A thought provoking lecture on Time Management

1. TIME
MANAGEMENT
Prof. Syed Amin Tabish
FRCP (London), FRCP (Edin.), MD, FAMS

2. Time for change
• Many students discover the need to
develop their time management skills
when they arrive at college
• Unlike high school where teachers
frequently structured your
assignments and classes filled your
day, in college, you will have less in-
class time, more outside of class work,
and a great deal of freedom and
flexibility

3. Why Time Management is
Important
• "The Time Famine"
•Bad time
management =
stress

4. Managing Your Time
• Managing your time
successfully implies
accomplishing what is most
important for you
• When you don’t accomplish
what you truly want, you may
feel confused, compromised,
and frustrated

5. Goals/Priorities/Planning
Drucker's Dictum:
Doing things right is
not as important as
doing the right things.

6. Questions to always ask
•Why am I doing this?
•What is the goal?
•How will I succeed?
•What happens if I
chose not to do it?

7. Inspiration
•"If you can dream it,
you can do it"
-- Walt Disney
• Disneyland was built in
366 days

8. Planning is Important
•Failing to plan is
planning to fail
•Plan Each Day
•Plan Each Week
•Plan Each Semester

9. Everyone has Good and Bad Times
•Find your
creative/thinking time.
Defend it ruthlessly,
spend it alone
•Find your dead time:
Schedule meetings,
phone calls, and
mundane stuff during it.

10. Advantages of Time Management
•gain time
•motivates and initiates
•reduces avoidance
•promotes review
•eliminates cramming
•reduces anxiety

11. Advantages of Time Management
• You need to manage time
effectively if you’re going to
be successful.
Better time management
skills can:
• improve your grades
• help you keep stress in
check

12. Planning Tools
•A Monthly Planner
•A Weekly Objectives
List
•A Weekly Planner
•A Time Log

14. Options for time management
• Begin using a cyclical system early
in the academic year
• The system begins with goal
setting
• The Second phase involves tracking
time (where you spend your time)
• Third phase is plan making, and
this could include making to-do
lists, weekly plans, monthly plans
• The Fourth phase is self-monitoring
your action

15. How much time is enough?
• The time you spend on task has
some relationship to the quality of
work you end up producing
• A good gauge to follow is to perform
2-3 hours of College work outside
class for every hour of class time
• For a full-time student with a 15
hour of class per week load the
recommendation is to do between
30 and 45 hours of homework each
week.

16. Procrastination
• According to O’Brien (2002)
up to 40% of university
students experience
procrastination as a problem
• Taraban (1999) reported that
students do most of the work
near academic deadlines and
failed to make appropriate
use earlier in the term.

17. HOW COME I NEVER HAVE ENOUGH TIME?
• Do you have trouble finding
enough time to study?
• Do you frequently find
yourself rushing to places,
missing deadlines, feeling
you have insufficient time
for relaxation and personal
relationships, or having a
general sense of being
overwhelmed?

18. How come !
• Do you realize that you
probably have as many as
168 hours(7 D x 24 H) of
available time each week?
• If you go to bed at
midnight and wake up at
8:00 a.m., you are
sleeping 56 hours a week,
leaving 112 waking hours.

19. HOW COME I NEVER HAVE ENOUGH TIME?
• Combine those 30 hours with two
hours a day for eating and
personal care, and
• You still has 68 hours of available
time a week.
• Even if you study 30 hours a
week, you still have a
considerable amount of time left-
---38 hours--for other activities!

20. Principles of Using Time Effectively
• The first is efficiency, the most
output for the least input.
Students:
• who plan
• use their study schedule
efficiently
• avoid wasting time
• are able to get their work done
with the minimum amount of time

21. Time Tips
• Count all your time as time to be
used and make every attempt to get
satisfaction out of every moment.
• Find something to enjoy in whatever
you do.
• Try to be an optimist and seek out
the good in your life.
• Find ways to build on your
successes.
• Stop regretting your failures and
start learning from your mistakes.

22. Key Points
• Time management includes
tools or techniques for
planning and scheduling time,
usually with the aim to
increase the effectiveness
and/or efficiency & include:
• To-do-list
• Setting priorities
• Goal management

23. The TM Cycle

25. Steps to Improved Time Management
•Create a semester
schedule
•Assess and plan your
work load each week
•Adjust your plan each
day
•Evaluate your schedule

26. Reading and Study Time
Read in three steps:
• In the first step, survey the
material by reading the titles,
sub-titles, bold print, italics,
definitions, topic sentences,
summaries, and conclusions.
• This will provide you with an
overview of the chapter, give
you direction, and help you to
see the details in relation to the
whole.

27. Second Step
•Form questions out of
the titles and sub-titles
using the Six Keys to
Reading -- who, what,
why, when, where,
and how; then read to
select what you want to
learn.

