How's That To-Do List Coming Along?

Here it is Friday again, and if you’re like most people, you didn’t accomplish all you hoped this week. Maybe your to-do list has only a few things crossed off, as they took longer than expected. Maybe you don’t have a to-do list and it’s all swimming around in your head. Since time management is one of the skills we try to impart to students, reading some time-management tips can kill two birds with one stone: help you to get more on track and give you ideas to help students get their work done, too. Here are some relevant articles and tools.

Wunderlist: www.wunderlist.com
This task-list app is free. It allows users to make lists in categories that they name themselves, add due dates, and add sub-lists. So, for example, you could make a list called “Create LibGuides for FYE” and create sub-lists for the various LibGuides you want to create and the tasks associated with each. There are many more task-list apps available, with various features that work for various kinds of work and individual preferences. Each has it’s pros and cons, but any list is better than having it all swimming around in your head!

Advice from Harvard Business Review
Published earlier this year, Elizabeth Grace Saunders’ “How to Get Your To-Do List Done When You’re Always in Meetings.”
OK, so lots of students don’t have meetings, but they do have obligations that can make it hard to get school work done. You and they can benefit from Saunders’ reminder that you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) wait for a big chunk of time to tackle a big project. Try doing it bit by bit and when the deadline looms you’ll have some of the work already complete.

Flipped Learning
You might already use Credo’s Instruct or other material in flipped learning—reading or watching that happens outside the classroom. Why not approach other learning in the same way? Professional reading—for us, articles from the latest issue of library science journals and magazines—often takes a back seat to day-to-day tasks and can seem like a luxury. But if you spend even 15 minutes one evening a week reading a professional article, you’ll be more informed and might continue reading past the one piece. The open access Communications in Information Literacy would be a great start.

Change Your Mindset!
Sometimes we don’t get things done because a task seems difficult or unpleasant. Try to find positives in the work, and remember that if you have to do it anyway, it’s better to do it now rather than feel the dread while you put it off. A recent article aimed at K-12 librarians has much to say to librarians generally in this regard. See “Bad Case of Annual Report Procrastination” under “Interesting Reads” in our InfoLit Learning Community.