Time Wasters and Ten Minute Technique With A Twist!

With finals around the corner, I need motivation and a clear system to see what I need to complete. Yet, I find myself becoming distracted and wasting time throughout my day. I still have my fritter finder but it is hard because there are so many distractions. My first strategy I wanted to complete what the Time Wasters. This applies to all my classes and will allow me to become one step ahead of the game. The second strategy I will address in this blog is the reading strategy, “Ten Minute Technique.” Yet, I adapted this strategy to complete questions for my philosophy 107 class. I did this because by adapting it I made it most useful to my courses. Continue reading to see exactly what I did!

Being a freshman in college, you experience a lot of new free time that can beneficial. Yet, it is very easy to waste that time and procrastinate. Time wasters support procrastination. The only way to realize why you are wasting time is to write down what you are wasting time on. The strategy, “Time Wasters,” allows you to identify what is holding you back and what you are avoiding. Time wasters distract you multiple tasks and multiple classes.

("Time Wasters" shown above)

My time wasters that I have identified are forms of procrastination for all my tasks. I have a beneficial procrastination, which is going to the gym. Yet to fix this, I need to find the correct time to go whether that be taking a break from work or going after I complete my work rather can using the gym to completely avoid all the tasks I need to complete. My other forms of procrastination are from technology. The main distractions are from the computer and my phone. The way to avoid this is by turning them off. If I know I need to read or do a small task, I will turn off my cell phone for the short amount of time. It is better to turn off my phone for ten to twenty minutes than to take double the time to complete a task. Another way to avoid distractions from the Internet is to turn off my airport. By doing this, I am unable to have Internet, which is my major problem solver. This cuts off distractions such as Facebook and fashion blogs that allow be to be distracted for hour. Since I am now able to identify what the problem is I can stop wasting time, get my work done, and essentially have more free time to relax and complete other tasks I need to do. In addition, I am a visual learner and I like the way this chart is set up. By seeing everything in a clear fashion, I will be able to take action and realize what motivates me and what I need to avoid.

The second strategy is choose to do is the “Ten Minute Technique.” This technique uses ten-minute intervals to complete a task. For reading you would read for ten minutes, break, read for ten minutes, and continue to do this until your task is complete. The purpose of this is that by the time you get to the second ten-minute interval you will have the momentum to continue going past ten minutes. I adapted this strategy to my Philosophy 107. For my final, my professor is giving us the questions weekly. It is extremely hard to get motivated and complete the questions when I know the final is not for a long time. I used the Ten Minute Technique to complete the questions. On average, we receive about seven a week. Each questions takes about five minutes to complete by the time you go through the information and find the correct answer. By using this technique I was able to get a small amount done at each time rather than procrastinating knowing it would take a long time to complete.

(Philosophy 107 Questions answered using the Ten Minute Technique shown above)

The first picture shows the questions I was able to answer in ten minutes. By doing the ten-minute interval over a few weeks, I was able to complete up to question 16. Now I only have three more questions for this week to complete as shown below.

(Last Questions needed to be answered using Ten Minute Technique shown above)

By adapting the reading strategy to complete my questions, I am able to actually sit down and do my work. This is a motivator because if I think about it that I am only taking ten minutes, I do not mind doing it. Yet, if I know I am going to be sitting down for over a half hour, I will procrastinate. This is a way to avoid procrastination in multiple classes. You can write a paper and write for ten minutes and take a break, complete math problems for ten minutes, or even fold laundry for ten minutes. When you think about it in the sense that ten minutes is only a short amount of time, you are more willing to do the work. This is good because I am a linear learner and I am able to keep it in an organized fashion. My materials are my class power points and I am able to use them to obtain the correct answer. My exam is how I am evaluated and this is the only possible way I will receive a good grade. Once my questions are completed I can take more action and study for ten-minute intervals.

The “Time Wasters” will allow me to get ahead in my classes, especially my PHI 107 course, and the Ten Minute Technique will allow me to complete the work. These both work for me since I am a visual learner. They lay out what I need to do and I can see that in a clear fashion. The next technique I would like to try in addition to this is the Flash Card Reading strategy. Once I have my questions answered, which I will be able to do since I found what my time wasters are, I will make flash cards to study. This way they will be organized and I can see what I do and do not know before the exam. Stay tuned for next week to see how I complete the flash card reading strategy!