Monitoring, evaluating and making improvements

Once you have monitored a schedule or diary for a couple of weeks, you might want to review how you organise and manage your time. You could consider the following questions:

• Is my schedule working?
• Why did I spend my time in that way?
• Is the way I spend my time helping me to study efficiently?
• What is good about how I use time?
• Do I waste time?
• Do I give time to my priorities?
• Do I know what I want to achieve each day?
• Do I put things off?
• Do I waste other people’s time?
• Do I set deadlines and meet them?
• Am I in control of my time?
• Are others in control of my time?
• Do I plan my time?
• Do I spend too much time on some tasks?
• Do I choose to do things that are interesting, even if they are not a priority?
• Do I spend too long on something, trying to make it perfect?
• Am I surprised by anything?
• What do I need to change?
• Is there anything I really can’t change? What?

Think about your responses to these questions. Have you been able to give sufficient thought to what you want to achieve? Once you have identified possible problem areas you can begin to address them. If you feel that you are wasting time, have difficulty staying motivated or spend a lot of time procrastinating, the unit, 'Staying motivated and avoiding procrastination', may provide you with strategies to overcome these difficulties. Be prepared to continue changing your system until you find one that suits you. Good time management is something that has to be developed over time.