Final Post: Task Management

Second semester has almost come to an end. I can't believe that this is our final blog post. I've encountered so many incidents during 2nd semester, yet the whole semester has passed by with a blink of an eye. The last blog post is about task management. I pondered why the last topic would be about task management above all the things we have learned in CLS 105. We learned so much about task management, but now that I started to write this post, I think I may understand why the last topic is task mangement. It is to refreshen the last part of second semester as if it is an another new beginning. Finals, projects, etc are all coming up and what we need the most is preparation and motivation for these tasks, and I cannot think of any better topic than task management.

To properly prepare for all the upcoming tasks, I used the Divide By Four strategy to complete my task management process. I used this strategy for two courses: CLS 105 and CFS 388.

CLS 105 Major/Career Exploration Project

Starting with CLS 105, I have a one major project: Major/Career Exploration. This project, which is due on 25th, was to be divided into four parts using the Divide By Four strategy. So I divided into the following four parts: proposal, 6 strategies/options, documentations, and reflections. Though the project wasn't as complicating or difficult as the previous projects in CLS 105, this strategy made the project much easier to approach and follow. This strategy has assisted me in keeping track of the project along with organizing in a much friendly manner.

CFS 388 Final Exam

Next was CFS 388 exam, which I chose to be the most time consuming out of all the final exams I am going to take. CFS 388 final is on May 9th. So I have plenty of time, but this can cause a problem of procrastinating. Just like the Major/Career Explorartion, I used the Divide By Four strategy on it and broke up into the following parts: gathering terms, outlining topic, making a practice questions, and reviewing by speed-reading the text book and lecture notes.

The strategy is really easy to use, and it grants the user an organized plan along with steps telling him/her what to do next.

The Divide By Four strategy has been a total success, as I have finished the CLS 105 project and am on good pace with preparing for CFS 388 exam. As the finals week is coming closer, I am pretty sure that everyone's stress level will increase. I hope everyone will continue to make good use of stress relief strategies we have learned in class along with the motivation/reward strategy to avoid procrastination.

Turn Your Task into a KIT-KAT

We are nearing the end of the year, and we still have so many tasks to manage and complete. There are efficient ways to complete each of these tasks within compact amount of time. But this is only if you know the correct ways and the steps to accomplishing tasks. I have used Divide By Four in two of my classes, for both Preparing for Exams, and Working on Projects. They have worked well for me because I knew the four exact steps that I had to make in order to achieve my goal for the two tasks. In my CFS 255 class, I have an exam this upcoming wednesday for three chapters, and I divided the process of studying for it into four exact steps. This made my studying more efficient and I was able to spend a good amount of time on it. I have an ongoing project throughout the whole semaster in my HTW 221 class, and I was able to divide it into four equal parts, which helped me greatly. It helped me to know exactly what was it that I needed to do, and let me stay focused on what I was supposed to be doing.

For preparing for my last CFS 255 exam, I divided the task into four different steps. The steps are all related to each other, but I was able to perform them in a shorter amount of time, mostly because I did not procrastinate. If I know exactly what I need to do for the hour, I will get right to it, without hesitation or laziness overwhelming me. It is different than just studying without thinking and planning because if I do not plan ahead of time, I usually procrastinate till the very end, which will make me not be able to study efficiently. If I do not plan ahead, I will not see the end of the process of studying and it will just put too much pressure on me, which will make me become less motivated. Dividing the task by four, took away the procrastination and put motivation in me.

I was also able to use this strategy in working on my year-long project in HTW 221. As the semaster is nearing the end, our projects are also nearing the due date. By using this strategy, I was able to see my project as just 4 different parts. Because I planned it out this way, I was able to see it as a whole, and I knew exactly what it was that I needed to do. I just needed to find the right topic, then get to researching and writing down the information, then just organizing them into a paper. After I divided them into four different steps, they sounded very straight forward as easy for me. I usually take projects as something complicated and I usually do not know where to start. But by using this strategy, I knew exactly where I needed to start, and was able to go on to the next step as soon as I was done with the prior step.

I was able to get done quickly and easily without any obstacles or procrastination distracting me.

Dividing a task by four is not a hard step, nor it is something that takes a long time to do. Little bit of thinking is involved in this process, and it makes the tasks become a whole lot easier for you to handle. It is like cutting up a 200 pound rock into four pieces so that you only need to handle 50 pound of the beast every time, just for four times. It makes you see the task as a whole, but at the same time, if you only look at one step before taking another step, the task becomes so much easier so that it makes you become motivated, and deter procrastination. This strategy is something that I would like to continue using in the future that it helps me complete any task with ease and not put too much pressure on me. It makes a heavy burden into kit-kats.

AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, I AM GOING TO MISS DOING TECH ASSIGNMENT EVERY WEEKEND........

iTask Management

Task management is one of the most important skill to understand in college. If you are good at task management, you won't have much problem adjusting to heavy workload in college. If you manage your time and task in efficient manner, you won't have to worry about finishing your works on time or feel overwhelmed by amount of work you need to get done. Without all these pressure, you can focus on one task at a time and succeed in that task which leads to academic success. If you are successful in academic career, you will feel confident to succeed in other areas as well, which ultimately leads to better future. To accomplish these goals, you need efficient strategies. I've used Divide by Four strategy for my CLS 105 class and for CFS 388 class.

Divide by Four strategy is useful for diving a task into manageable parts. It makes task much easier to accomplish because essentially this strategy divides a task into four parts; prepare, start, continue, and finish. For CLS 105, I've utilized this strategy for Career Project which I divided into four manageable parts. First, I prepared for the project by reading instructions and really think about ideas to how I will present the information and what kind of strategies I will be using for the project. Then I started working on the project by using 6 strategies I've chosen. I continued on the project and gathered documentations. Finally I've wrote a reflection paper and double checked everything to meet the guideline. This strategy made this project easier and more manageable because it divided the whole project into smaller parts which made me focus on one section at a time. I followed similar step for CFS 388 research paper. I've brainstormed the topic and ideas for the paper and gathered information and research topic related news articles. Then I wrote a paper and revised it afterwards. This was all done in a divided sections and over gradual period of time. I've used to work on projects overnight but using this strategy I think I will plan ahead and do it over time by dividing it into manageable sections.

