One of the biggest themes and challenges we've tried to address in 390B is time management. Since improving our time management skills and monitoring our improvement are very difficult tasks, we are allocating some time in the middle of the quarter to reflect on our progress so far. For today's reading, spend time thinking about the following prompts which we will use as the basis for an in-class discussion. We highly encourage you to write down notes about your responses so you can refer to them during the in-class discussion.
We have discussed/practiced many techniques related to time management so far this quarter. Examples include:
For each of these techniques, how much have you used them beyond your 390B assignments? How helpful have they been? Are there specific instances where you did or did not use one of these techniques and it helped or worsened your time management?
The techniques listed above break down time management into different intervals (quarter, week, day, length of project, etc.). Which of these intervals, if any, do you think you've improved your time management skills in, and why? Which areas do you still want to improve in? Try to be as specific as possible; if you feel you have improved in a particular interval, you should be able to refer to specific examples/moments of that improvement!
We often have disconnects between what we know we should be doing and what we actually do, especially related to time management. What are some specific time management strategies that you think would be helpful but have yet to regularly practice? What are some ways for you to shift from thinking/knowing a practice could be helpful to actually implementing that practice on a regular basis? These strategies don't have to be limited to the ones listed above; we encourage you to consider any time management strategies that you are familiar with!