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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