After using Divide by Four strategy, I learned that prioritizing and knowing what needs to be done when and dividing works into smaller parts to focus on things that are more important. As a visual learner and also kinesthetic learner, I've found this strategy very helpful because it's both visualized and require you to take actions to create the list and execute them. I would definitely recommend this strategy to my friends and use it for my other courses in the future.

Last Tech Assignment with Task Management

As the last class is quickly approaching and as the long weekend is near the end with finals coming up, task management is an important part of the learning and success. Due to the fact that I have finished my career experiment project 1 week early, I had time to prepare for the upcoming exams this week. As the final is approaching, professors bombarded me with last exams this week; containing math exam on Wednesday, Chemistry exam on Thursday along with Biology Lab Practical. Yes, it is a really busy week for me and chunking and managing my task is critical.

To approach the exams, I have used the divide by four strategy for chemistry and biology which take place on the same day, back-to-back. For both chemistry and biology, the first thing I needed to do was collect all the lecture notes and necessary resources. Then, I started memorizing all the formulas, vocabulary, concepts, equations that were part of the learning. To continue on the work, I referred back to online resources and textbook for more detailed information to better memorize the materials more specifically. Finally, to top it off, I will review the notes and diagrams for biology, and for chemistry, I will try to solve all the multiple choice questions on exam review sheet that was given out by Dr. Freedman.

So far, following this strategy has worked great as I knew exactly what I had to do and went along with it. Once my nice trip here in Toronto ends and when I get back to Syracuse. I will start focusing on the studying more. This is considered as hell week for me as I have total of three evaluation within 2 days. Although it is tough, if I manage my time correctly and wisely, I will be able to handle it with good grades.

Let's End the Semester with Task Management!

As the last week of class approaching, finals coming up, our

CLS blog has come to a last entry. After many blogs talking about many different strategies, our last blog touches on the last strategy, the Task Management. Because we have learned a lot of strategies so far from the class and many of them very effective, the task management might not be very new or different compared to other strategies. However, it is never useless!

As the finals approaching, and many projects, exams, and papers are either due or beginning, it was really helpful when I kept the Divide by Four strategy, which is a great one to manage our tasks. For this strategy, I applied two courses on it: CLS 105 and HOA 106.

For CLS 105, the last project, major/career exploration, was due on the 25th. And the last HOA exam was the earliest exam coming up. In order to complete these two in a successful way, I had to somehow organize them. So, for major/career exploration, I decided to divide into four pieces: The proposal, organize, execution, and reflection. With this order I began my project, which helped me keep on track. This helped me in finishing the project for it made me finish it a lot quicker than my regular pace. In fact, I turned in the project last week.

Because I ended my CLS 105 project early, I had plenty of time to start preparing for my HOA 106 exam, which is in two weeks. First, I created flash cards for they were the most effective study guide for this class. And I started memorizing and pictures, which was the second part. The third part was to look over the lecture notes and textbook to read the information of the paitings in more detail. The last part of this strategy was to review the memorized contents. The importance about this part is that while I am reviewing is that I can prepare for the essay questions for the information I put from my study guide for they will be critical when I write the answers for the essay questions.

So far, this strategy has been working perfectly well! After the long weekend of Easter Break

ends, we will all be back into focusing in school and especailly the finals. The end is approaching, and this is the last blog. Even though all the assignments from the CLS 105 is over, I hope we all can remember some of the strategies that were mostly effective to us and continue to use them in the future. Good to work with you all! Great job

Task Management

Finally, this is the last blog for this class. For the past few weeks, we have been using a lot of strategies that can boost up our grades or can help us have the right studying habits. There were several strategies that were really helpful and were effective; some strategies were not that much of a help, but they were still worth a try. There were also some strategies that I have used before I learned them during class. I was glad that I had an opportunity to share my experiences of using the strategies. For our last blog, we are able to discuss any Task Management strategy that we continue to use but did not discussed in previous blogs. So, I want to talk about the Divde By Four strategy.

The Divide By Four strategy was a really effective strategy in accomplishing my Major/Career Exploration project. I was able to complete the project step by step by using this strategy. In this project, a person can divide the tasks into four sections: prepare, start, continue, and finish. In the prepare section, I filled out and completed the proposal. I wrote the current condition that I am in, and 6 strategies that I can use in order to fulfill my goal. I also wrote the plans of each strategies, so I can put them in action. The second section, which is start, I wrote my proposal in words and began to start using the 6 strategies that I decided to use. After that, I went over to the continue section. At this section, I gathered the documentations and informations that I need in order to acheive my goal. Since my goal is transfering into Newhouse next semester, I gathered informations that I could get. Finally, in the finish part, I wrote my reflextion paper, which is a summary of what I have done, what I need to do, and what have I learned during this project.

This strategy helped me finish the project in an organized way. I was able to finish this project effectively and quickly. I strongly recommend using this strategy when you do not know how to start a project or study an exam.

Contain Your Stress!

Stress is probably the #1 problem for college students like us. Dr. Blumin introduced 'stress' and strategies we can use to relieve from stress. Stress can be very dangerous as it can lead to actions that we may not normally do when we are not stressed. The stress-level is probably getting higher as of this moment for everyone as the semester is ending and final exam week is getting closer. I don't want to think about how much stress I had first semester. I was taking only the core courses that already had the reputation of being a difficult courses. Though I overcame the stress, I knew it wasn't healthy for me both physically and mentally. That's why I chose to take less stressful classes like ENV010 which is a choir ensemble. I can definitely say that the stress-level in second semester is lower than that of first semester. However, stress still exists and it is steadily growing once more as I am reaching closer to the end of the semester.

