to study and complete assignments. My books would be open on the back line while I was making someone’s dinner and hoping the rush dies down for long enough to do some school work. This seldom worked out for me, and I would go home at the end of a long night too exhausted to care about doing any school work. I would never make it halfway through a semester before I dropped out when I tried to go to school with my restaurant job. I had to be able to support myself so the money was more important and I felt like I was trapped in a hole of mediocre jobs I would never move past without a degree. Today I am so incredibly lucky to have a loving husband that would prefer me to get a degree than stay stuck in that same hole. Not having to try to multitask and being able to focus on school has gotten me halfway through a second semester with some of the best grades I’ve ever had. Incidentally, by making school my main priority I have also stopped doing more than just working. I have stopped running and going to the gym. These are things I should be making time for, for the benefit of my own well-being as well as furthering my success in school. Covey’s Time Management Matrix can be used to help me figure out how to get back on track.
In Steve Mueller’s article “Covey’s Time Management Matrix Explained,” he explains to us how the Time Management Matrix is used to map out a person’s day to find out what they spend most of their time doing and how they can re arrange their schedule to make it most effective in their life. Covey’s Time Management Matrix is made up of four Quadrants. The first Quadrant is made up of urgent and important things. Things that are urgent require immediate attention, and things that are important are necessary to the achievement of a person’s goals. Go to work, pay your bills, go to class, do homework and projects are all things that would be in Quadrant one. The second Quadrant is made up of things that are not urgent but are important. These are things that are important to a person’s overall well-being and can reduce the stress brought on by the quadrant one category. Quadrant two includes things like exercise and physical activity, maintaining a person’s health, and exercising mentally by doing some reading. Some people, like myself, ignore this Quadrant by putting all of our focus into Quadrant one; however, it is very important to make time in our schedule for activities in quadrant two. Quadrant three is made up of urgent but not important things. Quadrant three really only seems urgent but usually only for someone else and should be ignored if possible since it will only serve as a distraction from things that are actually important in a person’s life. Quadrant four is made up of things that are neither important nor urgent. Everybody should be able to spend a little bit of leisurely time in Quadrant four but too much time will result in distraction from more important parts of a person’s schedule. Quadrant four includes things such as watching TV, browsing social media, and drinking with buddies. These can all be nice relaxing things but are best in moderation. People can use this Time Management Matrix to sort out their own schedule. They can fill the matrix with their own schedule to map out where they spend most of their time so that they can adjust it to figure out how they can get the most benefits out of their time. I personally need to find a way to spend as much time in Quadrant two as I used to. After mapping out my schedule, I have nearly cut it out completely and it has led to an insane amount of added stress. Spending more time in Quadrant two would help eliminate that stress. I can do that by doing weekly assessments with the Time Management Matrix and filling out my daily schedule to see where I can reprioritize my time (Mueller).
A majority of my time is spent in Quadrant one with the rest of my time in Quadrant four. Even when I am in Quadrant four, I spend a lot of my time worrying about what’s going on in Quadrant one. My schedule is obviously a very unbalanced one. To steer myself in the right direction I made myself a new schedule. By using the Study Guides and Strategies “My weekly schedule: time management exercise,” I was able to plan out a schedule that allowed for more time in Quadrant two (Study Guides and Strategies). I really had plenty of time all along. The problem was that I stressed myself into thinking I didn’t have time for anything else. The biggest problem was my own mindset. Following the guidelines of the MindTools website will help to calm my worries. In “Improve your concentration”, there is section on “Mindset”. In this section, the suggestions that stood out the most were; “Set aside time to deal with worries” and “Prioritize” (Improve Your Concentration). By this time in my second semester of school, I have an idea of how long my assignments and study time will take to complete for me to be successful. That amount of time leaves just enough time in my schedule for me to get out there and run or go to the gym. Some days I even have time for both! That’s way better than spending all day every day worrying about what’s in quadrant one and by being able to add stress destroyers like exercise back into my schedule, that ball of stress will begin to unravel. By using these tools, I have been able to completely reevaluate my schedule in a way that will leave me feeling in control of my life and back to doing the things I love.
I hope this information on time management has been as eye opening for everybody else as it has been for me. “I don’t have time,” is now becoming a phrase of the past now that I know how to actually schedule my time properly, and I’m so very excited. As I said in the introduction, with proper time management it is easy to build a working schedule to fit anybody’s lifestyle. See if you can’t put your life in the Time Matrix and do the same.
Works Cited
"Improve Your Concentration: Achieving Focus Amid Distractions." Mind Tools Ltd. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_78.htm>.
Mueller, Steve. "Stephen Covey's Time Management Matrix Explained." Planet of Success. 09 Oct. 2015. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. <http://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/2015/stephen-coveys-time-management-matrix-explained/>.
“My Weekly Schedule, an Exercise:: Time Management.” Study Guides and Strategies. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://www.studygs.net/schedule/weekly.htm>.
Sparks, Sarah D. “Studies on Multitasking Highlight Value of Self-Control.” Education Week. 15 May 2012. Web. 01 Mar. 2016. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16131multitasking_ep.h31.html?tkn=PTWFGpBwR5o7bkrnCvQZswL8Vr+lUoJB+62c.
