Time Out- A Student's Guide to Effective Time Management

7/25/2019 Time Out- A Student's Guide to Effective Time Management

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A STUDENTS GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE TIME MANAGEMENT

TEJAS SUMA SHYAM


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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................2

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................3

Chapter 1The Most Important Realization .................................................................................................3

Chapter 2- A day will always have only 24 hours .......................................................................................4

Chapter 3- Priority ....................................................................................................................................................5

Chapter 4- Sense of Proportion ............................................................................................................................6

Chapter 5- Interrelatedness of tasks ...................................................................................................................8

Chapter 6- Dont just plan, plan and plan!.................................................................................................. 10

Chapter 7- Procrastination: Your biggest ENEMY ................................................................................... 11

Chapter 8- Work Smart, Work Well .............................................................................................................. 12

Chapter 9- Its perfectly okay to feel over-awed at times ....................................................................... 14

Chapter 10- The power is yours ....................................................................................................................... 15

DEDICATED TO MY GRANDPARENTS AND MY MOTHER


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Acknowledgements

My primary inspiration to write this book has been my grandfather, Mr. G.S. Shyam, who has

been responsible for guiding me through my dilemmas and who has always encouraged and

motivated me to spread the light of knowledge wherever I can. He has been my greatest

teacher and I thank him for blessing me and making me capable enough to write this book.

My mother, Suma Shyam, has been my biggest support, most patient listener, ever-willing

guide and best friend, without whom this work would never have seen the light of day. I thank

her for always being there for me.

I thank Ms. Meera Dandekar for the beautiful cover illustration.

I thank my students, both current and past, whove contributed to the experiences that have

helped me in developing the central idea and expounding it.

I thank all my friends and students whove contributed to the development of this book byencouraging me, giving me feedback regarding the content and helping me with suggestions

on how I could make it better.

I thank God for the incredible clarity and energy Ive received while writing this book.


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Introduction

Every solution to every problem is simple. It's the distance between the two where the mystery lies.

- Derek Landy

It had been a long day. Nine hours of continuous lectures have an uncanny knack of sapping

your energy. Just as I was about to sink into a chair, a student ran up to me. He was hesitant,but his face betrayed a deep sense of fear, panic and guiltall rolled into one. He was just

standing there, biting his lip. Aware that he was waiting for a cue, I smilingly said, Hey! You

want to speak with me? Nodding his head, the kid said, Yes sir! Sir, Im trying extremely

hard to do well. I sit to study for most of my day. But Im still struggling to cope with studies.

What should I do? My scores are plummeting and my parents cant seem to understand.

Theyre constantly scolding me for not studying. I cant understand either. Im trying. But

nothing seems to work. There is so much to do. I constantly run out of time! Sir, please help

Ifthis problem seems familiar to you, were definitely on the same page. Most of my students,

at some time or the other during the course of their studies, unfailingly ask me such questions.

To be honest, Ive asked the same kind of questions to my teachers too!

So what should you do? What trick can you use to magically conjure up some extra time and

finish all those pending chapters? Which quick-fix will help you in transforming your academic

dilemmas into evergreen success stories? Does such a solution exist?

Ive spent days, nay- months, pondering over the answers to these questions. Every time a

student asks me a similar question, Ive tried to customise my solution to his or her individual

personality. And the one thing that Ive realized in the process is that, while there isnt a sureshot way to address the question entirely, there certainly seems to be a reasonably good

approach that one can follow. As we move along, we shall be delving deep into this approach.

Chapter 1 The Most Important Realization

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might

weaken and the wisest might err.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Weve all probably heard the story of the Emperors New Clothes, which paints a vivid pictureof a king walking along a street sans any clothes, refusing to accept his own common sense that

tells him that he has no clothes on. And while most of us have had a hearty laugh at the idiocy

of the king and his foolishness in not realizing how he had been deceived, we dont realize how

important this story is in the context of our own lives.

