Imagine you are fishing. That day you catch some fish. Perhaps one, maybe several. But you do catch at least one. What do you do with that one fish? Well you have to do something with it, otherwise it’ll spoil. Typically within twenty-four hours. We are talking old-school fishing when freezers and foil wrapping didn’t exist.
So you have this fish and you have to do something with it. Can you see where I’m going with this? Probably not. Allow me to explain.
Our lab and lecture this past week was on time management. After the lab, our TA asked us to write about our “fish” from the lesson. Meaning, take at least one thing that you got out of the lesson and then apply it within the next twenty-four hours.
In our discussion on time management on Monday (I unfortunately was not there for the lecture. sad face.) we talked about some of the things that get in the way of effectively managing our time. We came up with four things particularly: not enough sleep, looking at everything at once, not knowing when to say no, and distractions. Another thing we discussed that I particularly found interesting was from Habit 3 of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey.
Habit 3 is Put First Things First. The chart on the left is to help categorize your time usage into four different quadrants. Most time should be focused on Quadrants 1 and 2, those things that are important. The most effective people stay out of Quadrants 3 and 4. It's also important to attempt to shrink down the size of quadrant 1 (important and urgent) so that more time can be spent on quadrant 2.
From this lab, I decided my fish would be to start working on my balance of activities using the quadrants. I realized that I have been putting off homework assignments, projects, and large papers until the last few days before they were due. This made those days incredibly stressful. Because these assignments or activities were in the important but not urgent category, I procrastinated working on them.
On Monday after class, I went and looked at where I was spending the time that could be spent on school work. I definitely spent way too much time on Facebook, email, blogging, and just being distracted from the homework I needed to do on the computer.
So I set to work to find a way to block my distractions. A few weeks ago, one of the girls in my hall mentioned a program she used that would allot a certain amount of time to spend each day on your time wasting sites. I looked up the Stayfocusd app and downloaded it. I set a limit of 30 minutes a day for email, Facebook, blogging, and a few other sites I spend too much time on. The greatest part about this - when the time ran out, I couldn't go back in to reset my time settings. I had to wait until the next day to give myself more time. And when I did try to raise the time limit, there were about ten different boxes that popped up asking if I was absolutely positive that I wanted to do that.
Once my computer time was limited, I found that I had time to read my scriptures earlier in the day, get ahead in my homework assignments and spend more time with my friends. It was a great feeling the next morning to realize I wouldn't have to rush to finish homework assignments between classes. My day went by so much more smoothly, I was happier, and I felt zero stress. I could focus more effectively, and I actually felt even more motivated to work ahead on future assignments. It was incredible that limiting (I'm on the path to eliminating) my distractions helped me in the process of shrinking my urgent and important quadrant and allowed me to work in the second quadrant more.
Just a quick quote by Sam Ewing to share: "It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you put in the hours." Hearing this reminded me of Elder Ian S. Ardern's talk in this past General Conference. I felt inspired to improve in my time management when I heard his talk, and I obviously need to continue to work on it.
That is being a leader: managing your own time in such a way that the important things get done so you later have time for the fun things and even for the Lord.
