I'm basing this lesson off a Financial Diet episode on Youtube. Love them and watch many of their videos. But this week there was a really good one about curating your time on technology to get the most out of your day. This will go with a level 2 Unit standard as well so credit wise is not a waste of your time. Please ignore the ad in the video and the B word. (sorry about that)
Step one:
For one school week make a log of how you use your time. You can do this digitally or on a piece of paper. Put the times down and what you did during that time. - no judgements just the facts.
Step two:
Label which ones you would consider a distraction or a guilty pleasure and which ones were when you were working and productive.
Step three:
Subscribe to a newsletter or a podcast that you can listen to or read - something that will uplift you or help you learn something new. I prefer a podcast because it is a great thing to listen to while you are getting ready in the morning.
Step four:
Save posts/websites into collections to go back to later. I like Pinterest for this but in the video they recommend Instagram. Whenever something cool posts pops up you can save it to look at later.
Step five:
Join a book club or join a free course. This will give you a place to expand your mind and be able to talk to others about things.
Step six:
I've discovered over the years that what I mostly do for resources for teaching is to go through everything that is out there and curate it for my students. I want you to find websites and blogs that will feed into the subject areas that you love. You can use a RSS Feed if you want but at least bookmark some of the best sites so you can go back to it and learn things relevant to your passions. I use Facebook for this ironically. I join groups that curate sites and I can see articles that are relevant to me. It also means my Facebook is more about learning and work than it is about socialising.
Step seven:
Cull some apps. Go through your phone and see which apps you never use. Get rid of those. Also pick an app that you spend too much time on that is just a distraction. You can do this by making a list of your apps and rank them from the most useful to the least. Try getting rid of the least useful.
Step eight:
An inspiration board. You can use Pinterest for this but this is good to focus your goals. By visualising your goal will make it more concrete. Anticipating something can have a sense of joy to it as well. In this time while we are denied many things you can still gain joy from something just by anticipating it. This also helps with figuring out your why. This is important to gain motivation for the tasks you need to complete.
Step nine:
Set reminders for important dates. I use google calendar for this. I used to forget birthdays all the time until Facebook would remind me so I made sure to put them all into the calendar. By setting reminders you can free up your mind for important things.
Step ten:
Using either digital tools or a bullet journal set out a way to tackle your week. Some people need a lot of detail while others just need a list. I'll include some websites that are good for time management.
Storm Board - online post-it notes.
Trello - Collaboration to complete a project.
How to manage change - A lesson on how to make sure whatever change you make is healthy and manageable.
Bullet Journals - A guide of how to set up a bullet journal for school.
Graduation Plan - Make a plan of how you will graduate or for this year.
Pomodoro - A technique for productivity (I use this one, it is amazing.)
Coach Me - An app to track a new habit you want to create.
School Planner - An app for your phone that can create timetables and track your learning.
Try this for a whole month and then reflect on how well it went and what you would change or get rid of and what you can do better in the future.