Improve Academic Performance by Learning How to Prioritize
Have you ever noticed in your life that the times you were most productive were times when you had the least amount of time to spend, or a deadline to work to that you had to have a project or study finished by.
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?
These are some more detailed examples:
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.
You should get started as soon as possible so it doesn’t become urgent.
However, how often does this important task turn into and “Important and urgent” task, which is exactly what you don’t want What you need to do is pretend in your own mind that you only have a quarter of the time to get it completed, then you’ll complete it much faster and be able to spend the rest of the time “polishing” the finished product into something really great.
Not important but urgent. You have a quiz tomorrow but you haven’t reviewed anything. It’s worth 5% but you need every mark you can get.
You should have made time for this between everything else you were doing. You could have easily avoided all of the stress and anxiety that you have now subjected yourself to.
Whenever you notice that you are in a similar situation, you should focus on your weak points and spend 80 percent of your time fine tuning those points. Spend the rest of your time working on your strong areas.
Important but not urgent. You have a project that is worth 35% of your final mark. It’s due in a month and you estimate it will take you 20-25 hours to complete.
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. Your final exam is in 2 days time and 70% of your final grade depends on it. You have not done enough till now. The amount of new materials to be covered is so great that you are not sure where to begin. You start panicking.
You want to be sure you are spending appropriate amount of time on urgent and important issues that may take more time to resove than some of lifes more mundane problems.
The ideal coping method is to take a more objective look at the issue, and take the time to think it over calmly. There is no situation that can be best dealt with in haste; every difficulty needs some thought put into it, and every difficulty can be better overcome if you plan a little before diving into the situation.
Once you get this fine balance right, and at the same time learn how to make the urgency “work for you” with especially the urgent projects and exams, you’ll truly have a formula that will see you through any exam, project or work related task you’ll ever need to complete.
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