Time management I

Time management systems, workshops and advice earns millions of dollars for consultants. Time management applies to all activity associated with your endeavours to find Success At School. There are possibly hundreds of books printed every year on ways to manage your time. That means that it is an important topic for all of us to consider. There is an expert on every corner. We all need guidance as we go through life, especially when we have a myriad of tasks to be worked on simultaneously with due dates stacked one on top of the other as they are in school. The day to day requirements of school forms some of the most complex demands we will ever face. School life is very busy. We really do need help to cope.

How do you begin to model all that needs to be done so it is done in time, on time and represents your best quality of production? Math, English, History, Art, part time work, family commitments, sport, occasional entertainment and breaks, friends, sleep ... arrrrgggh. How will it all fit? Does fitting it all in just seem like a dream, something that has always been in the 'too hard box'? What if you heard that only a few hours of planning and preparation is all you needed to put everything into place so you knew from the outset that it all pieced neatly together? Well, it's true.

The first thing you must do is begin to record all you do outside school; include anything that uses up time, including recovery time for things like sport and late night entertainment. Try to find the key things that are repeated regularly and those that come up frequently. These can be catalogued a long time before they occur and will form a skeleton for your time management exercise. Leave out nothing. If you insist on watching television, put it down, especially if there are set times.

As you record the outside of school time eaters, start to outline the demands that school places on your time. Gradually a detailed picture of your life's time demands will emerge. Now you have some really valuable information that will help you with study, work and play. Think about its significance. It will actually help you find more time in your life because time management is not about filling your time up, it is about freeing up time. The time is freed up as you get used to prioritising what devours and wastes time. Can you give up some TV time? Do you have other flexitime which can be moved to another time slot or even used for something more pressing? Do not forget our aim. Success At School that leads to success in life; to give ourselves more opportunity to get a firm foundation for a better future. That's what we want.

If you can, keep all this information in a notebook. You can then track time wasters and time savers over a long period and make this notebook a great tool. Take it seriously, it has grand repercussions. We will explore the next part, once you have some data to work with. Go on, get going.

Good luck. Have a great day