Time Management
- IB ATLs
- IB Approaches to Learning
- IB ATL: Self-Management
- Time Management
How do we help students manage their time?
The IB describes self-management skills as a mix of (a) organization skills—managing time and tasks effectively, goal-setting, etc, and (b) affective skills—managing state of mind, self-motivation, resilience, mindfulness, etc.
On this page we look at the organisation skills and provide a tool - the pomodoro technique - which many people use to manage their time and tasks effectively.
“Real time is mental – it exists between your ears. You create it and anything you create you can manage.” Practice the following techniques to become the master of your own time.
- Analyze how you spend time.
- Assign time blocks for high priority thoughts, conversations and actions.
- Plan to spend at least 50% of time in thoughts, activities and conversations that produce most of your results
- Schedule time for interruptions – plan time to be pulled away from what you are doing.
- Plan each day.
- Take 5 minutes before every call and task to decide what result you want to attain. This will help you to know what success looks like. Also take 5 minutes after each activity or call to determine whether result was achieved.
- Put up a ‘do not disturb time’ when you have to get work done.
- Practice not answering phone or email just because they ring and show up.
- Block out other distractions e.g. Facebook and other forms of social media.
- Remember it is impossible to get everything done.
If you go to the discussion forum on My IB you will find a sample study timetable that Nazanin Nikanjam has created for her DP students. She comments that “They had a blank copy to design their own, and found it quite useful. Feel free to use.”
IB Diploma students need to develop good organisation skills in order to manage their time, complete all their assignments to the set deadlines as well as establish a work-life balance.The Pomodoro Technique teaches how to work with time, instead of struggling against it. It is a simple and effective way of improving work and study habits.The Pomodoro Technique utilizes alternating study and break times of 25 and 5 minutes, respectively. Each of these 25 minute bursts of productivity is called a "pomodoro", named after the tomato timer used by Francesco Cirillo in the 1990's. It is a technique used in a number of IB schools.
Explore the Pomodoro Technique through this video - it is technique used to avoid procrastination and distractions in study habits.
Mindtools has a whole section of tools on Time Management. Click HERE.
SelfControl is a free and open-source application for macOS that lets you block your own access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the Internet. Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click "Start." Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites—even if you restart your computer or delete the application.
Wunderlist is a cloud-based task management application. It allows users to manage their tasks from a smartphone, tablet, computer and smartwatch.