Planning, Goal Setting and Time Management

PLANNING, GOAL SETTING AND TIME MANAGEMENT

Planning

Planning is an essential skill for your studies for the following reasons:

1)You will have a number of pieces of coursework to complete – some larger than others – and so learning to plan their completion is going to be essential.

2)Some of that coursework will involve working with other people, and either they will be submitting work for you to check or work with, or you will be submitting work to them. Either way, you and they will need to have some sorts of deadlines by which that work needs to be submitted: that requires planning.

3)Most – if not all – of that coursework will require you to access items from the library, and some items will not be available electronically. If you don’t plan, then you will find the items are unavailable, on loan, or unaccessible for some other reason.

4)Failing to plan generally means (according to most human behaviour) that work is rushed at the last minute. Rushed work tends to be very poor work – whatever your adrenalin tells you – and you will then leave yourself open to car accidents, printer problems, hard-disk crashes and viruses, and all sorts of other issues which get documented by universities as excuses (NB NOT reasons) for late submissions.

Planning involves knowing the answers to a number of fairly basic questions. Let’s imagine that we want to plan a holiday:

1)Where do you want to go?

2)When do you want to go there?

3)How will you get there?

4)What resources – people, money, time, etc. – will you have access to, to enable you to go?

5)What problems could there be in going there?

6)How could those problems be overcome?

(Questions 5 and 6 are important for contingency planning.)

There are two additional and fundamental questions:

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO NEXT?andBY WHEN DO YOU NEED TO HAVE DONE THAT?

We need to bring some of this together. So:

1. Goal setting: Identify three personal goals for this month. ‘By the end of this month, I need to have done/completed/started (Think of three things)… ‘
2. Prioritisation: Which of these three goals is the most important?
3. Planning: What do you need to do to complete that goal? Think of the items below.

I need to have…
By (date)
The resources I need will include ...
The problems I might face could include ...
I might deal with those problems by ...
So, the next thing I need to do is ...

This probably seems fairly straightforward, I think, so why don’t individuals do this? There seem to be a number of reasons:

1)It takes time – and there’s the irony, because a little time spent planning would ensure that less time is spent either ‘making things up’ as circumstances come along or taking too much time to find documents and information.

It is relatively common for people to say that they don’t have enough time to plan. To be fair, it is not usually that folk don’t have enough time, it is sometimes that they are unwilling to put in the effort to do so. Why might it demand some effort? It might require effort because it does not come naturally and because the rewards are not instantly apparent.

2)It takes self-discipline and determination. Not all of us have a lot of that, so it can be tough to ensure we do this regularly.

3)Planning is not a personal preference for some. Some folk do prefer to be more spontaneous than others, and so planning is a somewhat alien activity in some ways.

Bearing in mind the reasons listed above, forward planning is not always done well. (That is why people who struggle to plan employ others to plan certain events for them – marriages, birthday parties, product launches, corporate events, etc.)

Action Planning

We can put some practical ideas into place to help us think about our planning over the next year. Put one goal into each box of Table A below.

A: GOALS

What do I want to have achieved within… / …The next week? / …The next six months? / …The next year?
My work
My personal Interests
My academic studies

Now, what do you need to start doing in order to achieve those goals? Let’s list some actions.

B: ACTIONS

What do I need to have done within…
to achieve the goals listed in A? / …The next week / …The next six months / …The next year.
My work
My personal Interests
My academic studies

An Awkward Interview Question

A slightly reticent individual (called Bill here) went for a job interview as a bailiff. Part of the interview went like this:

Interviewer: ‘Have you got any goals?’

Bill: ‘Any goals? Hmmm. [Pause] No, I try not to set goals because they tend to get at you when you don’t achieve them. So, I make it simple for myself: I aim to be the best there is’.

Interviewer: ‘It’s a good way to make sure you are not failing, if you don’t set any in the first place’.

Bill didn’t get the job – and though a lack of goals was not the only reason, his answer did show a lack of focus and motivation.

Setting Career Goals

Here’s a big question, and recognising that there may be a lot of life ahead, this may not be easy to answer but let’s see what we can do:

‘What do you want your life to look like in ten or fifteen years’ time?’

