Page 80 - Keys To Community College Success

HOW CAN YOU
handle time traps?

Everyone experiences time traps—situations and activities that eat up time you could
spend in a more productive way. With thought and focus, you can address and conquer
time traps. Note that this doesn’t mean never doing things like chatting with friends on
Facebook or watching Funny or Die videos; it means making conscious decisions about
when and how long you do certain activities so that they don’t derail your most impor-
tant goals. It also means thinking ahead about risks—both the risk of being unproduc-
tive, as well as the risk of prioritizing work over your social life—and what rewards may
or may not come from them.
Some time traps are a part of daily life—unavoidable, but able to be managed and
addressed. Key 2.5 lists the ones students encounter most often and offers ideas for
how to take control of them. Other time traps are linked to choices that people make.
It can be risky to put out the high level of attention and focus that your work may
demand, but the reward is an education that can help you fulfill your life’s most sig-
nificant goals. Make your most productive choices by confronting procrastination, set-
ting effective limits, and minimizing multitasking.

Confront Procrastination
PROCRASTINATION
The act of putting off a It’s human, and common for busy students, to leave difficult or undesirable tasks until
later. However, if taken to the extreme, procrastination can develop into a habit that
task until another time.
causes serious problems. For example, procrastinators who don’t get things done in the

KEY 2.5 Take control of time wasters.

1. Commute: Although we cannot always control it, the time spent commuting from one place
to another is staggering.
2 Take Control: Use your time on a bus or train to do homework, study, read assignments, or work
CHAPTER 2. Fatigue: Being tired can lead to low-quality work that you have to redo. Fatigue can also
on your monthly budget.

make you feel ready to quit altogether.
Take Control: Determine a stop time for yourself. When your stop time comes, put down the book,
turn off the computer and go to bed. During the day, when you can, take naps to recharge
your battery.

3. Confusion: When you don’t fully understand an assignment or problem, you may spend
unintended amounts of time trying to figure it out.
Take Control: The number one way to fight this is to ask questions. As the saying goes, ask early
and ask often. Students who seek help show they want to learn.

4. Preference and schedule mismatches: When your schedule goes against who you are as
a time manager, you can waste a lot of time trying to stay focused. For example, a night person who
is consistently late to morning classes will spend extra time getting caught up on material he missed.
Take Control: You aren’t likely to get a perfect match, but take your preferences into account as
much as you can when scheduling classes, work, and study time.

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