COVER STORY
Where do the hours go?
Graduate students and procrastination experts share their
best time-management tips.
By Amy Novotney
Print version: page 26
April Krowel cringes every time she recalls it. It was early December and she had planned to
decorate her home for Christmas with her husband and 2-year-old daughter. But she still
hadn't started her 30-page practicum paper, which was due the following week.
"I really thought it would be no big deal," says Krowel, a counseling psychology doctoral
student at Ball State University. "But it literally took all weekend to complete. I ended up
getting it done and got a good grade, but it was at the expense of spending time with my
family."
After that weekend, she made a promise to herself never to let it happen again. Now, she
uses Apple's iCal calendar program to keep better track of upcoming assignments and
schedules time for working on them weeks before they're due. She also sets reminders to
avoid forgetting anything.
"It's very important to me that my family doesn't suffer while I'm pursuing my PhD," she says.
Krowel's ruined weekend was the result of an all-too-common phenomenon known as the
planning fallacy, says procrastination researcher and Carleton University psychology professor
Timothy A. Pychyl, PhD. He and other researchers have found that people tend to
overestimate how long it will take to complete short tasks and underestimate the time longer
projects will take. Then there's the fact that we forget to schedule time for the basics, says
Pychyl.
"One of the biggest myths when it comes to time management is that next week always looks
free," Pychyl says. "But if you put everything into the calendar that you have to do before you
do anything else — things like eating, sleeping, buying groceries — you see right away that
you really don't have a lot of time."
Time management is especially important for graduate students because they have so many
concurrent projects, and that is likely to continue throughout their careers, Pychyl says. Get
your schedule under control with these tips from several time management mavens:
Audit your time
Take a week to keep track of exactly how you spend your time, Pychyl suggests. Be it
showering, eating or doing laundry, every activity should be tracked.
Nicholas Scheidt, for example, uses Google Calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar/render) to
schedule and color-code every single thing he does, from driving to sleeping, to going out to
brunch on Sunday mornings.
"Every single hour on my calendar is accounted for, so that I have a very clear view of what I'm
doing," says Scheidt, a clinical psychology graduate student at Carlos Albizu University in
Miami. Then, when he needs to find extra time to study for exams or write a paper, he just
looks at the calendar and reprioritizes.
"It's just so helpful to know where every hour is going because then you can really control
your time better," he says. Even just tracking your schedule for a week gives you a much
better sense of how you are spending your time, how long certain tasks such as grocery
shopping or reading email really take. You can then build a more accurate schedule for
yourself.
Find what works best for you
Experiment with a few different schedules, suggests Cady Block, a medical-clinical
psychology doctoral student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. If you're a morning
person, set aside a couple of hours in the morning to study. Block says she tends to work best
by doing what she calls "chunking," where she does certain tasks on certain days.
"I found that shifting my mindset too many times during the day — between conducting
research, attending practicum for a few hours, and then visiting another site to see patients,
for example — made me inefficient," she says. "But if I lump all research into one day, and
practica into another, I am able to concentrate all of my attention on what I'm doing."
She also chooses not to work on weeknights, reserving that time for relaxation, and then
spends a portion of her weekend on coursework and research activities that can be done
outside the lab, such as writing manuscripts.
"I know other students who do the opposite, and that works for them," she says.
Establish bright lines
Leave little room for negotiation once you put something on your agenda, Pychyl says.
"There's no starting the task at 10:15 a.m. if you said you're going to start it at 10 a.m.," he says.
"You have to honor your schedule as if it's set in stone, because otherwise you're setting the
precedent that these things don't matter." If you must give yourself any leeway on this, plan
two options for the time chunk — for example, either read studies or write a section of a
paper. This strategy should apply to both work time and personal time, Pychyl says: "There
needs to be a point in the day where you say, OK, I'm going to do some recreation now."
Just get started
So much of good time management is getting past the "I don't feel like it" mentality, Pychyl
says. "The truth is that your motivational state does not have to match the task at hand," he
says. "Very often, attitudes follow behavior, so just get started." You'll likely be surprised by
your renewed interest in the task once you make a little progress.
Get (a little) help from friends
Block suggests enlisting another student in your cohort to help keep you accountable and
meeting with him or her often to review progress. "I know of students who put together
‘dissertation groups' where they met once per month and reviewed progress on their
dissertations," she says. "Your peers can often be your key to success in graduate school, as
long as you choose them well."
Use small chunks of time
How often do you think to yourself, "I only have 15 minutes before my next appointment —
that's not enough time to write that memo/read that article/type up those client notes. I'll just
surf the Web instead"? Pychyl suggests using that time to get started on the task. "You might
be surprised at how much you can get done in a day by just using those small chunks of time
to make progress on something," he says.
Use technology to avoid distraction
Social networking and email checking are a procrastinator's best friend. To help you stay on
task, download a productivity tool that allows you to block certain sites on certain days and
times of the week, such as Leech Block (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/leechblock/)
, Google's StayFocused
(https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji?hl=en) or
Apple's Focusbar app (http://focusbarapp.com/) .
"If you know that Facebook or YouTube consumes a good amount of your time, these apps
can help eliminate those distractors," says Sheila Modir, a clinical psychology doctoral student
at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Abandon perfection
As a busy graduate student, you don't have the time and energy to give every project your all,
says Aileen Chang, a school psychology doctoral student at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. If there's an assignment that's not crucial to your realm of study, but that you're
required to complete, Chang recommends giving yourself only a set amount of time to do it.
"Once that time limit is up, consider the product ‘good enough' and move on to the next task,"
she says.
Reward yourself
It's important to plan breaks — and even an occasional vacation — to refresh your mind and
spirit, Scheidt says. While he was writing his dissertation last year, Scheidt took day trips to the
botanical gardens to clear his mind. As a bigger reward — and an impetus to stay on task —
he scheduled a trip to Argentina for after the project was completed.
"You really need to have incentives like that to stay motivated," he says.
Amy Novotney is a writer in Chicago.
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