Study Skills Class (19 super-powerful time management tips)

We teach these 19 super-powerful time management tips in our Study Skills Class.
Peers provide accountability and positive peer pressure to make these powerful
management solid habits.

1. Create a time audit. 

When it comes to time management, the first step you need to take is finding out
where your time actually goes. You may believe that you only send 30 minutes on
TicToc, but in reality that is eating-up an hour and a half of your day.

Consider tracking everything you do for a week.
With this information, you can then make the appropriate adjustments.

2. Set a time limit/goal for each task.

Setting a time limit to each task prevents distractions and
procrastination.

This time limit habit can become a game which is usually much more motivating than
a "nose to the grindstone" approach.

Be sure to place buffers between tasks and activities. If a task is not completed on time,
it can still be accomplished without eating into the time reserved for something else.

3. Use a to-do-list, but don’t abandon tasks.

“All goals and projects are made up of smaller parts that need to be accomplished in
order to achieve the goal, or complete the project. Create to-do lists for each goal
and project, listing all the measurable steps that need to be accomplished,” suggests
William Lipovsky.

“Aside from keeping you focused, this also motivates you as you are able to see what
you have already achieved, and what remains.”

At the same time, there will interruptions that may prevent you from completing a
task. William recommends that you “make a point of always returning to and
completing these tasks once you are able to. This may require you to set a limit on
the number of tasks you are working on at any given time.”

4. Plan ahead.

One of the worst things that you can do is wake-up without a plan for the day. Instead
of focusing on what needs to be done, you wander aimlessly and take care of more
trivial matters.

That’s why you should always plan ahead using one of these options;

The night before.
Before you go to bed, spend the last 15-minutes organizing for the next day.

Compose a list of your most important items for tomorrow.

First thing in the morning. During your morning routine write down the 3 or 4

most urgent and important matters that need to be addressed that day and work on

those when you’re most productive.

5. Spend your mornings on MITs.

Mark Twain once said, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the
morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."

Gross? Sure. But, the point that Twain was making that you should take care of your
biggest and most-challenging tasks in the morning, aka your most important tasks
(MITs) of the day.

There are a couple reasons why this such an effective time management trick.
For starters, you usually have the most amount of energy in the AM.
So it’s better to tackle these tasks when you’re not drained. Also, you can use that
feeling of accomplishment to get through the rest of the day.

6. Learn to ask for help. 

Asking for help is very important - understanding assignments and formulas and
homework means you will be more efficient in completing tasks and have more time
to spend on more important things.

7. Eliminate half-work.

“In our age of constant distraction, it's stupidly easy to split our attention between
what we should be doing and what society bombards us with,” writes James Clear.

“Usually we're balancing the needs of messages, emails, and to–do lists at the same
time that we are trying to get something accomplished. It's rare that we are fully
engaged in the task at hand.”

• James Clear has dubbed this “half–work” and here are a couple of examples;
• You’re writing a report, but stop randomly to check your phone for no reason.
• You try out a new workout routine, but switch to a new program a couple of days
later because you read about it online.
• While doing assigned reading, your mind wanders to the video game you love.

Regardless of where and how you fall into the trap of half–work, the result is always
the same: you're never fully engaged in the task at hand, you rarely commit to a task
for extended periods of time, and it takes you twice as long to accomplish half as much.
Block out significant time to focus on one project and eliminate everything else.

8. Change your schedule.

If you’re struggling with time management, the solution may be as simple as changing
your schedule around.

For example, instead of sleeping-in until 6:30am, wake-up an hour earlier.
You may find that waking at 5:15am  could give you time to exercise, plan-out your day,
eat a nutritious breakfast, and even work on side projects without being disturbed.

Also, consider waking-up earlier on the weekends and maybe cut-down on your amount
of YouTube time.

9. Leave a buffer-time between tasks and meetings.

Jumping immediately from one task or meeting to the next may seem like a good use of
your time, but it actually has the opposite effect. We need time to clear our minds and
recharge by going for a walk, meditating, or just daydreaming. After all, the human
brain can only focus for about 90-minutes at a time.

Without that break it’s more difficult to stay focused and motivated. Scheduling
buffer-time also can prevent running late to your next class or appointment. 

10. Get organized and single-task.

The average American spends 2.5 days each year looking for misplaced items.
As a result, we spend over $2.7 billion annually in replacing these items. Instead of
wasting both your time and money, get organized.

Start by having a home for everything and making sure that items are put back where
they belong. At the end of the day clean your work area and create a document
management system.

And, start single-tasking. Most people cite multitasking as the main culprit for
misplacing items.

11. Follow the 80-20 rule.

“The Pareto Principle also known as the 80-20 rule suggests that 80% of results come
from 20% of the effort put in. This is commonly used in sales as 80% of sales typically
come from 20% of the customers,” writes Renzo Costarella.

“When it comes to how you should manage your time this principle can also be applied.
80% of your results comes from 20% of your actions.”

Renzo suggests that you start by looking “at your schedule or to-do-list every day.
For the sake of simplicity try to get down five tasks you need to accomplish. Using the
principle you can probably eliminate the majority of the items on your list. It may feel
unnatural at first but overtime this will condition you to scale up effort on the most
important tasks.”

