Did you think that the way Shehnaz can think about ten years of her life suggests that she is quite well organised? Being organised is the third skills area on Learning to change. It has been chosen from among the huge number of skills that are talked about, for a number of reasons. It is really relatively easy to adapt and, yes, improve the way we organise our lives. Why is this important? Well, being organised means that we waste far less of the time that we have at our disposal. And if we waste less time it means that we have more time for the things we want to do. Although this skill is often referred to as ‘time management?, it might be more appropriate to view it as ‘self management?, as it relates mainly to how we manage ourselves in order, as far as is possible, to do what we want with our lives.
In 1910, Arnold Bennett wrote a book called How to live on 24 hours a day. Bennett?s comments are still very relevant today. He describes time as ‘the … raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. … It is the most precious of possessions.? Bennett captures the central problem of time management when he points out: ‘But if one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one?s life definitely? (Bennett, 1910). This highlights that if time is not managed, it has consequences in the real world which make our lives harder. Bennett urges the need for a ‘minute practical examination of daily time expenditure?. More recently, Norma Adair (1999, p. 12) has pointed out: ‘There is often a gap between what we think we are doing and what we are actually doing?. Adair suggests that we should all act like scientists and carry out research to find out where our time is really going.
Figure 12 Arnold Bennett Long descriptionThis activity is taken from Adair and Allen (1999).
By keeping a record of how you use your time, it aims to help you to develop what Adair and Allen (1999, p. 9) calls a ‘personal sense of time?. It would be useful to keep this record over the next three days. For each day you plan to record, take a sheet of paper and divide it up into 20 minute intervals. At the end of every hour, record how the previous hour was spent. It might look something like Figure 13.
When you have done about three days of recording, set some time aside so that you can go back over your record sheets. You can see these sheets as evidence for how you spend time. As with other activities in this section, see if you can think about them initially as though they were evidence about someone else. Now answer the following questions:
Keep these record sheets in a safe place ? you will be using them for the next two activities as well. (Doing this will help you save time!)
Figure 13 24th January Long description
Usually, doing this activity does make you stop and think. It may highlight how many competing demands you have on your time. Studying Learning to change is likely to be only one of many demands for some students doing this unit. You might be surprised at what you do achieve in a very short period of time. If this applies to you, then you can be pleased with how you already manage your time and yourself. This is a valuable skill. Its value is clear if you think about time management in a work context. At work we are paid in order to use substantial chunks of time for our employer?s benefit. So it is important to be able to show that we use work time well.
But the benefits of being well organised in how we use time also apply to many other areas of life. It may make it possible to allocate the time you want to a favourite pastime or to a voluntary activity that is important to you. Using your time well is also an important skill when it comes to successful study.
Learning to change is an opportunity to develop skills that you will find useful when you go on to other study. For example, in producing a written answer to activities there are a number of stages, including:
This list shows that there are a number of clear stages that you have to go through to successfully complete a written answer. They have one thing in common ? they all take time. If you do not allow yourself enough time for any of these stages, then it is likely that your answer will suffer. In other words, effective use of your time underpins all your work on this unit. Your note taking may be fantastic, but you have to have the time to do it.
This discussion has focused on the idea of time management as a skill. As with the other two skills (communication and problem solving), this implies that it can be built on and developed. But these three skills can also draw on our qualities and what we know.
Have another look at the sheets you completed for the time management activity above. Do they provide any evidence about what sort of person you are and what is important to you? For example, your time log might show that you spend a lot of your time caring for other people. Ask yourself whether this use of time reflects your qualities. Alternatively, it might reveal that you are not presently giving enough time to what you think is important. If this is the case, you could begin to ask yourself what you might do so that your use of time better reflects what you see as being important.
This activity suggests that important aspects of your qualities are likely to be bound up in how you use time, or how you would like to use time. It is important to recognise that our qualities, knowledge and skills all, together, form part of who we are ? our identity. Your qualities are likely to influence the knowledge you seek out and the skills you acquire. For example, if you place a great value on caring for family members, you may want to know how to cook meals they will enjoy. In this case, you would also develop the skills needed to cook these meals.
The next activity asks you to think about what you may already know about time management.
A good place to start is with the records you have already made. Look through these to see what you already know about methods of time management. These may be quite simple ? you may, for example, use a journal to keep track of meetings or appointments, or you may have a ‘to do? list attached to your fridge with a magnet.
Make a list of all the methods of time management that you already use and add a short (single sentence) comment about how effective they are in helping you to manage time. It might start like this:
Figure 14 Managing timeLong description
It is possible to use the information from this activity in two ways. First, it shows you what you know about ways of trying to exert some control over how you organise yourself and your time. Second, it might help to show you which of these methods you are using successfully and which do not seem to suit you (at least for the time being).
Authors like David Allen (2001, p. 24) have suggested that it is vital to manage ‘work flow?. Although Allen tends to focus on work, many of his suggestions are relevant to other aspects of life. He suggests five stages to ‘Getting things done? (the title of his best-selling book). These stages are:
You can see from this list that being organised is an important aspect of achieving personal change. You might also see connections with what you have been doing in this section. For example, we can see aspects of Allen?s first two stages:
The next section of this section returns to mind mapping as a way to process the evidence you have collected in this section as well as a way to organise it. Later sections of Learning to change are intended to take forward these processes and help you organise your information, review your options and do something.
This section has focused on three skills ? communication, problem solving and being organised. It is important to bear in mind that there are many other skills that are seen as useful, both in work and in life generally. However, we felt that these three were a good starting point as they all connect with each other. In addition they have important links with qualities and knowledge. So, gathering evidence about these skills is likely to provide you with information about your qualities and knowledge too. We have also focused on these skills because they have clear roles in everyday life and they are of value for academic study. You can probably think of examples of the ways in which all three of our case study subjects have benefited from organising their time. For example, Shehnaz?s organisational skills are important for both work and study:
Well, when I was a child minder, I used to have to work with the children. I had to plan my own activities with them. Now that?s come into my work as well and, obviously because I had to plan activities for the children, have a time limit, that?s helped me towards my doing my unit and setting the time limits to actually complete my assignments and things like that.
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