Discuss with your class how they manage their time. Describe the Pareto Principle, which is the 80:20 rule -- 80 percent of unfocused time produces only 20 percent results but 20 percent of focused effort can produce 80 percent results. Explain that writing an assignment means concentrating on it completely. They must not be distracted by outside influences. Use the time you have set aside for this task purposefully. Give the class a list of what contributes to time management, such as prioritization, concentration and focus, scheduling, goal setting and self-motivation. Have them complete a quiz (see links in Resources) to check their time management skills.
Ask students to write a 300-word article on a subject that correlates to your lesson. Tell them they must sit and write the article in 30 minutes without talking or distractions. See how many of your students can do this. In today's world of soundbites and short commercials, people's concentration levels are low. At the end of the 30 minutes, ask the class how hard they found concentrating to be. Suggest they practice doing this on a regular basis to increase their concentration powers.Talk to the class about their emails, phone calls and messages. If they are working and an email comes in, do they immediately stop their work and read it? Ask them why. Suggest that they do not answer any calls, emails or messages for 30 minutes while working. Allocate time at the end of the task to deal with these distractions.
Encourage the class to write a plan so their assignments and associated work link with their personal timetables, including the other activities in their lives. Have them each create a chart that links tasks to time, which can be done in a program such as Microsoft Access, Excel or Word. Explain to the class that, if they set reminders on their phones or in Outlook in advance of the work required, this will help, too. Give students an exercise that involves 10 different tasks, and ask them to prioritize and schedule them into one week.
Ask the class to log all of their activities during five weekdays to see how they spend their time. Ensure they include phone calls, texts, emails and time on social networking sites. Also ask them to include research time and work on their assignments, making sure to include any interruptions. Make them think about how long an assignment actually took and how long it would have taken without interruptions. Ask students to bring this log to class for discussion. Discuss goal setting, and explain how to set a major goal and then minor goals and actions that lead up to completion of the main task.
Give the class two tasks to do, one that requires full concentration and one that is easily done with little effort. Suggest to the class that you need both tasks completed by a set time. Often people stop in the middle of a high-concentration task and move to a lower level to give their brains a break. This means that, when they go back to the first task, they have to get back into the zone, reread what they have done and focus once again. This all takes time -- wasted time. See how many of your students do this. Explain how much better it would have been to complete the tasks separately. Self-motivation is vital here, as is the need to stick to the main task and leave the lesser task until later.