productivity

Make Time for Time: 1. Introduction

Starting today, over six posts, I’m dedicating my time to…Time!

We all manage time differently. And while one person gets up at the crack of dawn to get their work done, another person works at night in a productive buzz until the early hours of the morning.

photo by Leo Reynolds

Yes, we work better at different times of the day:

Morning – The Lark is most productive in the morning;
Noon – Middle of the day, you’re buzzing with ideas;
Night – As the sun sets, the mind awakes;
Any time – Both a boon and a pain. A few lucky people seem to find work easy whatever the hour. But beware, as a productivity lull can hit at any point. It’ll come back soon, but what if the work is urgent?

We have different ways of managing time. Three ways crop up quite often:

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Whatever comes my way – Impulsive
This isn’t a good way of managing time. If you don’t make plans, anything can bite you on the bum and mess up a happy existence. It’s fun to take up all sorts of offers at short notice and you may thrive on the excitement of not knowing what’s around the corner. But is it worth the hassle in the long run? You’ll realise it’s not worth it when things go wrong. Don’t wait until that time. It’s not pretty. It’s been known to cause otherwise joyful individuals to crumble.

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Embrace the future – Planner
Some people are the opposite of impulsive. They take planning to a whole new level. Everything has to be worked out in advance so there are no surprises. Down to the last second, it’s all expected, all arranged. Nothing is agreed until the full details are known. The last thing a planner wants is an unexpected surprise. But the more obsessive the planning becomes, the more surprises you’re bound to encounter. So hardcore planning can be just as damaging as acting solely on impulse.

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Work from past experience – Cautious
Hindsight is a great thing. Shame we don’t find out until it’s too late. As you live your life, your experiences make you the person you are. A cautious personality will occasionally be impulsive, but generally prefers to keep that to a minimum. The majority of the time they will have an idea of what’s ahead, trying not to be too restrictive or anal about the process. A cautious person can become too cautious, turning them into more of a planner (or someone who won’t commit to anything through fear). But a healthy dose of caution itself is nothing to worry about.

Impulsive and Planner elements can live together, because certain aspects of your life are prone to more planning and others happen off the cuff.

Anything is possible with time. At times of panic, we even imagine time slowing down. Clearly, it’s important to maintain a healthy relationship with it!

So this post sets the scene. I have another five posts over the coming fortnight. They’ll focus on:

If you don’t want to miss these posts, click here to subscribe to TheUniversityBlog in a reader, if you don’t already. You can also clickety-click to follow me on Twitter and I’ll put out links each time I post to the site.

You’ve got the time to do that, haven’t you? 🙂

Five mistakes to beat…before they beat you

Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes.

That’s good. Without mistakes, we wouldn’t have successes.

But it’s not easy to spot mistakes when they’re based on larger concepts. The situation may be different each time, but your actions may be the same. You need to be on your guard. So, by way of example, here are five issues that aren’t always easy to spot, but which can get in the way of you and a big bag of win:

photo by mao_lini

1. You have too many things going on at once

I’m sure none of us like to miss out on life. It’s rubbish if you say ‘no’ to everything.

But you don’t have to be available to everyone, for everything, all the time. Choose to be choosy. Pick to be picky. Be selective in which events you wish to attend and limit the number of hobbies you pursue. That way, you’ll miss out on less, not more.

2. You’re too dependent

Uni is meant to bring out your independence and give you masses of life experience. But if you’re used to other people clearing up messes and dealing with your problems, it’s hard to change. Why bother when you know someone else will sort it all out for you?

There will come a point in your life when you will have to do things for yourself. You may get away with it now, but people will begin to know your game. You either have to reinvent yourself (which is difficult, even at uni) or find a whole new set of people to annoy (and why would you act that way on purpose?). The longer you leave it, the worse the fall.

3. You silently sort out other people’s messes

Independence requires an assertive attitude too, otherwise you risk a different type of dependence. You may think it’s less bother to clear stuff up yourself, but you end up giving yourself more work and getting no further with it.