Like the king, all of us live in our own bubble- refusing to believe that anything is going wrong

with the way we lead our lives. Despite the strongest indications that were moving in the

wrong direction, we tend to reaffirm our faith in certain flawed ideas that we cling onto.

The most important realization, if one wants to effectively utilize time, is to understand that we

may be wrong in our current approachand that we must be open to correcting ourselves.

While this seems trivially obvious, it is perhaps practically the most difficult truth to accept.


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Most of us conveniently tend to shift the blame onto entities that seemingly eat into our time

and therefore leave us with no choice Ive heard a lot of students tell me that classes eat up

too much time and that homework and exams literally leave them with no time to explore the

subject and learn better. They keep cribbing about how they are doing whatever they think

best but nothing seems to work since theyre so hard pressed for time!

I have realized one small fact- There is always something that we can doto control how we

utilize time. But, for that, we must be brutally honest about the fact that were heading into

trouble because of our choices, and not because someone else is pushing us into an imaginary

abyss! And while one may feel bad about the fact that a mistake has happened and that hashad undesirable consequences, it is both- perfectly normal and imminent that mistakes will

happen. Theres nothing to be ashamed of in having made an error in judgement. After all, to

err is human. However, the key is to be thereafter open to making the required correction in

trajectory, so that life gets back on track. One needs to stop blamingothers and start changing

ones own outlook if required. Own up to the problem. Only then will you develop the

necessary grit to overcome it. Otherwise, youll always just keep waiting hopelessly and

wishing that there were more than 24 hours in a day!

Chapter 2- A day will always have only 24 hours

Yesterday was the last day on the calendar of the past. Tomorrow will be the first day on the calendar of

the future. Today is both the first and the last day of the present. Use it well.

- Israelmore Ayivor

A lot of times, Ive wished that there were more than 24 hours in a day, so that I could finish my

works thoroughly and on time. I guess most of you, at some point, may have also wished

similarly. And while wishful thinking always leaves one with hope, the harsh reality is A day

only has 24 hours. Rather than sulking and challenging this fact, a much better approach is to

devise a way in which these 24 hours can be better handled.

Over the years of trying to deal with the issues of time management, I have come to a small

empirical conclusion of my own- Time can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be

transformed from one form to another. And, sadly, nowadays time seems to be frequently

transformed from productive work to mobile gaming and from being hard-working to being

hardly-working! It is no wonder then that we tend to keep falling short of time to do what we

must.

@READER

#acceptmistakes #itsnevertoolate #lifelessons #introspect #stopblamingstartchanging

@READER

#24hrday #timeisconstant #gearupforthechallenge #stopwastingtime #startsolvingtheissue


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Since we have only 24 hours in every day, the next step to trying to manage this time effectively

is to make sure we dont land up wasting too much time in frivolous activities that are of less or

no consequence to our immediate well-being and progress. So how does one decide what

activity to pursue and what to give up? Heres where were going to explore 3 very important

concepts- Priority, Proportion and Interrelatedness.

Chapter 3- Priority

We dont drift in good directions. We discipline and prioritize ourselves there.

- Andy Stanley

Not too long ago, I was struggling with managing my time. I had, of course, realized the issue. I

also figured out that I had a limited amount of time. But I just didnt know what to do.

Everything I did seemed critical. Every work I took up was urgent. And there I was- unable to

make a list of what not to do. Consequently, I was stretched to my limit.

It was on one of those days that my grandfather sat me down and told me how I could take

control of things. I can never forget those precious words of wisdom. As clich as it sounds, his

advice has been life altering.

My grandfather told me that there are three very important aspects to decision making. The

first and foremost is a sense of priority. It is extremely necessary to have an idea about the

chronology in which tasks must be completed. The easiest way of doing this is to make a

checklist of to-do things and putting them in the order of decreasing priority based on

deadlines. For example, the most important deadline I need to meet is to prepare my students

for their entrance exams. That takes priority over everything else that I currently do. Only afterthat will I worry about planning a vacation for myself, even though Im halfway through

holiday season already!

