Top 5 Time Management Tips

Episode 72: Learn about time inventories, respecting deadlines, goal setting, audio notes and more…

Time Management Strategies For Medical School

* Do a time inventory and schedule time inventories every 3 weeks.

* Set goals.

* Set specific tasks with time frames

* Use an organizational system (use David Allen’s 2-minute rule)

* Physical fitness

* Use peak performance times

* Clean the clutter in your office, home, and nooks and crannies

* Set and respect deadlines

* Treat emails and your physical inbox as OTHER people’s agenda, not your own

* Negotiate your open-door policy

* Assign responsibilities during the conversation on the subject, and communicate feedback action steps on-the-spot

* Observe meeting start and end times strictly

* Manage multiple projects so you can mentally change gears and keep busy

* Say “no” to new projects if you can’t commit the time necessary, or if it unrelated to your Definite Major Purpose

* Reward yourself and alternate pleasant and unpleasant tasks

5 Time Management Strategies: A Physician Interview

Interviewer:            On the line with me today is Justin Anderson Anderson from Apollo Audio books. We’re glad to have you back. Welcome, Justin.

Justin Anderson:            Hi, Interviewer. Thanks for having me back.

TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS: JUSTIN ANDERSON

Interviewer:            We’ve enjoyed having you. Today, we’re going talk about time management and we want to pick your brain a little bit. And I sent you earlier this week 15 Time Management Tips and you picked your top five and even added one there.

So, what I want to do at this time is let you start off telling us about this top five tips that got you through medical school regarding time management and the very first one being a time inventory. Will you tell us about that?

TIME INVENTORY

Justin Anderson:            As a medical student, you are from day one totally overwhelmed with what you have to cover. And, you know, they all often make that analogy of, it’s like, time to take a drink of water from a fire hose. You can’t possibly retain everything all the material that you have to get through.

And so, whether it’s for your block exams or is it for studying for the USMLE, as the USMLE comes closer. I mean, I would always come and sit down and say, “Exactly, how much material do I need to get through?” And what I learned six months in the medical school is that for me to retain the information, I would have to make it through that information three times.

And so I would sit down and calculate out. Well you can do it two ways. You can either A, if you’re a reader, then you sit down and calculate out, how long it takes you to read X number of pages? And you use that to say, “Well, how am I going to get through the material three times?” Or B, if you used audio like I used as a student and I had a, you know, 10 hours of audio that covered pathology. Then, I would say, “Well, I need to go – you get two to three times to take 30 hours.”

And the thing is that once you start thinking about how many hours you need to study a day, then once you get a week or two into it, you need to decide, “Am I still on my schedule or am I not on my schedule? Am I getting further and further behind?”

And if you’re getting more behind, then what are you going to do? How are you going to adjust your study methods in order to get back on track? If you’re doing just right, then that’s great.

And I think that times that I really felt that it was the most important to do,