This broadly describes your life goal. Since it might be a tough question, how about thinking about these things:

• Married? With, or without, a family?
• Renting or having your own home?
• Living in the city/county/country you are now in, or somewhere else?
• Running your own business or organisation, or being employed by someone else?
• Being busy or being relaxed?

The answers will actually depend on the values which are important to you now, but those will change over time – so don’t worry: we’re not going to keep you to what you have thought about here. The second key question is this: ‘What will you need to do to get to have the life you have described above?’

If we use the ‘Having a family’ and ‘Having my own home’ ideas, we can then start to break this down into sub-goals and identify activities and achievements which would help us to achieve these life goals, but the example is easier to follow if we focus on something a little more medium term.

We can assume that we have set ourselves a goal of ‘Becoming a trainee manager after my graduation’. To achieve this, we probably need to ensure that we do the following:

Graduate with a good degree (typically an upper second-class honours, and usually an average in the UK of 60-70% or equivalent across our subjects).

Apply for graduate jobs in time and don’t leave this until the last moment.

Never have any resit examinations.

Develop all our skills and take leadership responsibility in voluntary student societies.

The next step is to break each of these down again and again until the timescales relate to the foreseeable future, by which you time would be in a position to know whether they would be realistic and achievable.

For example: In order to graduate with a good degree, you would need to pass all your courses at 60% and above. In order to pass your courses at 60% and above you would need to attend all your lectures.

You might not need to think about ten or fifteen years in the future just yet, but you should think about what you need to do in order to be doing what you want to do at graduation, which might be as little as thirty-six months away. This is something you need to start doing now.

If you are not sure what you will be doing after your degree, then you are probably the same as many other students around the UK, and there’s nothing very unusual about your situation, but you will need to think about the kinds of activities you enjoy, why you enjoy them, and how those activities might relate to possible employment or ‘work’ after graduation. Have a think about the following:

• Are there any subjects you particularly like in your degree?
• What kinds of activities and tasks do you really enjoy? What gives you a ‘buzz’?
• Are you creative?
• Do you like excitement and challenges? Or do you enjoy stability and routine?

The best thing here is to go and speak to a careers adviser, and you can find these in nearly all universities.

Although you are probably in your first year of university studies, it’s never too early to do this. Build a good relationship with them now and you’ll find them very willing to help you throughout your degree, and the help that they might be able to give you could help you focus on what you want to do during your degree.

Beginning with the End in Mind

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey (1989: 98) suggests that considering what others might say about us at our funeral – and what we’d want them to say – shows a great deal about our values and what we are really like, deep inside – and how we’d define our own success. He states that:

‘To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction’.

The definition of ‘effectiveness’ that he presents is different from one of ‘efficiency’: he argues that we can be highly efficient at things which will have no bearing at all on our long-term goals – in other words, we are being ineffective – and that developing a personal mission statement can be useful.

Goal Setting in Daily Life

Some goals discussed above relate to long-term issues and can provide an overall direction for what you do in the months and years ahead, but they can also have relevance for what we do on a day-to-day basis. What you decide to focus on and prioritise in life is ultimately a matter for you (and maybe parents, spouses and children) to work out – maybe with a little help from a careers adviser. However, on a daily and weekly basis, we need to set much more specific goals. Whilst these goals need to relate in some way to your career goals, their focus is going to be on the short term, and their achievement is going to be a great deal more visible.

Gantt Charts

Planning to complete large and complex projects is not easy: if you need to complete a dissertation, then you might find it a challenge. In some cases, individuals and organisationsuse what are called Gantt Charts.

Basically, Gantt Charts are two-dimensional ‘pictures’ of what a large project looks like (see the figure below). The vertical axis represents the order in which various actions and activities need to take place and the horizontal axis represents time.

Example of a Corporate Gantt Chart showing tasks and timings: Developed using MatchwareMindView.

Gantt Charts like this one are designed for complex projects typically lasting many months and involving significant numbers of people. Life as a student is not usually so complex, so the figure below shows a second example which relates to the development of a three-month long dissertation.