A simple, yet very effective alternate method of making checklists is what I call the COT

method. In this method, you divide a checklist into 3 parts- Critical (C), Ordinary (O) and

Trivial (T). Critical tasks require immediate attention, Ordinary tasks are less important but

must be completed soon and Trivial tasks can take some time to get completed. Upon making

such a checklist, it becomes much easier to visualize and implement priorities rather than just

creating a single unclassified priority checklist.

However, the method of making time-frame based checklists, while extremely good for short-

term time management, doesnt necessarily work too well if one thinks of the pros and cons in

the mid or long run. For example, even though my current deadline-based priority is work, the

sleep Im losing out on as the trade-off may very well become the cause of a health issue in the

near future! So while my working hard is an immediate need, its cons have substantial mid-

term potential impact. In such scenarios, making well thought-out choices by analysis of the

short-term, mid-term and long-term value of such choices may be a better approach compared

to simple priority based task completion.

Of course, there may be several other ways of allocating priority to a particular set of tasks.

Personal liking, ease of completion, coerced prioritization, incentives on task completion and

time-bound scheduling are all valid and fairly common methods that we employ regularly to


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prioritize tasks. Strictly speaking, no one method is vastly superior to another. And it is often

helpful to take a horses-for-courses approach while allocating priority - say, if the work is

incentivized enough, maybe it is a better idea to finish it off first!

While assigning priority to a task may seem to be fairly straight-forward, it is usually more

difficult than it seems. It is often the faltering block in the process of time-management. And

while even I cant claim to be anywhere close to an expert in assigning priority to tasks, thekeyword here is EXPERIENCE. Regularly setting priority lists (write it down in a diary, or

make a voice memo- whatever works for you!) and self-reviewing the outcomes iteratively is

the simplest and best method of bettering ones ability to prioritize. Asking a senior or set of

seniors to validate or suggest improvements may actually be a good idea at first, provided you

are comfortable enough with trusting them to take reasonable decisions. And while I wont

blame you for being sceptical about their inferences even if you value their inputs, it may be a

reasonably good way of either learning how to start thinking right or understanding how to

not to think wrong! Again, the important thing is to keep learning from your experiences. Try

mixing things up a little at first. Experiment a little for the first few times using less importanttasks for practice. Find your sweet spot. Verify if the outcomes are as desired when you

prioritize in that way. If not, go back to the drawing board and try a new priority list. Youll find

that within a few tries, youre going to be making priority decisions more effectively.

Chapter 4- Sense of Proportion

Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great and small

things small.

- Corrie ten Boom

Sometime during my college days, I met up with one of my closest friends. At that time, he was

all keyed up about his exams that were around the corner. Animatedly, he told me, Tejas, Im

going to start studying for my exams tomorrow onwards. The syllabus is so vast! And I have

just about a month to go. So, from tomorrow, my first priority is going to be academics. I was

very impressed with his clear thought process and, secretly, felt terrible about personally nevertrying to work so hard to improve my grades. I gave him a pat on his back and wished him

well. A couple of days later, while I was lazing around, I received a phone call from him,

Dude! Lets meet up bro. Im bored. What say we meet for dinner? I was pleasantly


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surprised, but agreed. While having dinner, I casually asked him how his studies were shaping

up. He grinned and said, Oh, the syllabus is too long! I am frightened just looking at the book.

I will start studying properly from tomorrow!

Does this argument seem familiar? Im quite sure most of us have, at some point, tried to do

exactly what my friend said- start from tomorrow! And Im also sure that tomorrow never

happened. But why didnt we manage to start? We definitely realize how important the taskwas. It was also perhaps at the top of our priority list. And yet- the task remains undone. What

exactly is wrong here?

