Student Fitness

By: Joe Norton 

Let me begin with one of my favorite quotes,
by the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” said Alice ”That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where” — Said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”, said the Cat.

Too much to do and not enough time…
No idea what to do when you do have time?

It’s an issue everyone deals with. There are many things we can do, slight tricks and tips, that may shave off time in the short-term. However, for Long term time management to be successful we need something more than “top 10″ lists of one sentence tips. I see this problem especially in College students. Of course we go for the easy lists of simple changes because we want to put in minimal effort/cost while reaping maximum benefit/profit - college students are bound to the same economical rules as any organization.

From my perspective as a college student I see the underlying problems seems to be that the majority of students just have no idea how to schedule, have never had to prioritize time, and thus have no idea where their priorities lay. Students tend to just be dropped in the college environment with no clue as to how to arrange their Student Schedule or how to budget their time to include all their major responsibilies, while also including freetime for flexibility and personal time for relaxation. I will be writing several articles over the coming weeks on Student Schedules and Time Management Skills for Students - but to start, here is the first in the series on Goals & Priorities - the Source of your activities.

Write out your goals -> Find your Priorities

Example:
Daily/Weekly Goals (goals for daily or weekly use)
- go to all my classes, get all my HW done thats due tomorrow, get started on finding sources for essay due next week, go to Gym tonight.

Short Term Goals (few weeks to a month)
- Schedule interviews for summer internship for next month,
Get business cards for my websites to give out at interviews.

Medium Term Goals (semester/several months/even a year)
- Be active in my Student Professional organizations, get above 3.3 GPA this semester (NO C’s!)

Long Term Goal (more than a year - lifetime goals)
-  Graduate from school without having gone crazy,  have atleast one revenue generating company by graduating, buy my own island (lifetime goal)

What I’m talking about here corresponds with the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey, because my advice - like Dr. Covey’s, is intended to involve the reformation of your “Characer Ethic” which are deep core values and principles that you live by. As opposed to the simple “Personality ethic” solutions like what kinds of phones to buy or what kind of filing system or how to trick people into doing what you want, because they don’t change solve the internal problem of prioritizing.
They only intend to make external fixes. are all bogus short-term fixes that leave you with your roots in a system that perpetuates the “unrest” we’ve all experienced.

Find your Roles -> they should coordinate with your Goals

Example of my Roles:

“Entrepreneur”, ”Student”, ”Leader”,
“Health & Fitness Enthusiast”,
and last but not least “Family Member & Friend”

I try to phrase them as this kind of statement:
To be the best _ I can be.
Because this phrasing maximizes your commitment to the objective and because it also takes into account that maybe you can’t be the world’s best X, but you ALWAYS have control over being best you are capable of being.

How this helps me allocate my Student Schedule is -I look at my roles, and then compare them to my goals and make sure they are in alignment with one another.
For instance: Every single one of my goals are intended to make me stronger in one of those given roles. At the end of the day I should be able to look at those roles most important to me and say: The reason I did X today, is because it improves my situation in the Entrepreneur Role, or the reason I woke up so early this morning was so that I would have time to fulfill my duty to myself to be a “Health & Fitness Enthusiast” and thus dragged myself to the gym hours before I had to be up for class.

The key to this system of Priority-Time Management works on the basis that you don’t “Find” time for your goals - YOU MAKE IT. Your scheduling in these areas of importance to you should supercede any planning for non-essential roles in your life.

I highly suggest those interested take a look at a prior post of mine where I posted several of my favorite (FREE) videos of Time Management Skills for Students.

By: Joe Norton 

We’re in college… we’re dirt poor…
and we have tons of stuff we want to do.
How can we possibly juggle our classes and all tasks associated
with those, clubs or teams we’re on, trips,
and the other million activities we want to do.
It’s simple: Time Management.
Scroll down and take a peek at the most informative, best quality, and most importantly,
FREE lessons on Time Management.

Oh what a broad topic you say? Yes, It definitely is.
But once you understand how essential time management
is you will be able to increase your productivity many times over. Below are some of my favorite videos available for free online. They are all longer than an hour, I don’t go for “clips” - I want feature length lectures. Sure, their are a million Guru’s on the topic - but I have yet to find any of them giving up their “precious secrets” for free. Yet, I find that members of the academic community are not only willing to - but they LOVE giving these tips to students. Take advantage of their intelligence, don’t pay Tony Robbins when his speeches are only long upsells for more expensive seminars.

Videos you can watch ONLINE for FREE

Randy Pausch on “Time Management” - This is the best speech I’ve ever heard on the topic. The things he discusses are concrete “life hacks” and not just theory. This guy, Randy Pausch, has the most ridiculous backstory - I’m not even going to get into it, just believe me and watch this must see video. This guy is the epitome of someone who wants to do as much as possible in as little time as possible.

Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” - About life and achieving your dreams. The same guy from the above video. This speech is equally informative and way more heart wrenching. Also, a must see video.

“Time Management” by College Law professors and Deans -
This is also another Time Management video I recently saw, it’s good, not nearly as good as Randy Pausch but still it’s worth watching. The people in it have some serious credentials and definitely know what they are talking about.

Each speech is more than an hour, but I think it’s worth it. When nothing is on t.v. I throw one of these on and listen to it in the background of whatever I’m working on. It’s amazing material.