Whole brain super learning ability

Chapter 10 Efficient Time Management (1)
If you value eternity, you should use time well.Yesterday cannot come back; tomorrow is not necessarily guaranteed; only today belongs to you.

lifetime planning
Everyone should plan their own time and make their future clear.There are two great tools that can be used to help you with long-term planning.The first is a planning board, which you can hang on an empty space on the wall, or just keep it on your desk.You can buy ready-made planning boards at craft stores, stationery stores or bookstores, or you can make your own according to the format of the sample form in this section.

one two three four five six

Month 181920 club activities 2122 basketball game 2324
25 experimental class 262728123
45678 am meeting with BAD 910
11 Lecture 1213 Physics Chapter 314151617 Weekend with friends
181920 Physics Chapter 421222324
What is the function of planning board?As you can see, it's basically just a variation of the daily calendar, and they're upright—months are on the left from top to bottom, and planners are on the top, which is horizontal, and you can change the orientation to your liking (most of the ready-made tables are in this format).

Before you can use this form, there is an important preparatory step that must be done with every project: You must break down any task into manageable parts.For example, to write a foreign language composition about Plato, you can subdivide it into:
1. Decide on the topic of the composition

2. Find preliminary information in the library

3. Draw up the outline of the article

4. Go to the library to find detailed information
5. Write a detailed outline
6. First draft

7. Duplicate

8. Check letters and proofread
9. Ask someone else to proofread

10. Type the finished manuscript

11. Re-proofread
12. Pay

Plan: Plato Final Composition Review/Exam Time
Decide on the topic (1 hour) Review the history notes of the previous month

Go to the library to initially search for information, draw up an outline, and review the English notes from the previous month

Go to the library to find detailed information and review last month's scientific notes

Go to the library to find detailed information and review the math notes from last month

Go to the library to find detailed information and review the history notes of last month

Write a detailed outline and review the English notes from the previous month

First draft, then find information to review last month's scientific notes

Review last month's math notes

Copying, writing inspection, proofreading and reviewing historical notes of the previous month

Others proofread and review last month's English notes

Finished typing and proofreading review last month's scientific notes

Review last month's math notes

the end of the third month the end of the third month

After each item, we list the estimated time spent on it.The longer a plan takes, the more likely it is to cause delays. Even the work of setting out the implementation steps and arranging them in the daily calendar will be delayed again and again.If you find yourself leaving long-term projects until the last week, start planning with the ones that are furthest away—the final essay is three months away, and the midterm essay is three weeks away.Then, lie to yourself - schedule the completion date 3 days earlier than the actual due date to give yourself a one-week buffer for life's inevitable surprises (try to forget that you have such a trick, Otherwise, you will be like a guy who is often late. In order to be afraid of being late, he deliberately set his watch forward by 3 minutes, but he always remembers that the remaining time on the watch can be added by 7 minutes, completely destroying the original intention).

The second is to carry out an enterprise division of labor with other students in the class to create a virtual reading enterprise.Although the steps are different, you will find that breaking down a plan into small manageable steps is not different from the concept of individual scheduling.

But because the later time allocation depends on what work you have been assigned in the team, we have to put a question mark on the time allocated for certain steps.As the details of the plan become clear and the various work assignments completed, your planning board must be revised to reflect the details and the time required for each step.

Schedule example

Monthly/Weekly Program: Student Enterprise

Month 1 Week 1 Initial Team Meeting: Discuss all homework, and possible products or services - three of each, discussed at the meeting. (1 hour)

Week 2 Decide on product or service; decide on team organization and long-term tasks for each sub-team

Team planning and short-term work designation in the third week
Designation of work items in each team in the 4th week (?)

Designation of work items in each team in the first week of the second month (?)

Designation of work items in each team in the 2th week (?)

In the third week, integrate the designated work items in the sub-team (?)
Week 4 all-team meeting to integrate the full plan(?)
In the first week of the third month, the whole team plan is decided, and the first draft of the report is written (?)

In the second week, the report was completed, entered and proofread (?)

Week 3······
Week 4

In your planning board, you must also include the time you spend preparing for all final exams.If you have skipped ahead and read Chapter 9 first, you will know that cramming for exams will not help you at all in the long run, and the short-term effect will not be good.Therefore, you should adopt the suggestions in Chapter 7 below, make it a habit to review the class notes of each subject every month, set every Sunday morning as "review time", and arrange a Sunday every month to review the previous month work for each subject.

