Session 4 STUDY SKILLS

4.1 TIME MANAGEMENT

Time management skills are your abilities to recognize and solve personal time
management problems. With good time management skills you are in control of your
time and your life and one is able to maintain a work, personal, academic and family
life balance. The skills include planning, allocating tasks, monitoring, scheduling, and
prioritizing.

Plan to show how the learners plan their week, develop an agenda incorporating class
times, study times, student involvement and free leisure time. It is hoped by the end of
this session, the students will learn basic skills of scheduled planning, the effectiveness
of “to do” list and how to put their plans into actions

4.2 Time management helps in:

1. Creating an environment conducive to effectiveness – get organized; protect
your studying time; be motivated for the task
2. Setting of priorities – How do we set priorities?
- set goals (SMART goals); have a clear action plan; stick to the set deadlines.
Have a daily, weekly, monthly plan
- ABC – planning: A: tasks that are perceived as being urgent and important.
B: tasks that are important but not urgent. C: tasks that are neither urgent
nor important.
- Pareto analysis – 80:20 rule. This is the idea that 80% of the tasks are
completed in 20% of the disposable time. The remaining 20% of the tasks
will take up 80% of the time.
3. Carrying out activities around the priorities
4. Reduction of time spent on non-priorities
5. Incentive to modify behaviour to ensure academic success

4.3 How to improve time management skills

- Get organized now
 - Stop procrastination
- Enhance your decision making skills and techniques
- Prioritize in techniques that save your time and energy.
- Understand what is planning and why you need to plan

4.4 PLANNING
Definition of planning:
- Planning is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to
achieve a desired goal.
- Planning is the process of setting goals, developing strategies and outlining tasks
and schedules to accomplish the goals. It involves the creation and maintenance of a
plan.
- Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal.
- Planning is one of the executive functions of the brain, encompassing the
neurological processes involved in formulation, evaluation and selection of a
sequence of thoughts and actions to achieve a desired goal.
- Planning is like a map – this helps one see how much they have progressed towards
the goals and how far they are to their destination.

4.5 Importance of planning

- Planning reduces the chances of failure.
- Planning eliminates wastage of time and energy
- Planning must not be left to chance as it ensures due attention to every subject or
activity.
- Increases efficiency
- Facilitates proper coordination
- Aids in organizing – stops procrastination
- Gives right decisions
- Keeps good control thus reducing stress
- Helps to achieve objectives
- Motivates the learner – and ensures equitably study time for the learner
- Develops moral values on the learner eg punctuality
- Encourages creativity and innovation – work smart not work hard
- Helps in decision making
- Prevent burnout
Levels of planning
- Short term planning – (0-1 year)
- Medium term planning (2-5 years)
- Long term planning (5-10 years)

4.6 Decision making process

A decision is any conscious choice as opposed to instinctive behaviour. It is a process
of selecting from among alternative choices of action/ strategies. Decision making is a
process of generating and evaluating alternatives and making choices among them.
Decision making steps:-
1. Identify and define the problem/ idea/ opportunity to be acted on – problem
is how to exhale in my academics – identify the purpose of your decision
2. Gather information - What factors does the problem involve? - Gather
pertinent information about alternative solution
3. Develop possible alternative solutions – problems can be addressed in several
ways. It’s always best to generate as many ways of solving a problem as
possible – subject to availability of time and clarity of the decision.
4. Brain storming and list different possible choices
5. Consider constraints and evaluate the alternatives/ choices – consider the
pros and cons/ cost benefit analysis
6. Determine the best alternative/ choice – selecting the alternative offering the
highest promise of attaining the objective, subject to the constraints identified.
Fear of making a wrong decision sometimes causes students not to make
decisions at all.
7. Put the decision into action - Implement the solution and follow up – decisions
are not made in a vacuum. It’s important to consider the environmental factors
(both external and internal) that could affect the decision making process and
subsequently the quality of the decision making.
 8. Evaluate the outcome of your decision and action steps – what lessons have
you learnt? What remedial action can you take?

4.7 Barriers to effective planning and effective decision making

- Planning is time consuming and expensive process
- Procrastination – is a practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more
urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones thus
putting off impending tasks to a later time sometimes just before the deadline.
Procrastination results in stress, a sense of guilt and crisis and several loss of
personal productivity.
- Lack of clarity on how to carry out the tasks
- Student syndrome – this is a phenomenon that many people will start to fully apply
themselves to a task just at the latest possible moment before the deadline. It’s a
form of procrastination

4.8 Overcoming barriers to effective planning and decision making

- Get organized now - Planning must be organized to allow for wider participation in
the formulation and execution of plans
- Planning should be definite – time specific and focused – time management skills
- Goals and premises must be clearly communicated by the learner
- Long range planning must be integrated with short range planning
- Make SMART decisions faster.
- Plans should be flexible – allow for changes so as to the changing environment.
- Plans should be reviewed regularly to ensure that the premises still hold and for
changes as appropriate.
- Where possible work as a team

4.9 Resources management

Resources management is assigning the right resources, to the right project, at the
right time so as to attain optimal results, efficiency and success. Resources include
manpower, money, materials, machines, etc. It involves skills tracking.
Reflection question: How can you apply the time management skills, planning
skills, decision making skills resources management skills to enhance your
academic performance?