Time Management Exercise 1: Semester Planning?

Conducted: Thursday, 4 September 2003

Summary: In this exercise, you will note when particular activities should be accomplished this semester and use those observations to plan other aspects of your semester.

Purposes: (1) To remind you that in order to succeed at Grinnell, you need to do some long-range planning, and not just work day-to-day. (2) To help you better manage your workload at Grinnell.

Supplies:

• A list of expected activities for the semester, prepared in response to miscellaneous homework 3.
• A four-month calendar for the remainder of the semester (distributed).

Steps:

0. Fill in the regular tasks on your schedule (e.g., daily class meetings, daily readings, daily assignments).

1. Fill in all the major deadlines that you listed in reaction to miscellaneous homework 3.

2. For each kind of deadline, consider the prerequisite tasks you will need to complete. For example, in order to write a five-page paper, you may need to (a) read some materials, (b) come up with a preliminary thesis, (c) write an outline, (d) write a draft, (e) edit your draft or have others edit your draft, (f) revise your thesis, and (g) rewrite your paper. Some of your prerequisite tasks may be more guidelines than tasks. For example, you should probably go to bed early the night before an exam.

Note that we'll complete this exercise as a group.

3. Fill in each prerequisite task on the schedule.

4. Mark an expected time for each thing on the schedule.

5. Identify the potential problem times in your schedule (e.g., weeks in which you have more than fifty hours of homework).

6. Come up with potential solutions to those problems.