BTFO 2015 Professor Carolyn Sharp Tips for effective time management Try different strategies – then trust what works for you. block out reading time for each class and write into an actual weekly schedule begin planning for major papers earlier than you think you need to; this ≠ writing the papers super-early, which can be a mistake if you use a family calendar , put crucial deadlines on it, so loved ones are aware and can support you give some thought to organization of materials, even if you don't normally care about organizational structures or lists o make a Word folder for each course o simple & excellent: "sticky notes" on computer desktop o advanced: Outlook Tasks list with a variety of color-coded categories "Be fully present at school when at school; be fully present at home when at home" – advice from Judy Fentress-Williams, then a Yale doctoral student with two small children, now a professor and administrator at Virginia Theological Seminary. The principle: FOCUS FULLY. If you try to handle everything all the time, you'll yield to the tyranny of the immediate, you'll be constantly distracted, and you will not work effectively. Bonus: mindful focus can be refreshing . "Set a timer to mark the end of the day" – advice from Mark Lester, current Yale doctoral student. The principle: HONOR YOUR LIMITS. We seldom finish everything we set out to do in a given day. Rather than flail haplessly for hours after you are too tired to work effectively, decide on a time when it is okay to be done for the day. You'll begin the next morning rested and rejuvenated.
3 – 2 – 1 – GO! If you have multiple projects clamoring for attention, try timed sessions. I use a meditation chime on my phone for 25-minute blocks: 3 on urgent projects Joshua commentary or Translating Alterity paper 2 on important projects Translating Alterity paper or Boer review essay 1 on pragmatic tasks -- edit 2 essays -- evaluate mss for JBL and BINS -- revise REL 500b syllabus -- update Jeremiah bibliography GO! reward yourself with a productive activity that gives you JOY and is unrelated to any deadline homiletics literary theory poetry
Strategies to maximize your learning use iAnnotate PDF or a similar program to take notes on PDFs of articles note-taking by hand is significantly better for retention than typing notes; use highlighting during review & write key words (by hand) in margins Use symbols in note-taking! "this yields the logical conclusion that" "the historical result was that" "this need not imply" "this is not the same as saying" ≠ "this is not fairly characterized as" "change" "transformation" "the Trinity" "Christianity" Xy "Christian" Xn skim strategically when you cannot do all the reading take paper drafts to the YDS Writing Tutor, Brad Holden – the earlier deadline you'll meet in order to get papers to Brad will prepare you well to meet professors' actual deadlines consider study groups for the big introductory courses o good for morale, but groups take time o helpful for extroverts who process out loud and thrive on immediate feedback, lively exchange; not necessarily ideal for introverts who need to focus and are unsettled by rapidly moving dialogue o sharing wisdom can mean shared errors if a peer gets something wrong, so use study-group notes as supplementary while still doing your own work
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