Time and task oriented management

To manage time means finding time and using it effectively . One of the most important skills is allocating time for different activities. It is probably wrong to assume that just because your learners are adults they know how to organise their time effectively. Sometimes some of them need help. To be a supportive educator you have to help build time management skills by focussing their attention on:

	defining their priorities and goals
	drawing boundaries around their work
	doing only those things which are consistent with their priorities
	enlisting the support of others to help them achieve their goals

As an educator you have to encourage learners to assess the way they spend their time. You could prepare some self-evaluation sheets or checklists for them or ask them to complete a log of how they spent their time.

Before starting to work with your learners on useful study skills you have to understand how they feel about the organisation of their study time. You could use the following points to encourage them to think about and discuss their existing study skills:

	use a regular study schedule (time and task planning)
	choose and organise the best place for work
	combine work and relaxation
	achievement of study goals

Priorities

A key step in time management is effective prioritization, this means allocating time to tasks according to their importance and urgency. A good exercise is to list different tasks that need doing and ask learners to prioritise them according to their degree of importance and urgency. You could use the following tables:

Printable PDF Version

The next step is to plan activities and time for problem solving. The plan could be made for a week, 2 weeks, a month, a term, a year. You could suggest that learners use the following steps:

Step 1. Evaluate the way learners use time at the moment.

Step 2. Eliminate time wasters.

Step 3. Define the key goals.

Step 4. Set priorities

Step 5. Plan time (Day; Week; Month; Term; Year)

One of the best techniques for planning is " the 6 questions approach". Your learners have to think and try to find an answer to each of the questions:

Who? - related to persons involved in task fulfillment or help for its realisation

What? - related to concrete activities and content.

Where? - related to the place for fulfilling the task, or the place of a single task in the learning plan

When? - related to time for fulfilling the task.

Why? - related to the aim of the task.

How? - related to the methodology: necessary consecutive and consistent steps for fulfilling the task.

Explain to your learners that they need to monitor and revise their work plan. This means they have to:

	check their work plan regularly - ticking off what they have already done will make them feel better
	see if they are on target - they may need to amend their plans to allow for changed circumstances, problems, further work, or different ways they have found of working
	ask themselves if changes are really needed - changes can make extra work, particularly if they are working with other people
	re-prioritise their actions and tasks

For better time monitoring you can advise your learners to regularly assess the time spent for learning.

Good time management results in time saving - from non-important tasks and activities to more important study aims. As an adult educator you have to encourage your students to develop some useful time-saving skills. For example, learners on a course involving research or essay-writing could be advised to:

	save rewriting notes
	use headings and key words
	keep all notes in one place; number pages; make references
	read only what is relevant to the task
	fill out an index card recording what looked worth reading
	save time in writing and looking up their references - write the page reference from the book for every book, article, complete an index card
	use word limits; map out their work to match the word limit
	record their ideas in a notebook
	use numbers and highlighter pens to group information
	write assignments directly onto the word-processor
	avoid duplicating effort - find a study partner to share research tasks and tactics, and to bounce ideas off

In addition to helping learners develop their time management skills you also have to build up their self-confidence by:

	helping learners work out the benefits of well-developed time management skills
	getting learners to think about learning quality
	getting learners to stop and reflect on what they have learned
	showing learners how wasteful and miserable just thinking about work can be - compared with getting on with it
	getting learners to set deadlines for themselves
	helping learners to maximise their use of peer-support
	giving learners the feeling of ownership of time