Time Management

Introducing Time management

At the latest Staff Student Liaison Committee some of the student reps requested some help with time management. This is a life skill relevant to everyone whatever their role. We all seem so busy and have trouble fitting everything in to our week. We've put together some tips and resources you might find useful.


First of all how about finding out how good you are at managing your time using this short quiz? This will help you reflect on how/ whether you manage your time.

Tips and online resources

Plan your week - work out how you typically use your time in a standard week using ARU's weekly time tracker. You can then also use their weekly and termly planners (go to the bottom of the webpage) to plan ahead. See also their time management guide on the Getting Organised page of their Study Skills Plus section.


List your activities - there can be a satisfaction in listing jobs and ticking them off. In an ideal world you do your thinking and planning now and then next week you just do what you've scheduled (or at least you don't spend so much time thinking about what you should be doing). In your time tracker you will have identified how much time is needed for which activity so you can spread your activities out over a week realistically in your planner.


Prioritise your activities/ tasks -Identify which tasks are urgent, which are important, which are optional and which aren't important. If something is difficult (perhaps you just don't want to do it) or needs more attention, allocate time when you are freshest or have the most energy not when you are likely to be tired. See Skills you Need's Priority Matrix.


Don't procrastinate or get distracted - go to the labels on the right and choose study skills and you should find a post we did on procrastination in June 2017. Turn your phone off, work somewhere where there aren't things around to distract you (you may find working in the LRC may be a suitable environment for you to work in with less distractions).

Other resources

The Learn Higher website has various short activities you can do to help with time management.


If you prefer watching videos to learn see the BBC Skillswise video on time management.

Alternatively, you may find this video useful:

There are various TED talks you can watch too of course (but do you have the time?).

Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and we are launching our new guide to mental health resources in the LRC. In this, we highlight some of our books on topics such as anxiety, confidence and self-esteem, depression, eating disorders and stress which may be of help. We also recommend a list of moodboosting books and some titles about mindfulness. See a quick preview below.

If you would like a copy of the leaflet, please come in to the LRC and pick one up. We will also make this available on our moodle pages as a pdf.

Mental Health Awareness Week display (with new guide)
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

Some organisations with useful resources

BBC3's Things not to say to someone with depression video features young people who suffer with depression talking about responses they don't find helpful.
Rethink.org (Rethink Mental Illness charity) has a student toolkit to help young people look after their mental health.
Student Minds is a mental health charity for University students and has it's own blog.
Mindfulness for Students may be useful for those of you wanting to find out more about this technique to help with stress and building resilience.
Mind is a mental health charity for all ages with lots of online support and advice. You can read stories and experiences here of people who have battled with mental illness and what has helped them.

Finally for those of you studying mental health as part of your course, our e-resource Issues Online (available from our electronic resources page using your network login details) has a range of e-books and articles on issues such as self harm and suicide, body confidence, anxiety and stress and understanding depression.

Exam stress and Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week - Stress: are we coping?

Next week is Mental Health Awareness Week and as part of this the LRC will be hosting a meditation session on Tuesday 15th May. There are limited spaces so it is on a first come first served basis.

Stress and Exams

It's that time of year again and for many students doing exams it can be a difficult and stressful time. While stress can't be avoided, there are things we can all do to help manage our stress. Here are some resources available on the internet from reputable organisations which might be of help.

Teenmentalhealth.org has a useful factsheet on stress generally. It explains that

• stress isn't the same as anxiety, 
• most stress isn't bad for you (whilst avoiding it may well be) and
• the key to managing it is to learn how best to deal with it.

It explains that you can change how your body feels by

• changing how you think about your stressful experience
• focusing on the problem and thinking of solutions
• using proven techniques to reduce your body's stress response

Online Resources

Student Minds - the student mental health charity - has five main themes to help with exam stress. 

The BBC website has plenty of advice here and here.

The Student Room gives some practical tips.

Have a look at this light-hearted page on how NOT to cope with exam stress.
If you are a lecturer you may find this newspaper article from the Guardian 2 years ago useful, but the links at the bottom of the article do not lead anywhere.

If you want to try some different ways to revise to make it more enjoyable, have a look at our blog entry 4 weeks ago or click on the revision label on the right hand side of the screen.

Stress: are we coping? book display in the LRC
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green event

Be Healthy, Stay Safe, Be Green

Yesterday was the College's annual Be Healthy, Stay Safe, Be Green event and the LRC had a stall at this. We enjoyed talking to students who came to our table and asked them what their prescription for a healthier life would be. Here are some of the suggestions:

Stay healthy

Love yourself

Love life

Be positive

Enthusiasm

Physical exercise (football)

Eat healthy food

Drink water

Stop smoking

Eat less fast food!!!

Smile and have fun

Always make the most of everything

Friendship

Read more

Less stress, less worry!

Eating better!

No drugs

Work hard, relax, exercise

Eat fruit and vegetables - 5 a day.

Student prescriptions for a healthier life
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

National Wellbeing Statistics

Statistics are useful sources of information and the Office of National Statistics website is a good place to start for all sorts of UK statistics (crime, population, employment etc.). Each year they report on the nation's wellbeing. Follow the link to read the latest report which covers happiness, life satisfaction and anxiety levels.

If you want to take your own Happiness Survey the Oxford happiness survey is available to print here  or you can take it online.

