Online Learning – How to manage your time when you are working

I have already finished two interesting weeks of my Student Readiness online course. As this is not my first experience in blended learning, the kind of reflection the course invited was a plus.

As many people considers me as an organized person, I was able to review my methodology for keeping thinks going in a good pace, that I want to share in this post:

• Make a to-do-list of important things and keep it visual in order to have them always in your mind. No matter the subjects of your to-do-list, make priorities. In my case this priorities are categorized in family, personal and work.
• Check regularly the subjects in your to-do-list in order to review the priorities you made. If priorities change, make the needed adjustments. In my case I do this every week.
• As most of us live in a digital world, many things must be attended in a digital environment, so if stakeholders' representatives are not interested in writing down what they need from you, it is able to suppose it is not important for them, and as a consequence those subjects not need your attention.
• The majority of decisions I used to make can be made by responding or writing an e-mail, so I try to make as many decisions in this way and avoid meetings.
• Meetings are important, when those are well prepare, involve deep thinking and there is need for a broad scope in problem solving. These are the kind of meetings I must include in my agenda.
• Pettit committees with colleges is a way to past by important issues arising during the day. So I used to be open to these kinds of meetings any time of the day. If we are not able to solve matter in five minutes time, it means that more in-deep thinking is needed, and as a consequence we need to involve more people and prepare a meeting.
• There used to be people that love (consciously or unconsciously) to press with an urgent need of response. From my experience in 90% of cases they have the response, so I used to return the “pressure” with a question, when my peers are able to prioritize their need I understand that my response must be urgent.
• There are things that cannot be solved, so if this is true, why should you have to solve it? I prefer to let them solved but themselves.

In the field of managing projects, the Gantt Chart is a very useful as a visual tool which is helpful at planning and scheduling tasks in a long a period of time. As it is visual, it is easy for making following of the completion of every task. This tool also identifies the responsible for every task and shows the interrelationship of every task when there are prerequisites. As a planner anyone is able to manage the complexity of the tool. For example, you are able to manage it in a spreadsheet or use more complex software like MS Project or Primavera.

If you are interested in using the Gantt Chart, in the following link you will be able to watch a video for a basic version of this tool in MS Excel.