The two strategies I used to prevent the stress from overwhelming me are: Stress Diagram and Ten-Minute Vacation Plan. The two most difficult courses that I am taking this semester are: CFS 388 and ECN 203. I chose these two plans for these courses, but these strategies are flexible enough to be used for other courses as well as something that is not academic at all too.

Stress Diagram is similar to identifying time wasters. By using this diagram, one will know which element provides stress to him/her. Everything gets much clearer once you have a visual graph or a diagram of something. So I listed down the potential factors that might be stress-friendly. For me, and most of other people I am assuming, grades are probably the most stressful factor in college life. After grade comes my family-issues that I am currently dealing with. I guess this is the reason why I still feel stressed when the stress I get from GPA isn't as high as last semster. Now that I completed this strategy, I have a clear diagram of what gives me stress. As expected, GPA and family-issue seems to be the big problem. My stress from GPA will be relieved as soon as I am done with my last final exam on May 9th. But, for the family-issue, I just have to hope for the best.

The second strategy, 10 minute vacation plan, can reduce the stress instantly. I used this strategy when I was writing a major paper for CFS 388 and studying for ECN 203 quiz. If the Stress Diagram Strategy is for long-term usage, 10 minute vacation plan is more like a short-term stress relief system. Everytime I finish a paragraph for a major paper in CFS388, I would grant myself a 10 minute break. During those 10 minute, I can surf on the web, go to youtube or facebook. I would not recommend sleeping for 10 minutes, because 1. you will not fall asleep within 10 minutes, 2. if you do fall asleep you will not be able to wake up. After the ten minutes are up I will go back to writing another paragraph. This system not only relieves you from temporary stress, but also gives you a slight motivation. You would want to work faster in order get another 10 minute break. For studying ECN 203 quiz, which covered 3 chapters, I will make a list of terms I need to memorize. The number of terms I needed to memorize for this quiz was about 30. So everytime I memorized 10 terms, I would grant myself 10 minute break. The 10 minute you get may sound really short, but it really is better than pulling a straight 3 hour of unstable working mode.

I hope my fellow bloggers also identified their sources of stress and countered it well with strategy like 10 minute vacation plan.

What causes Stress!!??

Ever since I came to college, lot of things have changed my life. One of the thing that was different from high school was the amount of workload that the school has given out to me. As a pre-med student, the amount of workload sometime gets unmanageable and therefore, there are times where I stay up all night, usually about twice a week to get all the work done with quality. This has caused me a lot of stress and recently, I have just begun smoking cigarettes to relieve the stress. I never knew what caused me the stress though. Therefore, I have applied Stress Diagram to figure out what is causing me all these stresses!

When I have finished drawing the diagram, most of my stress resources came from school work. Even though there were outside resources such as relationship with friends and extra curriculums, majority of stress resources came from lack of sleep, amount of work, and GPA. The diagram that I drew refers to two of my classes which has the most amount of work: Biology and Chemistry. The two courses hand out tremendous amount of work and people who currently takes the course would agree upon the fact that the work is confusing and difficult. Since its scientific courses, there are lots of memorization involved along with understanding concepts, equations, formulas, and more....

Even though I have figured out what my stress resources are, I cannot figure out how I will manage the stress. What I can try is having a better time management to increase the amount of sleep, but I cannot do anything about studying the course materials. All I can say is that I can try enjoying the current situation I have or work with friends to reduce the amount of stresses while I am working as cooperation will increase the chance of me understanding the materials better.

However, I have to say that this 10-minute vacation strategy has worked for me a bit. Whenever I got stuck on math problem every once in a while, I refreshened my mind by going onto different entertainment website such as Youtube, Facebook, and addictinggames.com.

I also go out to have a smoke break to get a cool air and exhale all the stress inside my body. Even though I am very aware that it is unhealthy way of relieving stress, it helps for me. All I can say is that do not let stress take control of you, just enjoy what you are doing and be good at it.

iStress Management

In this week's lecture, we talked about stress, how we can reduce the effect of stress, the strategies we can use to minimize or eliminate the factors that cause us to feel the stress. We use the term 'stress' so much these days due to the more demanding society and workload we get as a college students. It became part of our lives and under constant stress, we need to fight back with efficient strategies in order to stay focused and really do our best. Because I had such a stressful first semester, my reaction was to go little easy on second semester with course selection. This resulted in another cause for stress, which was that I need to take those courses I avoided anyway. I always thought there is one magical method to take away all my stress away, but it turns out life is not that easy. So I decided to get along with this bad friend called stress. Because he is a bad friend, I thought it would be a good idea to bring along few good friends to balance things out.

These two good friend's names are 'Stress Diagram', and 'Five-Minute Escape'.

I used these two strategies to all of my academic courses such as NSD 225 and CLS 105, but not only those two specific courses, but my entire career academic life in college as well.

The Stress Diagram is great because this strategy help you to prioritize the factors that causes you to feel stress out and visualize those factors to help you identify the problems. To make things happen, first you need a create a list which contains all the factors that cause you to stress. For me, the biggest causes for stress are my school GPA, transferring my major to the other, whether I should take summer courses in Syracuse or not, my friends, and relationship with this girl. After you create the list, make a pie chart to fit these factors in. In the pie chart, divide the list of stress sources according to their level of stress. For example, because I worry about my GPA most, I gave GPA stress factor the most space in pie chart to represent the level of stress level I get from it. Now not only you can identify the problems, but also visualize the causes for stress and their priorities. Because my biggest causes for stress is my GPA, it's related to my academic courses like NSD 225 and CLS 105. For that, I can try to study harder and get better grades to alleviate my stress level. Even though, diagram looks very simple, but it's effective because of it's visual elements and because I'm a visual learner as well. This strategy allows students to prioritize their time on.