For starters,setting priorities isnt the only important thing. Appropriately allocating time to

the priority is also equally critical. While a task may be your first to-do item in todays list, it

needs to be put into proper perspective with respect to the time that it needs and the emphasis

that must be put on it. Here is where a sense of proportion becomes critical.

A sense of proportion refers to an understanding ofhow much time and effort must be

allocated to a taskregardless of its priority. We often tend to make exaggerated plans for a

simple task, or hurry the execution of critical tasks. And while these tasks may or may not be

top priority, it is important to understand how much emphasis to generally give to a task.

Setting timeframes on tasks and trying to stick to them is an extremely important part of time

management. No matter how urgent a task, it must be handled in a time frame that is justifiable

in terms of its importance. An important but non-urgent task deserves more time than an

urgent but trivial task. It is crucial to make that allocation. Let us take a practical case to analyse-

Lets say I have the following lined up for evening:

1) Assignment of 25% weightage due after 7 days

2)

Watching an exciting cricket match on TV today

3)

Going to buy a pair of shoes to wear to school the next day

4) English ungraded homework to submit the next day

5) Eating dinner

6) Solving papers for a competitive entrance exam happening the next month

7)

Sleeping early

What can I do?

Perhaps it is best to first make my priority list in the following way (and yours may very well

differ!)

Task Priority Reason

Going to buy a pair of shoes 1 The shop shuts by early evening and I

need the shoes for the next day!

English homework 2 If I dont do the homework, the teacher

will scold me. I hate getting scolded.Watching cricket 3 Ah! Cricket! What a sport!

Eating dinner 4 Well, dinner is important too. And I get

hungry when I study.


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Sleeping early 5 Its been a tiring day

Assignment 6 Theres always a tomorrow!

Solving papers 7 Its a month away. I have plenty of time!

Now, while this priority list may seem quite handy, things arent quite sorted yet. For example,

if I spend too much time selecting shoes, I may not have enough time to finish the homework.

Or maybe, if I focus on finishing my homework, Ill miss watching the cricket match! There istoo much to do, and not much time! A catch-22 situation seemingly, isnt it? This is exactly

where a sense of proportion comes in. Even though I need to urgently buy a pair of shoes, I

must not waste much time on the activity. Also, I can perhaps only watch the last part of the

cricket match without missing the thrill rather than spending hours on it. On the other hand, I

need to be aware that the assignment is quite important and I cannot afford to finish it off

haphazardly. So I must perhaps start it off today by doing the background research necessary.

I may, after all, need about ten hours to complete the assignment, whereas the homework can

take just half an hour (given that it is ungraded and I can hurry it up a bit). Also, maybe I need

to compromise on sleep a bit for today, since my works will otherwise suffer. Dinner canperhaps happen while watching the match in order to save some time. And finally, the exam

paper solving can wait for today, because I am really caught up and cannot devote time for it.

But I must ensure that I am able to at least solve ten practice papers in the next week. For this, I

will cut down on any unnecessary activity in the next few days. After all, this exam may not be

priority, but it is extremely important to me and I must allocate sufficient time to do well!

What Ive tried to illustrate in the previous example is how one can work out a combination of

assigning priority and giving emphasis to a certain task simultaneously. As practice, you can

try thinking about what you would do in such a scenario. Remember, there is no right or

wrong answer. It is all about how you manage to optimize your time by adopting the best

possible approach.

Chapter 5- Interrelatedness of tasks

There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less

prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications.

- Arthur Erickson

There was once a prince who had a pet monkey and was very fond of it. Hed spend all his free

time playing with the monkey. The monkey, in turn, loved the prince and was very loyal. One

hot summer morning, the prince decided to take a short nap. The monkey took it upon himself

to stand watch while his master slept.