Example of a study-related Gantt Chart

March / April / May / June
Activity / 3 / 10 / 17 / 24 / 31 / 7 / 14 / 21 / 28 / 5 / 12 / 29 / 26 / 2 / 9 / 16
Agree Scope
Submit Proposal
Literature Review
Get Literature on Topic 1
Get Literature on Topic 2
Get Literature on Topic 3
Conduct Interviews
Analyse Data
Meet with Supervisor
Write Dissertation
Submit for Copying / This task to be completed by mid September

Unless you are studying project management as a subject in some way, or wishing to learn to manage complex projects (where there is a real advantage in being able to use project management software), there is probably no need to download or install any additional software: the student example above was done using MS Word, but could easily have been done with Excel.

There are two very important principles to bear in mind when using such a tool when there is a deadline for coursework:

1)Always start with the deadline and work backwards: if you estimate how long the different parts of the coursework will take correctly, you should be able to determine when you need to start. (NB people are great at underestimating, so be absolutely realistic with yourself on this one.)

2)Always build some contingency time into your planning. If you work on the assumption that ‘If it can go wrong, it probably will’ this may not be realistic in every situation, but if you have some flexibility built into your planning and have set yourself a deadline before the official deadline, you will not need to panic if something does indeed go wrong.

There is a third issue to bear in mind also – although it relates to everything you do, not just to your planning: ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK ON AN EXTERNAL DEVICE OR AN ONLINE STORAGE FACILITY. Yes, you might have a good virus protection programme,and yes, you might be able to get an extension for certain reasons, but that won’t stop your laptop or tablet being stolen or crashing completely, and most universities do not give extensions for IT reasons. There is nothing worse than working towards a deadline only to find that you need to start again from scratch, but it is common for students to ignore this and find themselves struggling.

Motivation and Time Management

There are a number of questions in this material on time management related to the question ‘Why don’t people do this?’ and some attempt has been made to address some of the knowledge and ability issues: the demonstration of any skill also requires motivation and opportunity. Well, opportunity is all around you as a student – the completion of work on time, attendance at lectures and so on – but the question of motivation remains, and for many people this is the killer question as it were.

Procrastination

Procrastination may be defined as ‘Putting off a task which has a higher priority in favour of one which has a lower priority’.

A review of the literature on procrastination (Steel, 2007) reveals that it is a particular problem for students (Steel, P., 2007 ‘The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure’,Psychological Bulletin 133 (1): 65–94):

• Estimates indicate that 80–95% of college students engage in procrastination.
• Approximately 75% consider themselves procrastinators.
• Almost 50% procrastinate consistently and problematically.
• The absolute amount of procrastination is considerable, with students reporting that it typically occupies over one third of their daily activities, often enacted through sleeping, playing, or TV watching.

(Taken from Steel, 2007; p.65.)

You are reading this book: are you procrastinating? Only if you need to decide whether you really should be reading a more important book or doing some coursework due tomorrow, and if that coursework is due tomorrow, then you really need to put this book down and get on with it. Would you do that, without it being suggested to you? Probably not.

There is particularly one important aspect to this, and whilst it is important, it is also simple:

For many people, the natural motivation is to do what brings us short term pleasure, rather than wait for better rewards in the longer term.

This idea is called Hyperbolic Discounting and applies to everything from dieting – ‘I’d like to have a really good enjoyable meal now than lose weight in the longer term’ – to drug addiction, the over-use of social networking sites, and the way we go about managing our time. ‘I’d rather go out with my friends tonight than begin the essay due in four days’ time’ is something that is fairly commonly heard amongst students, whilst rationally we would argue that to start the essay now makes a lot more sense (giving us more time to prepare it, and enabling us to enjoy our lives more when we can relax and celebrate its completion).

The concept has been borne out by a great deal of scientific research, and psychologists have been fascinated as to why human beings do not make rational decisions when faced with differences over choosing long term and short term. The most famous experiment in this regard was by Walter Mischel in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and has featured recently in the UK in adverts for a well-known brand of children’s sweets. Marshmallows were placed in front of children with a promise that if they were able to stop themselves from eating the sweet for the duration of the time they were left alone, they could double their reward. Few could refrain, of course, and yet the rational decision would have been to wait and receive a double reward.

In following the participants for many years, Mischelrealised that some refrained from taking the marshmallow not because they were particularly clever, but because they developed strategies for making sure they did what worked best for them in the longer term.