Stress Diagram

Another strategy that I've used to reduce my stress and help me get good grades on NSD 225 and CLS 105 is Five-Minute Escape. This stress management strategy helps you to relieve your stress effectively in a short amount of time. It's like a zen but really simple and easy to follow. It's one of those strategy you will use often anytime, anywhere. The directions are pretty specific. You close your eyes, and take five slow, deep breaths. Then rotate your shoulders in a circular motion, first backwards five time, then five times to forward. Slowly massage your temples in a circular motion with your fingers for 30 seconds. For this step, I prefer longer period of time because it feels so good. So I made it a minute long instead. After that, you massage your jaw, concentrating on the hinges. Try to force yourself to unclench your jaws when you do this. Then slowly drop your chin onto your chest five times. Move your right ear to your right shoulder five times. Then switch the side, trying to touch your left ear to your left shoulder five times. Finally, move your chin to the left and touch our left shoulder. Switch to the right. Go back and forth five times. Cross your arms in front of you and reach around to your shoulders. Using your thumbs and index fingers, knead your trapezius muscle for about 30 seconds. Finally, take five slow, deep breaths and open your eyes. These directions are directly from textbook and you can read it for yourself in detail in the book. It's especially effective because it doesn't take that much time and you can do this anywhere in very short amount of time. The first time I tried this, I was blown away by the effectiveness of the practice. My headache almost went away. But mind you, it's only effective if you do this once or twice a day. If you are trying to use this to reduce your stress level every 10 minutes, it won't work. So use it wisely when you really need it. I've use this strategy in my NSD 225 course after long lecture and it definitely worked for me. Try once, you will get the idea.

Overall, both of these stress management strategy worked out great for NSD 225 and CLS 105 courses. I can use Stress Diagram to identify my stress factors and use the relaxingFive Minute Escape to alleviate my little stress here and there. I mean they works great to just manage my overall stress level in college. I have less than a month in my first ever freshmen year in Syracuse and hope to stay focused until the end.

Because of these great strategies, I'm confident I will do just fine.

Let The Stress Fly Away

Get it? Stress is one of the things we live along with throughout the whole cycle of life. Some are enormous, and some are everyday stress that we have to cope with. However, when things get too big, then it becomes a problem. Not only time management is very important, managing stress is also a very important step in our life. Whenever I get stressed, I do certain activities that I like to do in order to get rid of them. This has been an ongoing process for me all throughout my life, and I am sure it is for most people as well. I have used Stress Diagram and Sources of Stress to sort out my stresses and found out where they came from. Actually thinking about them and listing them down made me realize what kind of stress I had, and how much they are taking a part in my life.

When I was drawing the stress diagram, I was able to see what was the major causes of my stress. Grades and school took a big part of the diagram and most of my stress was derived from school, worries/hope about my future, and parents' expectation, which is also related to school work. Now that I have list of my stressful factors, I feel that I can get more control over my stresses and how I should cope with them.

This is my sources of stress. They are very related to the diagram, with the school work, managing my time, procratinating, and worrying about grades and my life in the future. We live under constant stress and this is what help us function and control our emotions and our behaviors.

We may always feel like we want to get away from the current moment of stress, but I know that it is impossible. I want to make myself be able to cope with stress better, and know how to handle them, not just feel pressured all the time.

Stresses can be problems but at the same time they can be motivators.

I came to understand that without stress, where would be all the joy, and the fun and relief? I do things that I like whenever I feel like I am under pressure of stress. This is the time when I can relieve my stress and at the same time, make my feelings better and get myself together. I like to play sports such as basketball, listen to music, write and sing, hang out with friends when I am stressful. I realized that what would be the point of all these if I am living without stress? I would not feel relief, motivated, and the need to control myself if there was no stress. In effect, moderate stress is healthy mentally and physically. However, getting under too much pressure will be painful and there is a greater chance that I might give up on something if there is too much stress overwhelming me. There are always ways to get rid of your stress. I must always stay on top of my things and do the best in whatever I do so that I do not get under too much pressure. We must strive from the stress, because it is an essential part of life, and we must just accept it as it is. Stress coping skills is an important factor.

Do not let stress overwhelm you and you must handle it and get rid of it. Just enjoy!

Stress Management

I do not usually get stressed out easily, but the only thing that I get stressed is from academic works. Because I have a lot of pressure about my academic works, I sometimes get frustrated about it. The funny thing is that I do not really know what kind of things make me stressed out. So, in order to acknowledge my top 5 stresses, I used the Stress Diagram for this assignment.

I thought, "What makes me stressed out?", and listed several things that make me frustrated. Actually, there was exactly 5 things that make me stressed, and they all are about academic works. The most thing I get stressed is 'Grade.' Because I am planning on transfering to Newhouse, I need to receive a high GPA, which also means I really need to study hard and get a good grade in my classes. The problem is that this is not easy, so I frequently get stressed when I think of getting a high grade. Also, if I get a high grade, I can receive 'scholarship' from the school, which is my second most stressful thing. Syracuse University's tuition is pretty high, so it is really nice to receive scholarship. However, this, too, is not a easy task. 'Homework' and 'Studying' gives me stress too. When I have to do a large amount of homework in a short time or when I have lots of tests/quizzes/exams coming up, I get irritated and frustrated. The last thing is 'School' itself. This contains dormitory, weather, and everything that is related to the school. Comparing to other 4 sources, the 'School' gives me the least stress, but it is true that the school itself gives fair amount of stress.

Now, I comprehended my sources' of stress. But, to tell you the truth, I do not know how this will help me reduce my stress. The objective of this diagram is to figure out what kind of things stresses me out, and do not tell me how I can reduce the stress. I guess the only thing I can do is just do my best, and enjoy the situation. Enjoy it unless you can avoid it.

Don't Let Stress Ruin You!

As the end of year approaches, I am pretty sure many of us are anticipated to get out of school and begin enjoying the good vacation under the warm sun. It is this period of time in which many of us feel very stressed out not only in school work but also in other many factors around us, such as financial, social, familial, locational, and etc. It is very hard to avoid those stress to come to you. And I say, if we cannot avoid the stress, let us get rid of it!

