A member of the University at Buffalo's Center for Student Leadership & Community Engagement presented an excellent time management workshop to my UBE101 class (first-year experience) today. The students were engaged and had questions (which many of you know is sometimes difficult for first-year students).
The session opened by giving students a perspective on time. They were asked to close their eyes and raise their hand when they thought one minute was up. It was amazing to see students start raising their hand at the 30-second mark and others wait until 90 seconds had elapsed. It was a spectacular illustration of how we all interpret time differently.
The next step was to get students to pinpoint what activities they actually needed to complete during the course of the day. They came up with many of the usual suspects (e.g., commuting, sleeping, class, eating, studying, working), but also mentioned "GTL"which the presenter was unfamiliar with. It's defined here for those out there who don't watch Jersey Shore.
Once the activities of the day were outlined, we turned to the topic of values (read: what's important to us and therefore what we should spend more time on). The mention of "values" to a group of college freshmen seems to evoke a deer-in-headlights reaction at first, perhaps thinking that we are about to embark on a philosophical discussion. Once "values" are explained, however, they seem to relax a bit and start talking about what's important to them.
Our presenter discussed briefly the difference between high school and college; I will never be able to grasp the fact that whenever asked many students disclose that they barely had to study in high school... a few even disclosed that they rarely took home a book. I'm curious if others out there are finding them same thing, but my assumption is that this is quite prevalent across the post-secondary landscape.
We then had students prioritize their values and rate how satisfied they were with them. Did they value their family, but have difficulty finding time to call or email them? Was physical exercise important to them, but they weren't finding the time to get to the gym? It was emphasized that its not how frequently you took part in the activity, but rather how satisfied you are with the quality that was important.
Students then plotted out their 6 most important values and we discussed how these things tend to be lop-sided rather than a perfect circle. The goal would be to ultimately get ultimate satisfaction (10 on a scale of 1-10) in each of the top six value areas.
But how, they asked, does one get there?
Prioritize!
We discussed how to separate tasks into categories: Must-do, Should-do, and Could-do and starring those tasks which are *URGENT*. Finally, we reminded students that sometimes you need to break tasks down into multiple and manageable parts before they can be accomplished (the general rule is that if a task will take more than an hour, you should break it down into smaller tasks).
Time Management Links for First-Year Students
Virginia Tech "Where Does Time Go" Calculator-- Showing students visually where their time goes is powerful
University of Guelph "A Guide To Time Management"--Extremely interactive and engaging time management web course; covers the entire time management process
Time Management Links for Advising ProfessionalsUniversity of Guelph "A Guide To Time Management"--Extremely interactive and engaging time management web course; covers the entire time management process
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