As the prince lay asleep, a certain bee kept buzzing around his head, attracted by the scent of

the floral crown that he happened to wear. The monkey, on seeing this, got very annoyed and

decided to end matters once and for all. After all, his prince was asleep and this bee was

potential danger. The matter was both- important and urgent. Taking a quick decision, themonkey grabbed the princes sword that lay nearby and took a wild swipe at the bee.

Unfortunately, the sword missed the bee but hit the prince. The prince died on the spot!


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While a lot of you may have heard this story before, the take-home message of this story from

the perspective of time management is very important. Like the monkey, a lot of us may be able

to both- assign appropriate priority and decide on a proper schedule for task completion.

However, we often dont focus on the dynamic interplay between prioritizing and executing

one task and its impact on another. Understanding how one task links to another and how they

are intertwined is of utmost importance if one needs to improve ones efficiency. This is

because, while we may be able to allocate priority and assign appropriate time-slots, tappinginto the synergies or avoiding conflicts between various tasks may be the difference

between managing to stick to those desired goals and overshooting ones targets.

As an example, let us take a scenario where a student has only half an hour to both, finish

revision and have lunch before the exam commences. Priority wise, there is no clear winner.

Both tasks are equally important. Proportion wise, both seem to necessitate (say) around

twenty minutes each. But we have only half an hour! Were falling short by ten minutes. What

can we do? As most of you may have already guessed, the best possible option is to combine

both. Revise while you eat. In that way, there is a better possibility of optimizing both activitiesin the same time duration. This is exactly what interrelatedness refers to- trying to organize or

group things in a manner that both time and effort is saved in the long run.

Grouping can be done on just about any practical basis, keeping in mind the order of priority

and sense of proportion needed for a particular task. There isnt really a hard and fast rule here.

However, a useful method may be to try and keep tasks which are long and tedious

interspersed with tasks which are short and refreshing. This will reduce both- the stress of

working too hard and the boredom of working too long.

SOME SIMPLE, RANDOM INTER-RELATIONSHIPS TO HELP YOU SAVE TIME

Task A Task B Optimum

Travelling Whatsapp Whatsapp while travelling

Revising for exam Doing homework Finish homework of exam

relevant chapters first

Eating dinner Chatting with friends Meet friends over dinner

Extracurricular activities Studies Keep only a limited number

of extracurricular activities

goingRelaxation Playing games Play games during the break

Studying Whatsapp Shut off Whatsapp and study!

Over the years, a common statement that I have heard (and, admittedly, also sometimes made)

is that planning has been a futile effort since nothing usually goes according to plan. This

observation quite single-handedly discourages systematic planning and instead seems to

promulgate a casual lifestyle, since the outcome is seemingly similar.

However, on analysing a little deeper, Ive realized that one of the major reasons that a planusually fail is on account of creating over-dependence of primarily uncertain tasks among

themselves. For example, we plan a tentative meeting, and schedule our plans around it. If the

meeting stands cancelled or rescheduled, all our remaining plans become unrealistic or

stretched. The other reason for failure of plans is poor scheduling. This is exactly why a student,


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who keeps attending back-to-back lectures without reasonable gaps, usually finds himself

waning in both interest and attention. After all, while time optimization is important, one

cannot ignore the positive inter-relation between rest and productivity.

Thus, it is important to realize that while inter-relating activities will undoubtedly improve

productivity, one must think the consequences through carefully and accordingly decide on

how, what and when to correlate tasks. As the old Sanskrit saying roughly translates- Anexcess of anything can be catastrophic.

Chapter 6- Dont just plan, plan and plan!

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

- Peter Drucker

Once, while I was visiting a relative, I saw one of my cousins lost deep in thought. His

countenance was calm but determined. His body was limp and motionless, as he lay slouchedagainst the window sill. I was intrigued. I walked up to him and, gently tapping him on the

shoulder, broke his reverie. He looked at me quizzically and asked, Anything important? I

couldnt hold back, and asked him what it was that was keeping him so mentally preoccupied.