For this week's CLS strategy, we learned about the stress management strategies, which help us how to manage our stress to avoid it from ruining our work. The finals are coming up and we sure do no want these stress to ruin our last work!

When people are stressed out, they would want to stop doing whatever they are doing and just do nothing but entertain or rest themselves: they just want to forget about things that give them the stress. I also feel awefully stressed out these days from many things. Not only that I am stressing out on my GPA because I really need to get good GPA in order to enter Newhouse next year, but also because I want to keep my GPA high throughout the rest of my college year. However, GPA was not the only factor that gave me a stress, and I used the Stress Diagram from the CLS class to see what caused my stress.

From making the diagram, I realized the biggest stress I got were from Financial, GPA, and anticipation about the Summer. I did not have a job to keep me financially stable, not even a part time job. All I got was monthly allowance from my parents and this was starting to get overwhelming. No longer did I think I was able to manage my college life solely from my parents' allowance. And I started to think I needed to look for a job. This has been giving me a stress for awhile. Also, as I mentioned, GPA has always been a stress to me for I was always worrying about not getting good GPA. I really want to spend my summer as effectively as possible. I did not want to be a bum for four months, doing nothing but staying at home. As summer vacation approaches, I am starting to feel stressful about what I should be doing during summer. Whether it was summer courses or working at a job, I neeeded to find something out or I would continue to be stressed about it. Also, my family and friends always give me a stress not because they annoy me or anything but because I always think about keeping a good relationship between them. I want to keep my family, especially my parents, to be proud of my work and myself; I want to continue to have a good relationship with my friends even if I do not see them a lot during summer. These always give me a strss for I do not want to disappoint my family and my friends.

There are many ways to relieve my stress. Some of them are to play sports with friends such as soccer or basketball, hang around with friends outside, go out to a party on weekends, etc. However, when I need to work on school work, I simply do not have time to do these things. Because of this, I decided to use the 10 Minute Vacation I learned from CLS class. This is a strategy that I can use during I work on my school works. As an example, when I need to read a chapter from HST 102 textbook, I can read a section and rest for 10 minutes. If I think a section is too short, I can read two sections and rest for 10 minutes. Also for AST 104 class, whenever I am doing online homework assignment, I could work on a page and rest for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I would stop whatever I was doing and immediately go back to work. This not only keeps me working on whatever I need to do, but also keep me stress - off while doing it. If I, for example, read a section, stopped, and went on Internet surfing for more than 30 minutes, I would not be able to stop from it. Instead I would continue doing Internet until I realize that I have been on Internet for an hour. This would, again, give me a stress for having too much work at too little time. However, if I do the 10 Minute Vavation, I would be on track, without feeling stressful. During the 10 minutes, I could go on a Youtube and watch entertaining videos, or get on Facebook and check on my friends' interesting status. However, I would do this for ONLY 10 minutes. After that, back to work!

You all should try to list out the causes for your stress and see what you can do to manage those stresses. Depending on what type of stress you get, there could be different ways to get rid of it. So, when stress comes to you, do not let it ruin you. Instead, you can let it come and you can get rid of it immediately! The end is coming guys, let's all not lose track! We can do it!!

Let's Stop Wasting Time!

This week was about procrastination. I can assure every one of you bloggers here, that we are or have been procrastinators at least once in our life. I also admit that I was a procrastinator once in my life and even still do procrastinate time to time. I thought getting the work done on time and studying the test before the exam date and getting ready would exclude me from the procrastinator-category. But, as Dr.Blumin gave a lecture about procrastination this week, I realized that I still have a long way to go to fully escape from my pre-procrastinator habit.

I figured that it wasn't just about my mental mind setting, but also my natural habit that my body remembers and is used to. I can keep reminding myself that I have to finish this assignment in my head, but my body could be doing something else. I began to list the Excuses that I came up with on failing to control my body and the Time Wasters that my body is used to.

When I was done with list of Excuses, I noticed that I was a real good procrastinator that even sometimes deceives myself. For example, I will play video game and tell myself that I am just on a short break from all the stress and hard work. But in reality, I only play video game because it is fun and it is definitely less stressful than working on assignment. When I play video game, an hour feels like 10 minutes, but when I work on a task, an hour feels like 2 hours. Video game can be considered as one of the worst time wasters for me.

Hunger and thirst also seems to be a frequent excuse for me now that I think of it. Whenever I work, I will always get hungry or thirsty. Frankly, I am not really hungry or thirsty. I probably ate and drink not even an hour ago. But, I want to make up an excuse so that I can spend some time on anything other than studying. The 10 minutes I take to go to the vending machine can turn into 1 hour when I meet a friend on the way. The 5 minutes I take to order food can amplify as another hour when the food comes and I take time to eat and digest. It is just all simple excuse to procrastinate.

As I started to believe that I was a procrastinator, I was able to confirm that fact when I listed my Time Wasters. I am pretty sure that most people have this has a Time Waster as well. Yes, it is Facebook. This is 21st century, where technology is advanced enough for everything including college assignments, to be worked on computers. This could be a good thing and a bad thing. For me, I think it is really bad. Whenever, I turn on computer, whether it is for a academic purpose or something else, I always turn on Facebook no matter what. It was not even 10 minutes ago when I just had Facebook on as I am writing this blog post. I turned it off immediately after listing down the Time Wasters and saw how much damage Facebook can do to me while on task. Instead of doing Facebook, I can finish the online quiz for MAT121 much faster. Even for this blog post which is for CLS 105, the speed of writing has increased so much after turning off Facebook. And when I quit texting, I just cannot begin to imagine how much faster I will write for CFS 388 major essay that is coming up soon. I figured that it is much more efficient and effective to turn off all these Time Wasters and finish the work quicker then enjoy Facebook and the other Time Wasters.

Now I finally understand what forces me into becoming a procrastinator. I also understand that habit is the scariest and most unnoticeable thing. My habit has put me into a life of procrastinator. From now on, Time Wasters are going off and I am going to exert all my concentration on assignments. I will be able to do those Time Wasters as soon as I am done with all the work. This can work as my motivation as well. "Work first, Play later"

Don't Waste Time!