At the Be Healthy Stay Safe event, LRC staff enjoyed meeting Wendy, the College's new Counsellor. If you need someone to talk to, you can contact her and she will help you. In the LRC we have a collection of Reading Well Books on Prescription which GPs have recommended (set up by the Reading Agency) including some especially for young people. Books cover topics such as overcoming anxiety, overcoming depression, self esteem, stress and OCD. We also have a number of the mood-boosting books which are feel-good, uplifting fiction reads.

Anti-bullying Week

Finally, this week has also been Anti-bullying week and we had our own display with socks coloured in by students (as recommended by the national campaign).

Anti-bullying Week display
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

Procrastination

Procrastination

It’s nearly the end of the academic year and we’ve noticed there are still lots of students finishing off their work – especially in the library.

Perhaps you are a student who always seems to leave their work to the last minute or are you a lecturer who puts off doing their marking? Perhaps you put off doing the cleaning or tidying at home. Most of us procrastinate.

This can be down to 2 things
1) Procrastination
2) Poor time management

Photo by Kalyan Kanuri. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kalyan/3184149164

Even the best time management skills (such as planning) can fail to have the required results if we don’t actually get on with what is needed, so what is procrastination?

What is procrastination?

For those of you who don’t know this word, procrastination often involves

· Delaying what needs to be done

· Putting off something that you don’t like or find boring

· Being easily distracted by other things (e.g. Facebook!)

· Finding something easier to do instead

· Falling behind and not achieving what needs doing

You may identify with Tim Urban in his humorous TED talk below

Tips for avoiding procrastination

In Psychology Today, Elizabeth Lombardo Ph.D, gives 11 tips for avoiding procrastination

To summarise, paraphrase and apply this:

• Don’t make a huge deal out of having to do your work (manage those emotions)
• Think about the long term results (ie qualification, better job, better mark) rather than trying to feel better in the short-term
• Plan your work (but not to the extent you have no time to do it!)
• Give yourself plenty of time to achieve what you need to do –be realistic and don't leave it too late.
• Break the piece of work up into smaller chunks
• Stop making excuses
• Find someone who will check up on you and make you accountable
• Think about your environment. Turn off your phone, email, Facebook, internet and other distractions
• Reward yourself when you complete stages and/or the whole of your work
• If you get distracted, don't beat yourself up about it and just get on with your work again
• Avoid perfectionism. Aim for better and your best rather than perfect.

As Martin Luther King Junior said " You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step"

Revision tips and memory techniques

Revision tips

Exams are fast approaching and lots of students are finishing off their coursework and starting to revise everything they’ve learned during their course.

We’ve been searching for some tips for you on the internet. Take a look at this short BBC Newsbeat video.

The BBC also have lots more resources at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zw8qpbk with links to advice on the National Citizen Service website too.

If you are prone to worrying about your exams, the BBC published an article earlier this week : Exam Stress: a revision guide for the anxious which might be helpful.

Memory Techniques

More generally, a lot of us would like to know how to remember things better whether it's remembering someone's name, reminding ourselves to do something or memorising information for an exam. 

In 2105 The Daily Telegraph published an article Nine tips to improve your memory which also has a quiz to test how good your memory is. You may want to have a go.

BBC Radio 4 has an old archived page on improving your memory which includes tips such as 

• Break things down in to chunks
• Space out your learning (don't try to cram it all in at the last minute)
• Write it down
• Use imagery to associate something you are learning with a visual image
• Assign meaning to something (great for numbers eg remember the numbers 1945 by thinking about the last year of the 2nd World War).
• Learn it right the first time (so focus when you are learning).

For those of you interested in more information on how the memory works and further techniques to improve it, we have books in the library by Tony Buzan, for example, who is an expert in memory techniques. The books are found around 153.1.

You may also want to listen to this Tedtalk by Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do.

Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week

According to a survey published this week by the Mental Health Foundation, 2 in 3 of us will face mental health problems in our lifetime. Mental Health Awareness week is a time to promote awareness about mental health and remove any stigma and stereotypes to encourage people to talk about it.

One thing this week highlights is that whether you have good or bad mental health, you need to look after yourself.

10 ways to look after your mental health

1. Talk about your feelings
2. Keep active
3. Eat well
4. Take a break
5. Drink sensibly
6. Keep in touch
7. Do something you’re good at
8. Accept who you are
9. Ask for help
10. Care for others

Mindfulness

What is mindfulness?

According to the Mental Health Foundation website Mindfulness is “a way of paying attention to the present moment, using techniques like meditation, breathing and yoga. It helps us become more aware of our thoughts and feelings so that, instead of being overwhelmed by them, we’re better able to manage them.”

Mindfulness can be a really helpful tool to make us sit back and realise what it is we are feeling, whether it is exam stress, worry, sadness etc  and when doing so not to judge what we are feeling but to just be aware.

Meditation can be a great way of doing this and there are apps that you can download to help-

•           Headspace- this is a subscription app but it offers a 10 day free trial called take 10
•           Smiling Mind- Smiling Mind is a free mindfulness meditation app for young people to help combat stress, improve focus and increase resilience.

You might also find this website useful : http://mindfulnessforstudents.co.uk/

     

                             

Image CC BY-SA 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/repairgenius/7258035052

Other helpful websites-

https://www.mind.org.uk/

http://www.cpslmind.org.uk/

https://www.rethink.org/

Information for this blog was taken from https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/ For more information please visit this website.