I often work on the weekends, and that is when I usually make myself "to do" lists of the things I need to accomplish that weekend. I find myself writing these lists only as reminders (lest I forget) and have not often prioritized them. I have learned through this class that I really should prioritize these "reminders", just so that I won't find myself running out of time and not having accomplished everything on my list! It has happened!
Good points Laurel. Don't feel guilty adding things to your list that you really enjoy - whatever they may be.
Laurel, Your personal life is indeed something to keep at the top of your list!
I'm so grateful for this course since even though I was great at listing tasks and priorities for career and household chores, I completely left out personal life items which are of a high priority sometimes more than career. Also, I need to extend my prioritizing, so I can get away from being immediate and feeling quilty for not accomplishing all on my task list for the day.
Wonderful idea to add breaks and vacation time. I also think should add dating time so I don't end up spending way too many hours at my friend's home watching a movies that I have already seen, like last night! Plus play with my cats time.
That sounds like a challenge George. With no set tasks or schedule, you probably have to work a lot harder to make sure you stay on track.
I am an instuctor at a self paced school. There is no set student level of time or set daily activity. My daily tasks are set on the fly per need basis. Student need is the first priority. everything else fits in between.
Excellent idea Julie! Yes, taking care of higher priority tasks first will likely help you accomplish more and experience less stress in the process.
I usually try to get quick tasks done, ones that shouldn't take much time,first that way things that are more complicated can have my full attention. I see now that I might be able to get more accomplished if I did the ones with higher priority done first. I will be reorganizing the lists so the things get done first that need to be completed first.
I usually complete urgent tasks as soon as possible, and use daily task lists that are prioritized.
These are important points Keith. Setting expectations ahead of time can be a great solution. But sometimes, it's hard to communicate to administrators just how busy we are.
That will take some time to assess. I do at times have the immediacy problem. It is likely that I will need to slow down a little bit more than I need to re-organize
As a network administrator and an IT instructor prioritizing tasks is second nature for me. The only problem comes when ppeople have unrealistic expectations on the amount of time it takes to do things.
For example, take a printer repair that came up recently... I have to teach 3-16+ hour days and teach on every other Saturday for another 10, but in addition have to be on call with two campuses IT needs 24-7 and handle things like interior data backups and moving data off site to the other campus. With all of that, I assigned a printer refit with less urgency than the management wanted ( We will be covering printers in one of my classes, so I decided to "kill two birds with one stone" and fix it then). This caused students in that class to complain that I wasn't doing it with enough speed.
Many people do this Luis. One of the challenges though is that people then have to go back and do rework later. It's a big time saver to do tasks once and do them right.
I tend to over simplify the task at hand, leave it on the back burner, and not dedicate as much time as it deserves, I will use these new tools to improve better myself.
Generally, I will choose to do a task based on the timeline that I am given to complete the task. Even though a timeline may be given which will have an impact on my priortizing the task, I have learned in this module to do a better job in truly understanding the task and will analyze better the order in which I accomplish tasks.
That's a popular problem. One method that can help is to simply select one item that you will complete per day. On most days, this is typically a reasonable goal and over time, you'll find you are really getting things done.
I don't necessarily have a problem with creating to do lists, I just have a problem with sticking to what's on the list. I find myself writing this long list of stuff to do daily but I easily get distracted so once a wrench is thrown into my plans everything else is out the window. I will definitely apply what I've learned in this forum and in this week's reading to my everyday life.
Exactly. When everything is a priority, we tend to freeze up and get nothing done at all.
Learning to set priorities allows you to understand the difference between urgnet, important and should be done. If everything is a priority one, that will create more stress and make each task more difficult to achieve.