During last week's lecture, Dr. Blumin talked about the different ways of how a person can procrastinate. One thing that she mentioned really hit me up when she said, "Whenever I am busy and has tons of work to do, you always think about different distractions such as laundry, cleaning room, facebook, etc..." In my opinion, that is very true. Due to the fact that you have so much things going in your head and don't know where to start your work off, you tend to make excuses such as "I am going to start my work after I put my laundry in." However, this leads to cleaning room next, and then going out for smoke break, and more...

To prevent these type of things from happening, I wanted to find out what kind of activities are the reasons why I tend to procrastinate. Thus, I have used the Time Wasters strategy to find out the time wasters that I use and what kind of tasks I avoid. Since my major is related to science and maths, textbook is all I care about. Thus, whenever I have homework or need to prepare for an exam, textbook is my best friend. Thus, it really gets boring when you study; no pictures, no animation, no video, and only 8 sized font that I have to go through. When I think of this, I tend to avoid reading and do something else such as going onto Facebook to see what my other friends were doing. As well, when I have research paper to write, I make excuses for myself going onto Internet to find resources, but end up playing Korean Poker instead.

The list goes on. I tend to concentrate better when I listen to music while solving Math problems. Therefore, I make excuses to myself that I am going to change the music, but end up surfing the internet to see if there are any new songs which I would like.

After I have used this strategy, I found out the all the social networking sites and softwares were the reason behind my procrastination. By getting rid of online chatting programs such as MSN, Nate-On, and logging off of facebook, I would get my work done a whole lot faster. There is one common thing behind all the reasons and that is my computer. All my reasons behind procrastination has gotten done through using my laptop. Thus, I now have learned that when I don't require computer when doing my homework, by putting my laptop somewhere where I cannot see it will help me to get my work done without any procrastination at all. Overall, this strategy was really helpful for it helped me to discover the different reasons behind my procrastination.

Just Do It Now

Okay, that is what can easily happen through the process of procrastination. The longer you lag and take time to start a task, the worse the outcome will be. I regard myself as a big procrastinator and there are some reasons to why this is. First of all, the biggest problem that I have is that I just do not start a task when I do not think it is not a reasonable time for me to. However, through my past experiences, starting is the key to getting all the work done on time.

The two procrastination strategies that I have worked on are Excuse Busting and Time Wasters.

I just busted my own excuses. I have a lot of excuses for not starting my work when I can. The biggest 4 excuses that I have found are facebook, sleeping more than I actually need to, internet surfing, and listening to music at inappropriate times. These are all essential part of life, such as getting well rested, socializing, and personal hobbies. However, if I put too much time on them, during inappropriate times, and putting work aside, it becomes a problem. I must take every minute and hours to actually start my work, then I can keep them going and flowing continuously. I know what the problems are by writing them down and noting the importance of them.

When it comes to wasting time, some of the activities that waste my time overlaps with the excuses for procrastinating. I found that facebooking, taking too much time when eating, playing on the computer for hours, surfing the net are all time wasters. I can do these activites freely if I get my work done in the first place. The problem is that I do not get my work done beforehand, and I tend to keep these habits. It is hard for me to work right away when doing some of these activities. For example, when I am surfing the internet, it can go on for hours, even though I know that I need to start doing my work sometime soon. So I must, commit to myself that if I just work and get my work done sometime sooner, I will be able to have all the free time I want after. This can also relate to motivation. So I must start all my work as soon as possible whenever I know and find the time that they are to be done.

When you procrastinate, you are not getting the work done as you are supposed to but you are also cramming them because of the pressure of time. This will lead to worse performance on your work, such as writing too quickly to go over them or not having enough time to read enough materials that you won't cover them thoroughly. It is major job for me to start whenever possible and set aside all these other time wasting activities for later. I can sleep one or two hours less, if it is over at least 6 or 7 hours. After I get my work done, then I will have some more time to sleep. But not when I wake up later during the day finding out that now I have less time to start my work. Gotta keep myself motivated and do not procrastinate, as PROCRASTINATION is a harmful act.

SAY NO TO PROCRASTINATION!

Stop Wasting Time!!

As Dr. Blumin talked about procrastination in our previous class, I realized how I was a procrastinator indeed. I thought I finished all the products on time before the due dates, and I thought I studied for the tests a lot before the exam date. However, As I looked over my habits and activities I've done during I do my work, I had to admit that I was also a procrastinator.

Somehow, although I always tell myself not to waste time and get on with my work on time, it usually fails. So, I thought about what the problem was. As I listed the "Excuses" and "Time Wasters" I realized why I have been failing to work on time.

For the Excuses that I've used as a procrastination, I said that I "played video games to rest my brain" from work too much. However, the truth is that I have not actually used up my brain as much to be tired: I was simply playing computer games just because I did not want to work, but I was rationalizing myself that I was simply resting from the hard work for few minutes. The problem with playing video games is that it would not be few minutes: 10 minutes will become 30 minutes, 30 minutes will become an hour. I would then tell myself that I would get back to work after an hour, only to regret later for wasting time.

Also, I tend to go in a study room and work "together" with my friends. However, this is not really working because unless we do not have same homework, we would not need to work "together." We are simply working, and socializing - mostly socializing. This really wastes my time because I cannot focus on reading our textbook or writing essays when there is socializing going on around me. But somehow, even though I know I should not work in this atmosphere, I stay. Especially when I need to read a textbook for my History 102 class, because there is a lot to cover, I really need to be out of this kind of atmosphere.

Also, as I listed my Time Wasters, I realized the biggest obstacle for me was the electronics. I found myself awefully a lot on Facebook, telephone, or MSN messanger, talking with friends when I could be working on my homework. Although I can talk to someone on the phone for awhile, thinking about how much time I've spent in Facebook, I thought to myself ", what does facebook actually do to benefit me?" Of course it could keep me connected with friends, but I can do that after I finish with my work. Just because I did not get on facebook for few hours does not mean that I will lose contact with my friends. That goes the same with the MSN Messanger. So, instead of wasting my time at such things, I could read extra sections of my History 102 textbook, prepare for Astronomy 104 exam in two weeks, or write a paragraph on my HOA 106 essay.

