Skilful Time Management

STUDENT – FRIENDLY GUIDES
Skilful Time Management
Peter Levin – 2007

‘I was getting badly behind with my work – missing deadlines and not covering essential ground. Peter’s practical suggestions have helped me prioritize my tasks, make much better use of my time, and get back on track’ – BSc Economics student. Are you, like many other students, faced with complex and often conflicting demands on your time? Do you feel as though you’re constantly under pressure to make difficult decisions about what task to get on with next? Do you find having irregular deadlines superimposed on top of your weekly timetable a headache to deal with?This book is designed to help you cope with academic demands in a way that makes best use of your time – and puts you in control of your life. It is based on the principle that an ounce of organization can save you a ton of struggle. It shows you, among other things, how to: create a time-use strategy and put it into practice; plan your weekly routine; prioritize tasks, and manage two or more tasks at once; use your time productively; overcome blocks to getting started on tasks; and, make sure you meet deadlines.

If you can’t manage time, what can you do with it? My answer is that you can make the most of it. You can work out what you want to do with it – your goals, what you want to achieve – and you can work out how best to create and organize the activities necessary to achieve those goals. In other words, you can work out how best to use time and manage yourself. The principle on which this book is based is that it is perfectly possible to manage yourself – your activities, the things you do, indeed your whole life – to make the most of the time that you have available. And my aim in writing this book is to help you to realize precisely that possibility.

Time plays a central part in your academic life. The academic cycle repeats year after year. During each term or semester you’ll have a weekly teaching timetable, a kind of ‘treadmill’. Exams at the end of the academic year or semester are held on set dates that constitute ‘deadlines’ for you, as do hand-in dates for essays, project reports and other coursework. You will need to organize your work – indeed your whole life – around these cycles and deadlines.

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