I knew a group who lived together with a messy housemate who didn’t tidy up and left a trail of rubbish and washing everywhere. The others ended up doing the cleaning for him (quite literally silently sorting out another person’s mess). After weeks of this, they eventually plucked up the courage to do something about it. They politely asked the housemate to deal with the mess, explaining that it wasn’t a group of magic elves cleaning after him…

Good news is, the housemate listened and dealt with the mess. Over the rest of the year, they fared a lot better with the cleaning (it wasn’t perfect, but hey!).

This kind of confrontation takes guts, even as a team, but it’s more productive in the long run. It’s better to deal with the source of the problem, rather than the problem itself.

photo by braineater

4. You do anything else just to ignore the important stuff

Faced with tasks you’d rather not do, your thoughts tend to stray on everything else you need want to do.

We all procrastinate at times. But for some, the problem spirals out of control. It can get to the point where you make a conscious, active effort to find other things to do specifically in order to stop thinking about important work.

TheUniversityBlog has a big post about procrastination in the archives. Stamp down on it before the issue grows.

Heavy procrastination could be masking a deeper rooted problem, such as a dislike of the subject or a tutor. Be aware of outside issues that may be causing the procrastination, because it’s better to deal with the issues under those circumstances.

5. You put yourself down

“How did I even get to university in the first place?”

Everyone else seems so much better compared to you. You don’t understand the lectures, you don’t feel skilled enough to join one of the clubs, and you’re a rubbish dancer so don’t go clubbing with your friends.

It’s amazing how many people are down on themselves. Truly amazing. Why should anyone think it reasonable to make themselves look worse than they really are?

Even if you believe all this negativity, there’s no point in moping around and feeling even worse! Seek to improve your lot. Get some study advice and ask your tutor how to get ahead, join a club and learn from others as you go, take a night out with your mates and watch how practically none of us can dance!

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Find a motto

As I said at the start of this post, it’s not easy to spot mistakes when they’re not isolated one-offs. Once a pattern emerges and you discover an area you’d like to improve upon, sometimes all it takes is a motto.

For instance, my ‘motto of the moment’ is:

“Know when to stop.”

I’m surprised how much it helps to remember those four words. It’s the anchor I use to improve. I say it in my head and allow it to refocus my thoughts. Over time, I’ve had to remind myself less because knowing when to stop becomes a natural part of what I consider.

This isn’t a quick fix, but it is a quick snap to jolt you in the right direction. What would you give as your ‘motto of the moment’?

photo by Kyle Kesselring

Make your work rock and get your creative juices flowing!

Whether you’ve got a few days or a few months to hand something in, there’s always enough time to get creative and produce quality work.

photo by h.koppdelaney

But it’s often so difficult to shine? Life gets in the way, there’s so much other stuff to distract you, simply starting a project is a pain, the little perfectionist in you has niggling doubts, etc., etc.

Let’s check out some of the ways you can shove those distractions and problems out of the way:

Focus on the work in hand – It’s a willpower thing (or Inner Slacker thing). There’s so much going on around you that it’s insanely difficult to ignore it. But when you clear nearby distractions, get others out of the way, and isolate yourself from interruption and noise, it doesn’t take long before the work gets a lot easier to deal with. Honest! 🙂
Remember that the hardest part is the start – When it feels like hell even starting the work, you then wonder how horrible it’s going to be when you actually get on with it. Rest assured, once you have the courage to get on with it, everything else comes naturally. The first hurdle is the biggest one. The rest of the way isn’t so bad.
Move on when you’re stuck – You’re bound to face difficulties in your study. There are times when something doesn’t sound right, or you struggle to find a way of backing up a point. Don’t let it hold you up! When you face a block, make a note of it and come back to it later. Much better to get everything else out of the way and work on the annoyances later. You’ll be more focused on those aspects in isolation anyway.
Don’t let your Internal Editor get in the way – Another thing that holds us up is our wish to get it right FIRST TIME. It’s like our brain hasn’t heard of ‘rough drafts’! The editing process should come later, after you’ve got everything else out in the open. The longer you agonise over a word or the structure of the coursework, the further away you get from getting the work done. Edit later. Piece everything together later. Your Internal Editor can wait!
Don’t do it all in one session – Students who leave an essay to the last minute end up having to do everything in one go. It’s one of the worst ways of working, but last-minute essay writing is common. Start as soon as possible on your coursework and complete it over time. Short sessions are less daunting and help you target specific areas of your work each time. If you genuinely work better in much longer sessions, remember to take regular breaks from the study. And do the work as soon as you can…don’t leave it until the day before, when it’s stressful and when you’re in danger of running out of time.
Mix it up! – Nobody else can tell you how to put your work together. Do you like to write the Conclusion first? If so, do it first! Does the Introduction come naturally to you when it’s the last part of the creative process? Is so, do it last! Work to the order that works best for you.
If in doubt, get help – Don’t feel bad when you don’t understand what’s required. If a question doesn’t make sense or if you can’t get your head around a concept, your tutors should be happy to help. Make sure you know what you want to ask and what help you’re looking for and, armed with this information, ask away.
Your answer is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – Move away from thinking about the ‘right’ answer. What you’re trying to do is support an argument, explain a function, analyse a concept, and so on. Critical thinking is not black or white. It’s all about the shades of grey.
Stop fearing the worst – The work you do is private at first. Nobody is looking over your shoulder. Well, they shouldn’t be anyway. So it doesn’t matter what you write down and it doesn’t need to be perfect. There’s no need to panic about it; just get all your thoughts and quotes and ideas and workings and illustrations out in the open. Even if loads of the output is rubbish, you’ll have all the good stuff sorted too. Take the good stuff and shape it into something big. You don’t have to tell anyone else about the other rubbish you put out. That’s your own little secret. It’s the quality stuff that makes you the hero…

These are just some ideas to get the creative juices flowing. What do YOU do to get those ideas from your head to the page?

photo by SashaW

Controlling ‘valid disruptions’

Let’s say you’re writing an essay. At the same time, you’re using the Web. At the same time, you’ve got Facebook open. At the same time, Twitter is feeding you constant updates from the people you follow.

Is this kind of situation something you’ve experienced?

I listened to Aaron Porter talk at the Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C) today. At one point he recounted his experience of completing coursework:

“I had a sense of anxiety if I didn’t know what was going on elsewhere and the ability to flick between different [computer] windows was quite reassuring.”

In a world where we increasingly work with realtime information and rolling updates, it’s difficult to feel at ease when you know you may be missing out on something. This problem is not confined to entertainment; it reaches all aspects of life, including education.

A sense of needing to be on the pulse at all times is a recipe for information overload, or ‘filter failure’. However, we’re not about to start working without disruption on a regular basis. It’s becoming a way of life. What we call ‘disruptions’ are often self-created. Perhaps you could call them ‘allowed disruptions’ or ‘valid disruptions’.

photo by jesse.millan

To put it another way, you have asked for Facebook on screen and you have requested updates from online services. You’d be more annoyed if someone knocked on your door every two minutes, asking questions. And you’d hate it when you’re trying to work and someone starts blasting music loudly that you don’t want to hear.

So disruptions aren’t always unwelcome, even if they are disruptive. That’s why moving away from ‘valid disruptions’ can cause such anxiety.

Does that mean a disconnected student is a more productive one? A more successful one?

No, it doesn’t. But for the same reason ‘valid disruptions’ are self-created, the number of ‘valid disruptions’ need also be self-regulated. Once it becomes too much, you’re better off limiting the flow. Letting it continue would be less productive, which cancels any use the ‘valid disruptions’ were in the first place.

It’s not easy to self-regulate when you’re used to the flow of different voices, calling for your attention. But to recognise the need to cut back when it’s difficult to cope is most of the battle won.

How do you recognise the need to reduce those disruptions? It’s usually when one or more of these things happen:

When you’re not getting enjoyment/engagement from the flows that you’re following;
When it’s too difficult to keep up with the flows;
When nothing else gets a look-in;
When ‘long-term’ detail is sacrificed completely for instant satisfaction;
When you can’t act on the flow and it just becomes noise.

So keep an eye out!

How have you fared with ‘valid disruptions’? Are they a boon or a pain?