Question

Time Management Reflection

1. Consider how your Rocks have changed lately.

2. Consider what steps you can take to keep yourself organized and focused.

For your Reflection Assignment, write a one page reflection of how you are going to organize your time over the next few weeks. What method will you use? What are your priorities? What difficulties do we believe you will face and how are you going to overcome those difficulties? You may feel free to address all aspects of your life; academic, career, family, personal, etc.

Answer 1

Time Management Reflection

1. Consider how your Rocks have changed lately.

2. Consider what steps you can take to keep yourself organized and focused.

For your Reflection Assignment, write a one page reflection of how you are going to organize your time over the next few weeks. What method will you use? What are your priorities? What difficulties do we believe you will face and how are you going to overcome those difficulties? You may feel free to address all aspects of your life; academic, career, family, personal, etc.

1. The concept of Rocks is pertinent to the way we manage our time and prioritise our activities. Let us understand this from the activity. Say for example – you have big rocks, small pebbles, sand and water, and jar to fill all these into the jar only if you follow a proper methodology. In order to maximise the space usage, we will first put the big rocks, then we will put the small pebbles by making adjustments, shaking the jar if required, and then sand and water. If the aforementioned sequence is compromised, the space usage of the Jar will be compromised. In real life, the rocks represent our big tasks or items, pebbles refer to the next priority items, and sand and water refer to other activities. Since I am a student and my exams are near, preparation for exams is priority for me now i.e. they are the big rocks as they will take my maximum time of the day.

2. Steps you can take to keep yourself organized and focussed:

Remember, keeping organized will always be achieved through a time table and staying focussed will be achieved by goal setting. Therefore in order to stay organized and focussed following steps need to be followed:

a. Create a time-table: The first step is to create a time table with all the activities that you want to do in a day. Remember, an activity that is not bound by time will never be finished in time or will never finish at all. Eg: If a person starts driving towards his office, he should know at what time he has to reach and will plan the speed of his car accordingly.

b. Prioritise your tasks: Task prioritization is one of the pivotal steps in getting things done. Whatever is prioritized properly gets done properly. Therefore, it is necessary to divide your tasks into high priority, medium priority and low priority category. Your high priority tasks will be tasks that need to be addressed first.

c. Use a to do list: Usage of to do list is very important to keep achieving the targets. You may set targets for the week but you need to have a to do list for the days as well so that you are able to achieve the maximum throughout the day. The to do list will also help you in reflecting at the end of the day how many tasks you were able to achieve and in case there were any problems, you could address the same.

d. Keep measuring: whatever gets measured, gets done! This saying couldn’t be more apt for organizing and staying focussed. If you are keeping a track of what you are doing and how you are faring in your activities, then only you will be able to see visible outcomes and scope of improvement, if any.

However, in order to achieve the above, you will have to overcome lots of barriers. All the steps stated above are nothing but a change from your normal ways of working or schedule. Hence, there will be resistance from your mind on how you want to achieve the same. The important thing here to note is that, if you want to be successful at being organized and focused, you need to be ready to change your past habits and inculcate discipline, for nothing good was every achieved by anybody who lacked discipline.