28. Third Step
•Review the material
you have selected or
marked for learning in
order to assimilate it.

29. Study Time II
• Spend half your reading and study
time in reproducing
• Mere reading is mere impression
• In an hour of study the individual
who spends half of the time trying to
write, say, or think about what he or
she has read will be able to
reproduce twice as many ideas as
the individual who spends all of the
time in passive reading of the
material in that book

30. Study Time III
• After you have read your book,
close it, and then attempt to
recall what you have read,
review to fill in any gaps in
your knowledge or to find the
right words to express the
ideas, re-test yourself and
review again.
• The cycle is read and recite,
read and recite, read and recite
until you feel confident in your
knowledge

31. Review when forgetting is greatest
The greatest amount of forgetting
usually occurs within the first 24
hours after study
• Notes taken today or material read
today should be reviewed that same
day
• If the material is in outline form,
underlined, probably only ten
percent of the total assignment
need be reviewed.
• This should normally take 15
minutes for each subject

32. Review frequently
• Because of delayed recall (the
examinations next month, and the
finals) periodic review is necessary.
• An hour's review often results in as
much actual learning as five or six
hours of original study.
• A short weekly review of about thirty
minutes for all notes taken that week
will pay high dividends on all
examinations and in more permanent
learning for use in later years

33. Learning
• Space your learning.
• Studying two hours a day five
days a week, for four weeks
ordinarily results in more
learning than forty hours of
study crammed into a four-day
period
• Know word meanings
• Use a dictionary or the glossary
in your text or in a lecture.

34. PBL
• PBL is a method designed to
help students learn the
sciences basic to medicine at
the same time they develop
the reasoning process used by
physicians in their clinical
practice.
• 􀂄 The problem comes first
without advance readings,
lectures, or preparation.
• 􀂄 The problem serves as a
stimulus for the need to know.

35. Problem-based learning is
designed to develop
􀂄 Integrated knowledge base
􀂄 Decision-making/critical thinking
process and skills
􀂄 Self-directed, life-long learning skills
􀂄 Interpersonal, collaboration, and
communication skills
􀂄 Constructive self and peer
assessment skills
􀂄 Professional ethics and behavior

36. PBL
•Helps learners build a
bridge between what they
already know and what
they need to know to
reach the next level
• Emphasizing active learning, which
has been shown to be more
satisfying than
passive teacher-to-student learning
and to enhance retention and recall

38. PBL: Starting the case
• After the introductions and discussion
are completed, the tutor distributes the
first page (only) to each student and the
process begins with one of the students
reading it.
• Reading the case aloud keeps the group
focused
• Before moving on to the second page of
the session, the group should have
formed a clear idea of the problem so
far, what is known, what is needed to
know and where to go from here.

39. PBL Case (contd.)
By the end of the session:
• Before the end of each session, the
students in the group need to clarify
their plans for their own learning
between sessions by:
–FIRST, identifying all of the
significant issues and settle on a
"do-able" list of learning tasks for
the next session.

40. PBL Case (contd.)
• SECOND, deciding which issues
everyone will tackle and which will be
divided up
• THIRD, deciding what SPECIFIC
questions individuals will try to answer.
• FOURTH, deciding how they will
address these learning issues (e.g., by
looking up notes from a course, reading
a section of a textbook, doing a
literature search, searching the internet
or consulting an expert)

41. The Process of PBL
• What are the issues?
Identify the important
issues in the problem
• How well do you
understand the issues?
• Are there any words or
terms about which you are
unclear?

42. Learn from each other
• Share your own
knowledge, expertise, or
ability to reason and
synthesize information.
Be receptive and
appreciative of the
contribution of your small
group members.

43. Determine priorities for learning
•Consider time,
resources and
objectives and set
priorities regarding the
relative importance of
each learning issue

44. Learning Issues
• Learning issues are
questions that cannot be
answered with students’
current knowledge and
that can be explored and
answered through
systematic, self-directed
inquiry.

45. Learning Issues: First Session
1. Getting Started (Introductions,
Ground Rules, Expectations)
2. Identifying Problem
3. Exploring Pre-Existing
Knowledge
4. Generating Hypotheses and
Explaining Mechanisms
5. Unfolding the Case
Incrementally

47. PBL: Second Session
Independent Self-
Directed Study of
Learning Issues

48. PBL: Third Session
• Discussion of Learning
Issues and Application of
New Knowledge to the
Case
• Continued Unfolding of
the Case Incrementally
• Assessment/Reflection

50. During Tutorial Session students will
􀂄 Come prepared to discuss the case
and learning issues researched since
the last tutorial.
􀂄 Actively participate in group
discussions and contribute to the
learning process
􀂄 Develop learning issues at each
session, phrase them as full-
sentence questions, write them on
the board, and post them on the
course web page.

51. Tutorial Session contd.
􀂄 Go to the board to diagram,
outline, draw, etc. in
explanation of mechanisms
related to hypotheses
􀂄 Participate in end-of-session
reflection and assessment by
giving and receiving
constructive criticism
regarding self, tutor, student,
and group performance.