Time Strategies for Epics of India
For this assignment, the first article read was The Myth of "Too Busy" by Tim Grahl. He talks about the importance of scheduling time, instead of just referring to one's self as too busy. He believes this should be called prioritizing our time instead, and it is important to lay these priorities out and formalize them in our lives. I find that I tend to soft schedule in this matter, I find a pattern of work that allows me to maximize my use of time and tend to stick to it. However, the rigidity of Grahl's suggestions seem a little out of place in my life, there are just too many unforeseen circumstances in engineering and the fact that an error related to your work can occur at any time means that I need a softer form of scheduling to allow time for emergencies in research or capstone work.
The second article I read was The Important Habit of Just Starting by Jory Mackay. This article references how work goes much more smoothly once it is started, because starting is the main psychological hurdle in our way. There are so many distractions in our way, according to Mackay, that starting is exceptionally difficult due to the influence of readily available instantly gratifying experiences. Admittedly, these can be influences in my own work schedule, however, they are not killers, provided they are used properly as rewards. One thing I tend to motivate myself with is using distractions as rewards for meeting milestones, such as giving myself 10 minutes of UAS flight time for completing a long homework assignment. While this does distract from starting the next assignment, it does provide a good timetable for when I will start, as well as allow a break for my sanity. This falls back to exactly the principle Mackay is advocating, that we manage and control our distractions, getting ourselves to start our work so we can finish it.
One final thought on time is in engineering the best way we manage our schedule is by working together
The second article I read was The Important Habit of Just Starting by Jory Mackay. This article references how work goes much more smoothly once it is started, because starting is the main psychological hurdle in our way. There are so many distractions in our way, according to Mackay, that starting is exceptionally difficult due to the influence of readily available instantly gratifying experiences. Admittedly, these can be influences in my own work schedule, however, they are not killers, provided they are used properly as rewards. One thing I tend to motivate myself with is using distractions as rewards for meeting milestones, such as giving myself 10 minutes of UAS flight time for completing a long homework assignment. While this does distract from starting the next assignment, it does provide a good timetable for when I will start, as well as allow a break for my sanity. This falls back to exactly the principle Mackay is advocating, that we manage and control our distractions, getting ourselves to start our work so we can finish it.
One final thought on time is in engineering the best way we manage our schedule is by working together
Let's collaborate from Ron Mader on Flickr
This collaboration, even if its something simply like proofreading or commenting on others work contributions, helps everything go much faster and smoother in the end due to allowing the workload to at least be slightly shifted away from just one person or team.
So true about collaborating, John-Paul! One of the things I like about this class being online is that it is possible to build in opportunities for people to interact socially through the blogs and also to provide more substantive feedback to help with revising the projects week by week. Especially with writing projects, getting feedback from real readers is so valuable!
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