I realized why I always stayed up late finishing my work. Yes, I was procrastinating not because I wanted to but I made myself to do it. Without realizing, I was continuously wasting my time in useless things and that made me sleep late everyday. When I had free time, if I spent those times working on my homework, I could have the whole night with the free time to do whatever I want to do. If I want to finish the rest of the semester in success, this time wasting needs to be stopped! Let's not waste our time guys!

iTime Wasters

This week's lecture focused on procrastination.

As a heavy procrastinator myself, I listend very carefully to Dr. Blumin's words of advice.

As we all know, procrastinating night before an exam is not a good idea.

When I was preparing for SAT exam, one of my teacher told me to get a good night sleep before the test date. It was meant to relax your body and mind to do your best on the day of the exam. Procrastination might be good for short-term outcome, but if you get used to it, it messes up your whole schedule and can be really negative in the long run.

Especially in college, you need strategic schedule to manage your time efficiently. In that front, the lecture on procrastination was important. I used to procrastinate whether it's an exam or essay, but after living under lots of workloads in college life, I felt that procrastination won't help me but rather be a negative factor in my career. Now, I do my works ahead of time or at least few days before the deadline. That way, I can fix and revision any errors and really just relax a bit and do other assignments in the meantime.

Once you get out of procrastinating cycle, it feels so much better and you won't feel urge to go back.

To make my life more easy, I used a great anti-procrastinating strategy,

'Time Wasters' in two of my classes.

Time wasters are the factors that contribute to procrastination. These are activities you do instead of doing your work. It would be perfect solution to just get rid of all these time wasters but as we all know, we need little bit of distractions and fun in life to get ourselves going. Rather, it would be a better idea to decrease the amount of time we spend on these time wasters and spend more time on doing work. To achieve this goal, you need to first identify the time wasters. Writing down these time wasters can help you realize and focus on things you need to spend less time on.

As you can see, in the left column, I listed the time wasters that distracts me from doing work. In the right column, next to the time wasters, I listed the task that I was avoiding by doing the time wasters. By identifying and listing the time wasters and works that I was avoiding, it gave me a idea of how I should go about to solve and what actions needs to be taken. I applied this strategy to my ENL 211 course and NSD 225 course. I had an exam for NSD 225 few days ago. As I listed above, instead of studying for an exam, I went to Facebook and wasted couples hours instead. For ENL 211, I had a reading assignment to do, but instead, surfed YouTube to watch silly videos. This caused me to stay up all night and study for an exam and read all my reading assignments in one night. I didn't realized this until I wrote it down using the Time Wasters strategy. Now I know what kind of time wasters are ruining what types of studying, I can decrease or eliminate those tasks to do my work. This strategy works well because now you can actually see what's going on around your wasted time schedule.

This strategy worked very well for me. I love how I can identify and see things that I haven't thought about which wasted my time. Now that I see those tasks and also the work I was avoiding, I can clearly fix those problems. This strategy will make students feel more productive overall. This kind of motivates you as well. I will sure to adapt this strategy in my other courses as well.

Time Waster

I always thought that I 'invest' most of my time in studying. I thought that I was a hard worker who spend lots of my time in doing homeworks and studying the materials that I have learned in class. But, come to think of it, I was wrong. Though I do spend lots of time sitting down in front of my desk, I do not spend all of my time in studying. I frequently recognize me doing something else. After a few minutes of studying or doing homeworks, I get distracted to my computer, my phone, or my iTouch, and do something else for a while. If I calculate my times spending, I guess that the time I goof around is much more than the time that I study. I wanted to know what kind of things distract me from doing my work, so for this week I used the Time Waster.

The picture in the right is a chart of the Time Waster. In the left column, I wrote down the times wasters, in other words, the distractions that keep me from doing my works. In the right column, I wrote down the tasks that I avoided, which are going to be my academic works. First thing I did was identifying my academic works and tasks; for my academic works, I have Japanese homework, CLS projects, Astronomy reading and homework, Math homework, and HOM homework and study exam. These are the works that I had and have to do, but avoiding them, becuase I was busy in doing something else; in short, I was distracted by other things that prevented me from doing my academic works. So, I listed the time waster, which is the distractions that I fall into. The top 5 distractions are: Watching TV; Doing Computer Game; Hanging Out; Surfing the Internet; Staying in My Room. These are the time waster that I 'use,' so I can avoid doing my tasks that should be the priority of my 'doing list.'

After I completed the task, I looked back and realized that I did not invest most of my time in studying and doing homeworks, but spend time in doing something else. By looking at this chart, I was able to recognize what were my distractions and time wasters that prevented me from studying. Now I know my time wasters, I should keep them in mind, and try not to fall into the distraction. Instead, I got to do my works first. After that, I can do the 'distractions.'

I Need Potent Motivation

Motivation is what I need in order to keep going and doing what I am supposed to do. What motivates me? That is the hardest question I can ever find, at the same time, it is the easiest question I can ever find. I know that earning good grades will result me into having a better future and overall will strengthen the course of my life. However, at the same time, the rewards that I can get can be other external things such as free time, the time for my actual interest, and relaxation.

The motivation to do the actual work is keeping myself distanced away from distraction when I am working. The motivation to actually study and learn for high performance is thinking about my future. I regard these two factors as just as important as each other. However, they are two different factors; one is about the future that I cannot foresee, and one is in the immediate present, things that I want to enjoy. What is more powerful? I do not know. What I do know is that I must keep these two in proportion.

There are other very small factors in motivating me to work as well. Scarcity of time, a satisfying grade on my exam, and how much I am interested in the subject. And such things like the picture that I have taken, that kind of stuff makes me want to put more pictures on this week's blog.... What is YOUR MOTIVATION!