12. Use a calendar.

Calendars have long been a fundamental tool for time management. If you do not
already use a calendar - start today!

13. Stop being perfect.

When you’re a perfectionist, nothing will ever be good enough. That means you’ll keep
going back to same task over and over again. How productive do you think your day
will be as a result?

So, stop being perfect. It doesn’t exist. Do the best you can and move on.

14. Just say “No.”

You can only handle so much.
If you already have a full plate then decline that party invitation or helping your
classmate on a project until you have the spare time.

15. Instill keystone habits.

Charles Duhigg, author of "The Power of Habit," coined the term "keystone habits."
But, what are they? Simply put, they’re habits that can transform your life, such as
exercising, tracking what you eat, developing daily routines, and praying.

These habits replace bad habits and solicit other good habits. As a result, you’ll be
healthier, more focused, and better suited to manage your time.

16. Don’t waste time waiting.

Waiting is time that could be better spent elsewhere.

However, instead of wasting this “waiting” time, make the best of it.
For example, while sitting in a waiting room consider reading an inspirational book,
listening to a podcast, or planning an upcoming project.

17. Find inspiration.

When I’m dragging, I use inspirational sources like extra prayer, a TED Talk, or
biography. It’s a simple way to reignite that fire to get me motivated and back-on-track.

18. Batch similar tasks together.

When you have related work, batch them together. For example, don’t answer your
emails and phone calls throughout the day. Schedule a specific time to handle these
tasks.

The reason? Different tasks demand different types of thinking. By batching related
tasks together, your brain isn’t switching gears - which means you cut out that time
reorienting.

19. Do less.

This is a tactic from Leo Babauta. He started the blog Zen Habits and it’s definitely a
must read. So, what does Leo have to say about doing less.

Doing less doesn’t mean “less is more.” It means “less is better.” This is achieved by
slowing down, being aware of what needs to be done, and concentrating only on those
things. Once you do, make every action count. As a result, you’ll be creating more value
instead of just fodder.

Source: Edited Forbes Article

This is yet another reason why quality academic tutoring is vital. 

E3 is Excellence in Educational Enrichment

 Published on April 24, 2021

Grade Inflation Is Ruining Education

written by Shane Trotter

“When people lose the connection between their actions and their consequences, they lose their hold on reality and the further this goes the more it looks like madness.”

~ Robert Greene

A recent study conducted at the Naval Academy showed that students learn less from easy teachers. As the researchers state, “Instructors who tend to give out easier subjective grades… dramatically hurt subsequent student performance.” While a generalization, these claims support the intuitions of anyone who has ever been to school or met a human. When students can give less effort, they do. So, why have schools been moving toward easier grading?

In a decade working in high schools, I’ve seen a consistent push to reduce writing, reading, and note-taking, expand late work windows, lighten workloads, dilute the weight of assessments, and, most fundamentally, to eliminate failures. The same can be seen at the university level. The amount of time college students have spent on academic work has gone from 40 hours per week in 1961, to 27 in 2003, to less than 15 hours in 2008*. During that time, the average grade has risen in both public and private universities, while national SAT scores continue to decline. Today’s graduates are not smarter or more prepared for their future, but at least they think they are.

The roots of these trends can be found in generations of self-esteem culture and a gradual educational shift from a standards-driven approach to one of customer service. As consumerism enveloped society, our schools became more concerned with perception and appeasement than learning. School, in the eyes of parents and educators alike, became something to game—the lessons taught an arbitrary ritual that stood between students and the diploma they needed.

All the while, headlines continued to note America’s declining status in world education rankings. More money was targeted at shrinking gaps between different groups and supporting the disadvantaged, yet scores declined across nearly every demographic.

Still, schools are moving further away from standards. Walk into any high school professional development and you won’t hear discussion about what skills students will need for an uncertain future or about specific competencies that students are struggling to master. Instead, there is a parade of new strategies to make learning effortless. Schools have embraced the ideology of intrinsic motivation. If students aren’t invested in their learning, the thinking goes, it is because we haven’t made the environment fun enough, interesting enough, safe enough, or (education’s answer to everything), because we have not understood the ways that today’s digitally distracted youth learn and, consequently, have not integrated enough new technology.

To be fair, intrinsic motivation does matter, as does connecting with students and making content interesting. Furthermore, harder grading does not necessarily breed better learning. We’ve all had that amateurish teacher who hardly taught but made a point of asking obscure questions, as if being difficult would cover up their insufficiencies. There is, also, a lot more wrong with education than just low standards. We ignore movement and nutrition despite an obesity epidemic, prioritize broad, superficial curriculums, and neglect logic and critical analysis, which should be the backbone of post-elementary education. In an era of information overload, students are never taught to discern truth from falsehood and parents never guided towards strategies for limiting pernicious smartphone behavior.

Still, if you want to improve public education the place to start is by enforcing standards. We can debate what should be learned, how it should be taught, when, with how many breaks, or what the environment should look like, but when the grades stop reflecting mastery, the entire operation becomes performative. Grading becomes less meaningful. Teachers play the role of thermostat, cooling off grades as soon as they detect too many are in “hot water.” As a teacher of 20 years recently vented, “Just tell me what you want the grades to look like. I can make the breakdown whatever you like.”

