Time Management
How to plan successful completion of the module
In life, it seems that tasks can expand infinitely but the available time always remains finite. Welcome to my world!
When embarking on a course of study, it is critical to get your time management just right. It'll take you a lifetime to fully develop this skill, and in my own logistical planning, I'm not quite there yet.
Properly managed, time will be your friend and although you will always be short of it, you will mitigate this problem as you would with any other resource.
Experienced project managers are really good at time management. Although this skill can be taught, it's not effective until it becomes part of your organizational strategy for life. The demands on your time will always exceed the available time. To be successful in almost any field of endeavor, you need to develop your time management skills.
When I'm working on an academic course of study, I know I can fly through the material and get to a pass mark quickly. To get to a credit grade or honors, I might need to put in double or triple the time. Look up Pareto's principle, it describes this idea quite well.
In my modules, you can probably get to a pass mark quickly. After that as you spend more time, you will see diminishing returns. You need to understand that, realistically plan how far you can get, and understand where to stop.
Keep up with the work as you're going along, don't procrastinate or delay in search of perfection, that is a path to falling behind and not completing the module. Plan how much time you can assign to any single piece of work and stick to that timetable. At the cutoff point, stop and submit the work.
Do your time calculations now, not when you're struggling to submit.
Check the syllabus. At level 9 for a ten-credit module, there's an expectation that you will spend up to thirteen hours on independent learning. Realistically, treat this as putting one long day of study into each of my modules. Look at the assignment work and plan your time investment based on the mark allocated.
Worked Example
It is week 6, I need to complete:
A report (15 marks)
An assignment (25 marks)
I know I have 20 hours of working time available until the deadline.
I know there are 40 marks available.
I should spend 20/40 = 0.5 hours per mark.
Report 2 = 7.5 hours
Assignment 1 = 12.5 hours
When you run out of time
In emergency medicine we have a term called triage, look it up, it is horrible in many respects, it is also a reality.
Apply triage to planning your course work submissions.
For some assignments, you can easily get 90% of the marks, do them!
Some assignments will take much time, do them next.
If you get so far behind, you can’t complete a report, drop it and accept losing 10-15% of your marks.
Medical Triage is horrible, but it saves lives. Academic triage is also horrible, but it might get you through. I have used this strategy, although I've hated doing so, and it's got me through things when no other approach would.
Take a look at this video from 2022.
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