Welcome to the Penguin Prof channel.

I've gotten a lot of requests for videos having to do with college success in general.

And so here we go.

I thought I would do one on Time Management, which I think is unbelievably important.

And one of my favorite quotes, my quote of the day is to get what you want, stop doing what isn't working.

So think about some of these suggestions that I have for time management and uh give him a try and, and uh let me know what happens a lot of this material that I'm going to use today comes from Randy Pausch.

He actually gave a one hour lecture on Time Management.

You can get it on youtube.

Um He was an amazing, amazing man um from Carnegie Mellon University.

So I basically took out a lot of the material that didn't really apply to undergraduate students and uh organized it a little bit.

And um here it is, I think time management is incredibly important.

And it's odd to me that most people learn and take classes on how to manage their money but not their time because, you know, you, you can always make more money.

But time you, you never get back.

So I really don't think there is a more important topic.

Um, if you can't manage your time, well, you're going to be stressed if you can manage time.

Well, you're going to be happier and you're going to have plenty of time for all the things that are important to you.

Um, that's actually me.

I am by day, mild mannered biology professor and uh by night and on weekends, I am a ballroom dancer and um, how I have time to do all of this is because I manage my time really well.

Um, one of the, I think the first step is to figure out what your goals are.

And I think goal setting is really, really important.

Um, you should be setting goals throughout your life and constantly re evaluating because of course, you and your world is, you know, constantly changing, write them down.

Um, you can always change your plans later but you have to have plans.

Um, or, you know, you'll just be lost.

I see a lot of students on campus, they're just wandering around wasting time, semester after semester, sometimes year after year because they just don't have really firmly established goals for themselves and then you can waste time and money.

Um The next step is to keep a time journal and um this is a really powerful tool.

It is kind of a pain in the butt to do, but I highly, highly, highly recommend it.

Um Basically you get uh one of these guys a time log, you can make one yourself, you can download them from the internet and you write down everything you're doing every 15 minutes and you want to do this for several days when you're working and going to school and then several days um, on the weekends and you want to evaluate it every half hour or updated, I should say every half hour, don't wait until the end of the day because you're probably not going to remember what you were doing.

Step three is to evaluate your time journal and the things you want to be asking include, you know, how are you wasting time?

What can you be doing better?

What time of the day are you most productive?

We're going to come back to that one that's really important.

Are you spending enough time eating, sleeping and exercising?

This is not optional.

Um I do find that when students get stressed for time, this is sometimes what suffers.

They come to class, they're barely awake.

Um You know, they're, they're either eating too much or not enough and don't even get me started about the exercise.

Um This one's going to take you quite a while.

How does your actual use of time compare to the goals that you set for yourself?

Um For a lot of people, this one is kind of the, the painful one but it's the one that you just got to do because that's gonna tell you a lot about what needs to change and what you're already doing.

Well, step four is to make schedules.

Um, you can either do separate ones for school, for work for your family or I, I like to do them all just on one piece of paper or on one, screen on my computer.

Figure out your, what I call the prime productivity time.

Your PPT, you want to defend this with a vengeance.

Don't fight your own natural rhythm.

You know, if you're a morning person or an evening person, uh you know, so if you may have, you know, for me, I have really bad dead time in the middle of the day.

For me, the hours between two and four are just so difficult to get anything meaningful done.

So I try not to teach during that time.

I try not to do anything of importance during that time.

You can't always have that much control over your schedule, but try as best you can to do it.

And you've got to tell your friends and family because when you decide to study and that's got to be during your primary productivity time, you got to defend that and you've got to tell them, you know, they have to respect that and not to contact you by phone by email, by text.

Um You know, during that time, unless it is a real emergency.

If you don't tell your friends and family, you may as well not even schedule study time.

Um, like I said, use your less productive time for things that don't require a lot of brain power.

And, uh, I find that house cleaning is really perfect for that time.

Um, that's just a suggestion you want to make useless time useful in a typical student schedule that might look something like this.

There are blocks of dead time that can easily be filled with snacking and social activities and meeting friends and hanging out.

And I'm not saying that those things aren't important, but look at all the time that you could be, uh, wasting and, and not even really realize it because you're thinking to yourself.

Well, I'm at school.

Well, I'm saying, look at those blocks of time and not necessarily all of them, but at least some of them dedicate them to study, make sure you get yourself to a place with few distractions.

That could be the library, which is that cool place that used to have books and, uh, and study.

And it will really be a shock, I think for most of you to see just how productive that time can be and you're already on campus anyway.

The next thing, uh, in terms of lists and schedules, you've got your schedule, you need to do lists, break down your big tasks into small, more manageable ones.

I always say, do the uglies first and you want to prioritize those lists using due dates and importance.

Step five is to reduce waste whenever possible.

This image, by the way, this gentleman was taking recycling materials that he had collected to a recycling center in China.

The average American wastes two hours every day that does not include television and being wasteful with your time can lead to all kinds of, you know, uh results that probably you are very well aware of.

This is the one I want to mention everybody today.

If you ask people on the street, they'll say they're expert multitaskers that yes, of course, they can study and watch TV, and listen to music and text and message and read and, you know, uh drive a car and do 12 other things all at once and, and actually the studies show it's just not true.

The brain is really not good at multitasking.

They took some very, very productive people, lawyers, surgeons, people who have spent their lives, you know, dealing with so many different important decisions.

And these folks all thought that they had amazing multitasking ability and it turns out that they don't.

And um, you know, I'm not a rocket scientist and I figure if the rocket scientists can't do it, I probably can't do it very well either.

So, you know, really consider how much multitasking you do.

Um The brain is really not set up for that.

Um You want to reduce interruptions as much as possible.

Look how much these interruptions cost, you interruptions are really, really damaging to your primary productive time.

So you may have to learn how to say no to people and invitations and things.

And that was one of the lessons that I had to learn when I really started um getting into courses that, you know, were very challenging for me.

I had to learn how to say no.

All I want to say about television is that it, it is a time void.

By the way, if this is your idea of spending time with your family and you're wondering why you're not getting enough family time.

Yeah, you may want to look at this.

I really want you to read this.

Please read all of it.

It applies to you.

Please press pause now and read.

Thank you some of these statistics.

Um You may find shocking um some of them maybe not so much, but it is really, really worth reiterating that television is just a void.

I am not saying that it's all bad.

Um But you really have to schedule it just like everything else in your life.

Um Step six is to avoid procrastination.

Um Basically, you've got to realize that, you know, you really need to pay attention to deadlines and it's really important to establish your own.

Um And those should be before your boss or your professor's deadlines um using the skills that I've presented should help you to avoid procrastinating.

Procrastinating causes a lot of stress.

So what you can do now, these are things that I recommend that you do right now.

These are things that we already talked about.

I do recommend that you try them and evaluate yourself again to see how you are doing.

And remember that being successful won't make you manage your time.

Well, it actually works the opposite.

Managing your time will make you successful.

I wish you good luck.

And thank you so much for visiting.

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Good luck.