Grades are a metric. Like all metrics, they are subject to missing immeasurable components—essential soft skills like how well you interact in groups or how you utilize body language in persuasive argument. Better teachers will develop the ability to detect and integrate these soft skills into grade determinations, but the grade will always be a crude approximation. Still, we must have metrics that intend to measure relevant data and represent it with as much accuracy as possible. A strength and conditioning coach knows that the translation between their workouts and each athlete’s sport is fuzzy. Helping a linebacker add 50 pounds to his back squat doesn’t predict how many more tackles he will make, yet we know it helps. We want to identify the trainable qualities that we believe will most influence his performance and we want to measure these qualities with as much accuracy as possible. If “nice” coaches shave off a few milliseconds when testing 40 yard dash times or randomly inflate athletes’ bench press numbers, then the data is compromised. The more this happens, the less valuable the data.

It is the same with school grades. Rampant grade inflation has made grades less useful while, ironically, making them the entire point of school. The subject becomes a means to an end. It is the topic for the activity that needs to be done to assign the grade.

What did you do today?

I had to fill out a chart matching New Deal policies with their effects.

What’s the New Deal?

I don’t know.

Thus, education devolves into a lot of activity for the sake of activity, with little recognition for what skills truly matter or for the ability of education to improve lives. The same has happened with standardized testing. When improving education becomes a priority, states roll out some new testing regime. The test is supposed to better assess how well students are learning, but the grading criteria are manipulated so that it is very difficult to see how well students have actually learned. Getting zero questions correct on this year’s Texas Biology STAAR test earns a score of 1418. To pass the STAAR students only have to get 19 of 54 questions correct, or as the state reports it, a 3550. Not that standardized testing is the answer. An overemphasis on these tests has led to the de-professionalization of classroom teachers and hurt educational quality, but the point remains. By making feedback confusing, we negate its ability to prompt appropriate adaptations.

The point of assigning grades is to give feedback—to reflect reality. When grades are distorted, they stop delivering feedback that would help teachers to accurately assess what was learned, students to accurately determine how well they are learning and prompt greater effort, and the entire system to adapt to the needs of students. This is especially the case among low-achieving students who are often passed through high school without developing the ability to write intelligible emails or to do basic addition. I’m constantly amazed by how many high-school athletes I train who simply cannot add weight totals in their head.

Many argue that everyone just needs a high-school diploma so they can move on with their lives. McDonald’s workers need a high-school diploma now too. But this has nothing to do with the skills a high-school diploma is supposed to guarantee. The only reason you would need a high-school diploma for low-skill jobs is because we have made it nearly impossible not to graduate. You don’t have to do anything but show up and occasionally turn something in. Not graduating is now the ultimate red flag. Likewise, we tell every student they need to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get a college diploma and then many go wait tables. By inflating grades across the board, we’ve created an insane labyrinth of debt where employers look for candidates with an unrelated college diploma, because it signals they’ve done more than waltz through high school. Our cultural expectations grow increasingly insane as the distance grows between reality and our social indicators.

I have a radical idea. Assign grades based exclusively on academic performance—the quality of the writing, the accuracy of the math equation, the understanding of the historical themes. Grade everything for mastery, alone, and consider it a breach of ethics to do otherwise. Most students would work far harder, learn far more, and come to enjoy it. They’d invest enough to cultivate more rewarding interests and become better citizens. Some would not rise to the occasion and would be left behind. But that is already happening.

So many students sit in algebra classes, lacking a grasp of basic arithmetic. We put students in positions where we know they won’t learn anything and, in the process, make a mockery of the entire system. What’s worse, this refusal to engage with reality precludes better adaptations—technical skill routes, reality-based community support initiatives, and focused remediation for those motivated to bridge gaps.

This past year, our students have learned less than ever because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the limitations of virtual learning. How much better might they have fared if they had not been trained to find excuses and expect they’d be passed along? How much more important is it now to have mastery-reflective grading so that we can diagnose gaps and target them? To suggest that we should grade dishonestly is to fundamentally misunderstand the point of education. It prolongs childhood, ensures less engagement, and reinforces a culture of deferred responsibility. Nothing could be more cruel.

 

Shane Trotter is a writer, high-school educator, and strength and conditioning coach in Texas. In addition to his personal development blog, Inspired Human Development, he writes for Breaking Muscle. His book, Kids These Days, will release this fall. You can follow him on Twitter @TrotterWrites, or through his website.

Image by Matt Benoit from Shutterstock

* The 2008 data are from a different study than the data for 1961 and 2003, so we cannot rule out the possibility that the disparities are driven by differences in methodology.

Correction: An additional reference has been provided for the claim “The amount of time college students have spent on academic work has gone from 40 hours per week in 1961, to 27 in 2003, to less than 15 hours in 2008” that was not included in the original version of this article. Additionally, the year reported for a statistic was incorrectly stated as 1960 instead of 1961. This has been corrected. We apologize for the error.