Improve Academic Performance by Learning How to Prioritize
All too often in life, it seems that the times in which we felt most productive were times when we actually had the least amount of time to spend. What do I mean? Think about that looming deadline set by your boss or that all-too-rapidly approaching final exam.
Do you find it easier to complete your tasks when you are stressed for time and having to push to complete work before the deadline ,than when you have no deadline?
Here are a few exact situations:
Not important and not urgent. You have a book report to hand in at the end of the semester. It’ll take you 10 to 20 hours to read the book and 4 or 5 hours to write the report. You have 3 months and it’s worth 10% of your final grade.
Get to work as early as you can so you don’t end up rushing later on.
You really want to avoid letting an important task become an “urgent and important” task. You can easily avoid this type of situation by psychologically giving yourself one-fourth of the time to complete the task, which will result in a faster completion time. Therefore, allowing extra time so that you can review and “polish” the final product into something truly amazing.
Not important but urgent. A quizz is scheduled for the next day, but you haven’t been to able to review anything. Though it is only 5% of the total, you are desirous of getting the maximum mark you can.
You should have done this in-between other things when you had the time. Now you will feel stress and anxiety that could have easily been avoided.
You need to spend most of your time honing the skills you need more practice on, while still perfecting the strongest areas.
Important but not urgent. You’ve been given a project with a one month deadline. You estimate you will need approximately 20-25 hours to complete this project. When completed, the project will comprise 35% of your final grade.
Once you’ve broken it down into manageable pieces, it’s important to set a separate timeline and deadline for each piece, so that you have a really detailed and realistic plan for completing the project. This keeps your work stress-free, since you have set times when you can cool off and set times to focus on each bit of work.
Important and urgent. You have a final exam in two days, it’s worth 70% of your final grade. You haven’t put in enough time – there is so much new material to cover you don’t know where to start. Panic starts to set in.
This is a waste of your time. The best strategy is to focus the majority of your time on working on things that are important, but not urgent; the trick is to plan your time to make this possible. Sooner or later you will find this skill invaluable in all the aspects of your life.
You should always think before you take action to resolve any matter,a few seconds of thinking can greatly reduce your chance of making a mistake that you will later regret.
When you get the balance of urgency, study and researching for projects right and align them with a prioritized time table, in particular the urgent assignments and tests, you’ll have a success formula that will see you through not only your education, you’ll have a valuable skill that will enable you to complete any project in your working life as well.