If you implement this plan, you will find that there is very little time for cramming, or for a certain final exam, and a special reading time is arranged in the last week-at most, it is just a few hours to review, and you still have a little trouble. Too sure about the details part.When others are squatting in the library to light up the night before each exam, you can sleep soundly and soundly, and take the exam with full energy, relaxed mood and full confidence the next day.In addition, this reading schedule has an added value. After a long time, you will still be deeply impressed by anyone who tests your related topics.

During the semester, if there is any important plan, it must be continuously added, and its content should be revised according to the actual time used in each step.Developing this habit will allow you to understand how your future plans will arrange time, and it will also ensure that the more experience you have, the more accurate your time estimates will be.

To use it with the planning board, first transfer all the material in the planning board to your term planning day calendar.Then add your weekly class schedule, work schedule, family celebrations, vacations, travel and other additional activities, everything must be taken into account, the idea of ​​the daily calendar must cover all your scheduled time information, A planner, on the other hand, only contains an outline so that you can understand it at a glance.

Hang your planning board on the wall at home and keep your term planning day calendar with you.As soon as you have a new plan, appointment or meeting, fill it in your daily calendar, and then write items related to the main plan to the planning board.

To replace the planning board, simply remove the planning board.Put all the information—including all the steps of your plan and the time you estimate each step will take—on a daily calendar.Which method to use is up to you.I personally prefer both, for a simple reason: I love being able to see the full semester plan at a glance on the wall.I find it much easier to see how everything fits together than to look at a dozen different weekday calendars, or even three monthly and daily calendars.

Without a careful study of the daily calendar, it is not easy to see which step belongs to which plan (using different colors may solve this: problem), but the order of the plan board makes it easier to see this kind of information.

High school students may find it convenient to only use a daily calendar because they don't have as many long-term plans as college or graduate students.But when you go to college, especially if you have more papers, reports, and projects than the average person, you will find that the planning board is a very useful tool.

Now that the "big picture"—the entire semester—is under your control, the next thing to learn are tools that will help you organize your day and week.

Three effective time management methods must be persevering.At the end of each week, set a time for yourself—ideally Friday night—to sit down and plan your work for the week ahead.This may be the most valuable time you spend all week, because you will see it come to fruition next week, and beyond.

Now let's make a time plan, you must take the following steps seriously.

1. Make a “to do” list

First, you need to know everything you have to do this week, you can check your planning board, and/or the term planning day calendar, in all your major plans, what work must be in this week, and add anything else that has to be done that week: from giving my sister a birthday present, to attending the monthly volunteer meeting, to completing that homework assignment that might just be assigned, etc.

Once you have made your list, you can move on to the next step, arranging the tasks in order of importance.

2. Prioritize work

When you sit down to read a book, without any plan, you usually just head straight into the first job that comes to mind.Of course, the first job that comes to mind is not necessarily the most important.The weekly work priority list is to help you arrange the order of the work according to the importance.That way, even if you don't have enough time to get everything done, you can at least get some of the most important things done.First, ask yourself this question: "If I could only get a few things done this week, which ones should I choose and put an "H" on these high priority tasks. After marking the most "urgent" items, proceed to Consider less important things - projects that you can wait until next week if necessary. There may be some work that you think is important, but it doesn't have to be done this week, and these projects may not need to be so important this week , but the priority order may be raised next week. Those with lower priority are marked with "L".

Priorities for this week
priority
Sequential dates 3/28 to 4/3
anatomy report

H——Looking for materials in the library

M - draw up outline

L - Complete the first draft


chemistry homework
H - Chapter 8

M - Chapter 9

M - Exam practice
……
Tactical Takeaway: If you find that day after day, week after week, you keep putting aside the same low-priority task, take a moment to pause and re-determine if it’s something you Must do.It's a strategy for letting a job or problem "just go away."In the corporate world, some managers deliberately ignore some problems, just waiting to see if those problems will solve themselves under this benign neglect.This approach works in business and it might work in schools too.

All other unmarked items, which are in between important work and low priority work, check those again, and if you are sure they are not "H" or "L", mark them with "M" (meaning medium priority) .

Some students love using 3 x 5 cards for prioritizing work, and you should love using them for note-taking, too—they're easy to flip through, prioritize, and recall.However, I think they seem a bit cumbersome here, of course you can still give it a try.

(End of this chapter)