How are you managing time, workload and academic pressures? How can you improve your time management skills?
Managing my workload has been a skill heavily practiced during my time at Macquarie. Being able to prioritise and be realistic with the timeline for deliverables, I have found to be very important. Having to juggle work deadlines as well as study for assessments has not been an easy task, but setting out specific goals for the day has made it easier to stay on track and not fall behind.
I could improve my time management skills by allocating a set amount of time for each subject of study to ensure each subject is progressing at a similar rate. While this is a good idea in theory for work as well; finishing a task completely before moving on, is a more method of attack than having a whole set of partially finished tasks.
Hi Sam
ReplyDeleteIndividuals often find it difficult to be realistic with how much time it will take to complete a new task. To err on the side of caution, it is probably best to budget more time rather than less. If you finish early, you can always use the time to perform a quality review or jump to another task.
Your second thought is ambiguous but it seems that you may be trying to weigh the benefits of completing one task prior to moving on to another as opposed to juggling multiple tasks and switching between them until one or all are complete. Often deadlines dictate which approach one has to follow. However, if deadlines or time pressures are not an issue, then your time personality preferences (i.e., do you prefer to multitask or mono-task) or the nature of the task are likely to drive your response.
On tactic to manage multiple tasks (or courses) is to "chunk" your time for the different tasks. For example, you could work on Project A during the morning take a break and then work on Project B during the afternoon. Or you may prefer to spend an entire day on each task. As noted, it really is a matter of preference. Experiment and determine which time management strategy works for you.
Diane