If you want to manage your time effectively in grad school, you need to be able to prioritize.
By prioritizing your tasks, then you can allocate time to the tasks that are the most important to you.
But how do you know which tasks are most important to you? And what if sometimes you have to work on tasks that are more important for other people?
This is where task understanding comes in, yet again.
Task understanding, or the knowledge that we have (or need to have) about what we need to do every day in grad school, is key to managing your time effectively.
Without it, you're likely spending too much time on tasks that you'll have to redo in the future, increasing your chances of experiences negative emotions (that will zap your motivation), and will result in you spending LESS time doing the things you want to do.
The three aspects of task understanding are: explicit, implicit, and sociocontextual.
If you're struggling to manage your time effectively, spend more time making sure you have clear understanding tasks that you are finding challenging to complete.
You don't need to do this for tasks that get done readily, however sometimes doing it for those tasks can help you answer these task analysis questions and gain practice doing this.
Here are some questions to get you started:
Explicit
What are the criteria or requirements?
What are the instructions for this task?
What are the standards/grading scheme?
What terminology is used?
What other information have I been given?
Implicit
Is the timing of this task important?
What is the purpose of this task?
How does this task fit with the course / project / thesis?
What are the important concepts or ideas?
What kinds of thinking, knowledge, and/or skills are important?
What resource, materials, and/or tools can help me?
Socio-contextual
What program or discipline-specific approaches are important?
How does this task fit into my grad program?
How do my past experiences impact my understanding of this task?
What is the impact of my beliefs about learning and knowledge?
Who can help me when I have questions?
What is the culture around this task?
References
Hadwin, A. F. (2006). Do your students really understand your assignment? LTC Currents Newsletter, II(3), 1-9.
Miller, M. F. (2009). Predicting university students’ performance of a complex task: does task understanding moderate the influence of self-efficacy? [Master's thesis, University of Victoria]. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1748
Oshige, M. (2009). Exploring task understanding in self-regulated learning: task understanding as a predictor of academic success in undergraduate students. [Master's thesis, University of Victoria]. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1690
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