A Smart Action Plan

A Smart Action Plan After I had started my first year at University I realised that if I want to become a successful student it is crucial to develop time-management skills. It is based on identifying our goals, prioritising and listing them in order to help us achieve the best result. We also need to identify our strengths, look at our work and think how we could improve it to get a better result in the future. We can do so using a diary or personal organiser. Time-management skills are very important because if we know how to organize our time properly, we can carry out more and meet deadlines. It is important to start with setting our priorities because sometimes there is no time to complete all of them. We need to be aware that some of them might take longer than we expected so we should write somewhere what we want to do and when we want to do it. Resources: We should start with identifying our goals and priorities. When doing so, we need to be realistic and definite about them. We must precise wh at needs to be done, how and when. Then, it is recommended to start keeping an academic diary or a personal organizer where we can write in everything we do (such us important dates or study activities). It will help us to look at the way we work and identify where further improvements can be made. (Oxford Brookes University) To take the most out of the diary we should always carry it with us and keep it up to date. It is also recommended to check it many times a day and add new tasks straight into it. The last step is to identify how we spend the time in order to see if we use it productively. We need to list the work we have to do and precise the amount of time we want to spend on carrying out particular tasks. The most important things should be highlighted or stared that can be easily seen, where the least important ones should be written in a pencil so we can change or remove them easily. (Cottrell S., 2003) Reflective comment: The first thing I did in order to improve my time- management skills was doing some background reading. I used a chapter of a book recommended by my tutor as well as some online resources. It gave me understanding of which steps should be taken in order to became successful. I started with identifying my goal, which was preparing a good set of notes for my oncoming exam. Then I started writing in a diary activities I was planning to do. The most important ones I wrote in using a pen (such as searching for material for my notes) and less important in pencil (like going to the store or meeting someone). The following, I highlighted the most important one so every time I opened my diary it was the first thing I saw. It was a reminder of what is need to be done. Then I identified how much time I want to spend on these tasks.