Invicta Vlogs
Prioritise: Manage Your Time Well
At the beginning of the final term, we have an opportunity to reflect on the events of the year and to plan for a fresh start at school in September. For many, the exam period will have brought with it challenges: beginning to organise yourselves and your learning, prioritising tasks and trying to use your time productively, to ensure that you were able to fully prepare yourself for your assessments.
These are not easy skills to develop, and you will not become an expert overnight. Now is the time to learn from your successes and the mistakes that you have made this year, and to be better prepared come September.
Before you can prioritise, you must first organise.
There are many different ways to organise yourself, but whichever system you choose must make sense to you. Remember the goal of organisation is to be able to find things without wasting time.
Clutter is a time waster. Clear the clutter from your desk or work space, keeping only the papers you are working on that day on your desk, or have a different folder for each subject.
Make piles; keep a recycling bin handy and eliminate the items that clutter your desk. The goal is to ‘File it, act on it, or discard it’, clearing space to work on your to do list.
You should use this approach when tackling your emails and electronic filing too; organise your inbox, move important emails into clearly marked folders, or flag them for future follow-up. By doing this, you ensure you can quickly retrieve information when needed, and keep your inbox at a manageable size.
The most important part of organisation is to make it a habit. Sort homework tasks and email as you receive them. Delete unwanted or unnecessary emails. Organise in the morning before starting the day, or at the end of the day, to plan for tomorrow. Daily organisation can take as little as five minutes and will change how you approach your work.
Prioritisation is a good way to ensure that deadlines are met and to minimise stress.
Everybody puts things off sometimes, but if you keep doing this the work will pile up and seem insurmountable. Prioritising jobs and improving your time management is so important as delaying tasks to the last minute can cause you to worry, and even to miss deadlines.
There is a difference between a task that is urgent and a task that is important – an urgent task may not be very important!
- Make a list. Write down all the tasks or items you need to complete. For larger assignments, identify individual tasks within them. Your list may be focused on what can be accomplished in a single day, in the course of a week, or by a fixed deadline.
- Identify due dates. Which tasks are long term, mid term, due next week or next month?
- Once the list is completed, assign priorities to each task, from most important to not very important.
- Plan ahead – create a schedule for when you will complete these tasks.
Start or end the day with your ‘To do’ list. Tick off what you finished and review the remaining tasks. A word of advice; do not constantly reorganise the list, as this can become an excuse for procrastination!
Dealing with distractions
- Do the most difficult work when your concentration is strongest
- Take regular breaks, perhaps every hour – set an alarm to help you keep track of time.
- Be flexible - reflect on whether your study session has been successful. For example, if you are getting less done in the evenings than you hoped, try something different, perhaps by studying in the early morning.
- Set realistic goals for your study session e.g. 'I'll read this section, or work for 40 minutes before I take a break’, and stick to them!
- Minimise interruptions. E.g by putting your phone or silent, or asking friends and family not to disturb you
- Make a deal with yourself - 'Okay, I'll go to the cinema with my friends on Saturday, but that means that I'll need to get up early on Sunday to study’.
- Just get started! You may find that the task doesn't take as long as you expected and you'll feel much better for getting it out of the way.
Taking charge of your space and your time allows you to focus on what is important, meet deadlines and minimise school and personal stress.
Mrs McGivern
Assistant Director of Science