Ah! Im planning which university to go to for my MS degree. MIT seems fair enough. But I

like Caltech better. The professors at both places seem good. Its a tough choice to make! I was

pleasantly surprised. I never knew that he had received offers from both these universities.

Congratulating him heartily, I asked him when he was planning to join. In his slow,

characteristic voice, he said, Bro, I have yet to give the GRE!

Being a dreamer is wonderful. Planning activities is awesome. But working towards the plan

is most critical. We all tend to make lofty plans, but back out at the slightest hint of adversity.

Remember- a plan is only as good as it is execution. Making plans is useless unless one works

towards their successful completion. Moreover, one must realize that sustained effort (and not

ad-hoc, irregular work) is the key to managing time well. The more you persevere, the better

you save time in the long run. While patch-work may save you the blushes in the short-term, it

is only a well-planned and well-executed strategy that helps you optimize in the long-term.

The best strategy to execute tasks is to constantly set time-bound, micro-targets and work

towards their fulfilment. These tasks must be the pieces of the bigger jigsaw puzzle- your long-

term vision. Align your targets. Define deliverables. Set parameters for measuring the

outcomes. These are yours to define. You alone need to decide what your desired outcome is

and what milestones are important to you in achieving those goals. And give it your best shot!

Its like your favourite mobile games. As you complete one level, you enter another. Similarly,

upon finishing one planning-execution cycle, move onto the next. Make the targets more

ambitious if you are able to realize them more easily.


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Chapter 7- Procrastination: Your biggest ENEMY

Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill.

- Christopher Parker

Mom, the assignment is due after a week! I will work on it tomorrow for sure! Does this

statement sound familiar? I bet it does. Most of us, if not all of us, have the nasty habit of

keeping things for the last moment. After all, the work does get done eventuallyso whats the

big fuss about?

Now imagine a situation where your assignment is due the next day and youve not yet

worked on it. Somehow, for some unfortunate reason, you fall severely ill and are unable to

work on the assignment. What next? Youre obviously thinking of making excuses about your

health to the teacher. Maybe he or she even agrees and doesnt castigate you. But, at the end of

the day, by not doing your work, youre just going to be piling up a greater load of work on

yourself in the forthcoming few days.

Procrastination may seem like a temporarily easy way out, but its consequences are often

more damaging than the problem that one tried to avoid. Unfortunately, to most of us, the

immediate short-term benefits of delaying work seem much more desirable than putting in

immediate effort. If one needs to manage time efficiently, this must immediately stop! No

matter how systematically and optimally you approach a problem when you actually do,

initial procrastination may completely undo all your efforts. For example, even if you are

capable of finishing an assignment better than others but dont adhere to submission deadlines,

all your effort is goes in vain.

DO NOT DELAY

One of the most challenging questions my students ask me for advice on is, Sir, I really dont

like this activity. My heart isnt in it. The moment I start working on it, I feel drowsy. Hence I

avoid it as much as I can. How do I tackle this issue? Indeed, procrastination is often born out

of a lack of interest in the activity. For, if you like something, the probability of you doing it is

generally high!

If a particular activity is not to ones liking, there are usually two approaches one can adopt. The

first is a brute-force approach, where you decide that the task must be done regardless of liking.

Hence, you just do it! Usually, this is where you may face a lot of internal inertia to kick-start the

DND


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task, but youve got to convince yourself that it is something worth the effort. After all, life may

not always give you fair or easy choices. There are going to be things that you have to do

becausewellyou have to!Treat such activities as needs and finish them off as soon as you

can. It may help you to realize that the sooner youre done with these works, the sooner

youre going to be free to do what you want to do!

The second approach is to try and develop an affinity for a task by associating other activitiesthat may interest you alongwith it. Personally, I have used this approach quite a few times and

it has worked well for me. I distinctly remember how I used to hate taking compulsory walks

for an hour every day. But it was something that I needed to do. So I figured that listening to

music and talking to friends while on a walk would actually help me pass my time brilliantly. It

worked so well that today I actually look forward to taking walks just so that I get that much

me time.Perhaps, all of you can find similar tasks to associate with, that makes your work

both- easy and fun!

