Learning Time Management Skills
Learning Time Management Skills
Livia S. Umeda, MT-BC, NMT
Have you ever felt like time slips through your fingers? A whole day goes by and you didn’t get as much as you had hoped done? Perhaps it feels like hours go by, in which you try to be productive but things don’t get completed. If so… this is the blog post for you!
In this blog post we’ll chat about:
Why time management is necessary
How to plan ahead and complete big projects without stress
Common platforms and planners
Summary
Why is Time Management Necessary?
As music therapy students, interns, and professionals, we often have a lot on our plates- more than other respective students and colleagues. A lot of times these are complex projects with many steps that take a lot of time to complete. For a lot of us, there is nothing in our primary, secondary, or tertiary education about how to manage our time. Instead, we bumble along. Let’s take a moment to chat about it here.
How to plan ahead and complete projects without stress
When given a large project, for example a ten-page music therapy research paper in university coursework, it is rarely effective to wait until the night before a due date to complete it. Instead, at the start of the semester, since a course syllabus is provided on the first day of class, it’s helpful to identify the steps necessary to complete the project and identify when each step will be completed by on a calendar. For instance, if a university follows the semester-system (a total of 16 weeks) and this project is due the week before finals (15 weeks to complete it), the steps can be assigned based on each week of the semester. Here’s a possible breakdown:
Week 1: Brainstorm ideas & preliminary research
Week 2: Brainstorm ideas & preliminary research
Week 3: Establish research question(s)/ purpose statements
Week 4: Continue preliminary research (and contact university research librarian if applicable)
Week 5: Continue preliminary research
Week 6: Identity sections of research paper
Week 7: Targeted research
Week 8: Targeted research
Week 9: Continue targeted research & begin writing the research paper
Week 10: Write the research paper
Week 11: Write the research paper
Week 12: Write the research paper
Week 13: Write the research paper
Week 14: Proofread (and receive feedback from the university writing center/ instructor if applicable)
Week 15: Proofread and submit research paper
If you use the method discussed above, in which you (1) identify the steps necessary to complete a project (regardless if it is academic, clinical, or of another nature), (2) determine the amount of time you have until the due date and break it into “chunks,” such as weeks, and (3) assign each “chunk” a task, you will be able to complete the project without stress.
Common platforms and planners
Some common platforms and apps you can use on your phone, tablet, and/or computer are:
Google Calendar
Reminders can be integrated onto the calendar itself.
Events can be categorized based on level of importance or by type (such as meetings, clinical sessions, time spent driving to various locations for work, documentation time, and established time for self-care)
Apple calendar
Apple reminders
Reminders can be set to send you a notification to your iPhone at certain times. For example, if you want to remind yourself to complete clinical documentation on the day’s sessions at 3:30PM each day, it can be set to send you a reminder with that title every day.
Countdown app (iPhone)
For some people, it is helpful to see a countdown until due dates of large projects or countdowns until certain events (such as concerts).
Stepping away from electronic resources, for those completing coursework- it’s often helpful to buy a wall calendar that you can write all assignment due dates and other events on. It can help you determine your busy weeks so you can figure out when to assign yourself less “work.”
Summary
In this blog post we briefly chatted about:
Why time management is necessary
How to plan ahead and complete big projects without stress
Common platforms and planners
Summary
If you ever have any other questions, there are lots of people surrounding you that you can ask for help (such as friends, professors, or others). You can also always email us at themusictherapyspot@gmail.com.