Whatever approach you decide to take, just rememberdo what you can today, for there may

not be another day.

Chapter 8- Work Smart, Work Well

Hard work is when we keep repeating the same old things in order to make a difference in the results.

Smart work is being able to discover and correct mistakes and keep working at the resulting things in order

to make a difference in the results.

- Renjit Ebroo

One hot summer afternoon, a crow was very thirsty. It saw a jug half-filled with water and tried

to drink the water. However, the water level was too low. The smart crow, after cogitating for a

few minutes, hit upon a plan. It flew to a river nearby, picked up a few stones in its beak from

the river-bank and flew back to where the jug was. It then dropped the stones into the jug.

Voila! The water level rose up and the crow was easily able to drink the water.

Now while we may all choose to praise the crow for its ingenuity, dogged persistence, hard

work and resourcefulness, there is an obvious flaw in its plan- if it did make the trip to the river

anyway, why couldn't it just drink the river water instead?! Undoubtedly, hard work and

planning is a key component of time management. However, an equally critical,

complementary but often underrated aspect is smart work.

Imagine someone asking you to solve a math problem like, say, what is two times two. No

matter how many times you solve this problem, the answer will remain the same. As long as

you know that two times two is four, doing this problem once or one hundred times will make

no difference! And this is where smart work becomes important- there is no glory in repeating

a mundane task several times after already having achieved a level of proficiency in that task.

Smart work is all about recognizing that, given a limited time span, there must be a trade-off

between quantity and quality. And that trade-off must be made in a manner that optimisesthe output.


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Most of the times, I have seen students solving the same, easy type of problems over and over

again in their study time. Their justification- we can do a lot more of these problems in the same

time! This strategy, while seemingly excellent, is unlikely to yield good results. One simply does

not become awesome by being repetitive! A much better approach would possibly be to solve

fewer easy problems and focus on tackling a melange of problems of different types in order to

get comfortable with the overall aspects of the subject.

Working smart doesn't mean compromising on hard work. Undoubtedly, hard work is

essential to build strong fundamentals. In fact, the best sort of approach would be to initially put

in most of the hard work and, as time progresses, switch to a more result oriented, smart work

approach.

A lot of you may now be wondering, But how do I work smart? It seems like such a vagueconcept! Well, truth to speak, there is no universal way of smart work. However, one of the

ways thats worked very well for me has been to be organized in my approach from the very

beginning. For example, whenever I make test papers for my students, I usually save them up

meticulously in separate, named folders so that the next time I need to refer to a few of those

questions, I dont need to search much. While this seems like a relatively trivial activity to do,

youd probably be amazed at the amount of time it has saved me in terms of compiling study

materials!

Many students suffer on account of not being able to read too much before the exam due to

limited time. There is a simple workaround to this. While studying things for the first time,

make a separate set of concise notes on your own, one that contains the important, exam-

worthy points classified in a manner that you can best understand. It can be a chart, a diagram,

a cartoon sketch, a paragraph or simply bullet points- whatever works for you. But make sure

you put in the effort. This combination of hard work and smart work will reap you rich

dividends before the exam, when youve got all the important notes in a concise manner and

therefore you dont need to read up pages and pages of information. Its just that simple!

I recently came across another interesting technique that enables one to work smart. This was

actually pointed out to me by an ex-student, who is currently pursuing engineering. He told meabout the Pomodoro Technique which seems to work well for him. This technique relies on a

method that combines systematic approach with time-bound goal setting. While the detailed

description of this technique is a topic worth exploring unto itself, the basic idea is to set a time


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limit for a set of tasks and work to an alarm that sounds the end of the time interval. Typically, a

good idea would be to set an interval of, say, one hour and decide on a set of tasks (or maybe a

set of questions!) to be tackled in this time interval. As soon as the timer sounds the alarm, stop

what youre doing and check-off whatever you have achieved. If youve underachieved, take a

short break (about five minutes) and restart the process with a new set of tasks (or maybe

include some of the unfinished ones there as well). If youve achieved your objectives, take a

slightly longer break (about fifteen minutes) before repeating the process again. Eventually, theidea behind this technique is to enable a person to understand and reduce the impact of internal

and external disruptions on the task-flow and execution. A very interesting aspect of this

process is also to make a record of any disruptions that you may face during the time interval,

so that you can revisit the problem areas and work towards identifying solutions.

Whatever your approach to working smart, remember- you know your strengths and

weaknesses. You know what you dont know. Always try harder to work on those aspects that

you can improve and keep reinforcing those aspects that youre good at. Only then will you be

able to find your sweet spot!

Chapter 9- Its perfectly okay to feel over-awed at times

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

- Winston Churchill

I vividly remember my first semester at IT Bombay. Academics, which I usually excelled at,

was suddenly getting big on me. My talents, which I had previously been quite proud of,

seemed to pale in comparison to those my peers and seniors had. I was struggling to cope witha changed environment, where I had to start afresh, re-establish myself and try to carve a space

for myself among a crowd that was teeming with intellect and talent. I tried hard, made many

plans, tried to allocate priorities and give adequate time where I thought necessary. And yet- I

wasnt doing too well. It was a terrible feeling. The MA105 (Maths) exam, where I blanked out,

quite shattered my sense of balance. It was like being sucked into a vortex and not knowing

whats going to happen next

What I have undergone is what most people undergo in some form or the other in their lives.

Weve all been over-awed at some point, not knowing how to move on or what to do. Weve

tried hard, done what we can, and yet, everything seems to stack up against us. Well, its

perfectly okay to feel this way. Trials and tribulations are a part of life. No matter how much

one prepares, theres always the chance that things may not work out.

The trick is to accept the temporary setback as a life-lesson and try to analyse it for possible

ways of betterment. Be diligent and honest in your review. Dont castigate yourself for things

you cannot control. There are times when even your best efforts may be nullified by

circumstances. Accept the fact that things werent up to the mark in this instance, reflect upon

what can be done to attain a better outcome and improvise by using a better sense of

judgement and planning for the next time. But keep working, keep trying and never give up!Remember, you only fail if you stop trying. Every setback is only a corrective step towards a

better future. As they saytry and try till you succeed!


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Chapter 10- The power is yours

Trust your instincts. Follow your heart.- Debasish Mridha

Weve reached the fag end of this small book. A lot has been said about what you should do

and how you should probably go about doing it. Im quite sure that this hasnt really been

gospel. Most of you must have, in your own way, put a lot of these things into practice.

Through this book, Ive merely tried to help you think of a systematic way in which you can go

about tasks so that you may be able to optimize time.

A senior Professor of mine once gave me extremely good advice that I feel compelled to share

with all of you at this juncture. He told me, Tejas, a lot of people are going to give you advice. It

is, in fact, very easy to dole out advice! But remember, at the end of the day- listen to all but do

what your heart says.

All of you will receive all kinds of advice- some good, some indifferent and some bad. Different

people will tell you different things. Everyone will seem to be correct, and you may feel

compelled to follow their advice because they are senior or because you respect them. But

remember, you alone must decide what advice to use and what to refuse. Do what works

best for you. Manage your time on your terms. Assimilate the best advice from wherever you

can get it and frame up your own best course of action. There is nothing better than your owngut to tell you what works for you. Temper it with practice and sprinkle it with a garnishing of

others wisdom. You will surely come up with a recipe that works. As Captain Planet said-

THE POWER IS YOURS!

Try Hard

Don't Panic

Keep Trying till you Win

Documents

Time Out- A Student's Guide to Effective Time Management