Motivation Leads to Rewards

There are many ways to describe the word 'motivation'. I would personally describe it as a force that drives and encourages me to complete a task. In college life, I think motivation is one thing that a student should not seek to forfeit. Without motivation, a student, especially in college where he or she is independent. is likely to fail academically and socially. In high school, I was a student without a motivation. All my friends were similar to me and we could hardly be called students. Everyday was like a weekend to us. It's not that we were rebelling against the school or acting like punks, but we were simply unmotivated. In my junior year, I was in a situation where going to a college seemed as an impossible task. Fortunately, I finally got motivation. That motivation was so powerful that I was able to isolate everything during summer break except for SAT prep book. My scores skyrocketed compared to what I've got 3 months ago. Although my GPA was deep down in the abyss, I was able to go to a college with a motivated mind that rendered me a great SAT score and an outstanding college application.

Now that I think of it, I still don't know what was the primary source for the motivation that I got in my junior year. However, I think I know what motivated me after this week of CLS 105. I am pretty confident to say that my motivation derived and still derives from Rewards. If you think about it rewards is probably the universal source for everyone's motivation. Students study for rewards whether it be a inner-feeling, or a physical reward from parents, people work because they get rewarded for it and pets listen to the owner for the same reason as well.

So it was time for me to figure out the possible rewards for me in college. For an each successful and motivated semester that I complete, I listed down the possible rewards I would get. For a no-cost reward, of course, it is a grade. Grade is like a receipt you get after paying for something. It is a proof of your hard work. For a low-cost reward, I will get something from my parents whether it be a cash or a present. For high-cost reward, which is the most important to me, it bestows me a better future and more options available for me which can include transferring to another school or getting more benefits in SU. Finally, I will obtain something that cannot be bought with money: self-accomplishment feeling. This is the greatest prize and the reason why I was able to continue on working. After experiencing the first accomplishment feeling, my motivation got much stronger.

Ultimately, the motivation search can start and end at rewards. When there are no rewards, motivation will be gone along with it. But when there are rewards, motivation will keep flowing in me. But let's just say that when there are no more rewards left, that should mean you've pretty much worked too hard and got everything you wanted and should take a break.

Motivation

Documentation of exploring rewards The reason that I came to college was not to just socialize and make new friends and relationships, but to pursue my personal goal of becoming a doctor. I know that being a doctor is a long and tedious way to go, but very rewarding at the end. I have to take 4 years of undergraduate, 4 years of graduate school, 1 year of internship, and 3 years of resident in order to become a doctor. Thinking about it, I thought to myself: How much money will I be making when I become a doctor? What kinds of rewards are there? Are the rewards worth it? In order to answer these questions, I filled out the Exploring Rewards section on page 282 of the book. I have applied this strategy for every classes that I am taking and thought about the no-cost rewards, low-cost rewards, and high-cost rewards. Even though the rigor of my classes are very tough, in the end I get a pretty good rewards. By becoming a doctor in the end, I thought to myself that I would earn a high salary, good reputation, and among the top hierarchy in the society. Low-cost rewards would be the amount of money that comes into my card from my parents on monthly basis, the proud feelings from all the accomplishments that I have earned. No-cost rewards are the high GPA, acquired amount of credits, relationship with professors and peer students, more knowledge on the subjects, and becoming more informed person. Overall, this strategy helped me to explore what I could be earning from a long track that I have to step in order to become a doctor. This freshman year served as a stepping stone of what will be a long journey to accomplish my personal dream goal. This strategy has served me well and in any case when I change my major to something else, I will use this method again to figure out what my rewards will be. This strategy has really set my motivation higher to accomplish the ultimate goal of becoming a doctor. I believe that motivation is one of the most important factor towards the success of college life and this method has helped a lot.

What Motives You?

There is a saying that "you can be the creator of your own destiny" and the motivation is the key source to make yourself to become the ceator.

Motivation is very important when you want to achieve something. Whatever you do, without motivation, there is no way to achieve the goal.

I, too, always thought that motivation is reallly to keep myself working forward to reach my goal. Hoever, not until college that did I even have an actual goal to achieve.

In my middle school and high school years, I simply thought doing "good enough" in school will get me into college. Yet, as time passed and when applying to college has approached, I realized that just by doing good enough would not give me any good results.

As I entered Syracuse, I had a strong goal to come with, which was to get into Newhouse School of Communication. This was a strong motivation for me. Because I had to get good GPA at the end of the frst year to get into this school. The only thing in my mind was grade, grade, and grade!

This is my motivation. Whenever I get good grades, instead of becoming lose and complacent, I become more motivated to keep on the track and continue to bring out good works next time. Also, if I get a bad grade instead, then I once again become motivated to do 200 times better the next time to cover up my poor works.

This Exploring Rewards Chart gave me a perfect way to record my motivators and keep myself reminded with them. These rewards that I get after accomplishing something will give me a stimulus to become more motivated to work harder. Obviously, my high - cost reward is good grades! If I get good grades, as I said previously, I will become motivated to continue the same work. My low - cost reward is learning new materials. Although it is good when I learn new materials and I do feel accomplished, but because my main focus is on the grades, I do not become as motivated when I learn new materials. The no - cost reward was accomplishing the assignments. When I complete an assignments, depending on the how much of the effort I put in, I feel relieved and accomplished. The result of the assignments is what motivates me, however, not really the work itself.

In conclusion, I learned that I get motivated not much by others but by my own work. The motivation will continue to push myself over my limits to reach my own goal and I am sure the feeling I get will be tremendous when I reach it. Motivate yourself guys!

iMotivation

Motivation is one of the key element which can aid you to succeed in college. Motivation let's you actually do things rather than just thinking about it. Motivation plays important role in your academic life as it can help achieve your goal. Motivation is what makes your college life most fulfilling and better in the long run. Unmotivated students might see some success in the early stage but to be successful in the long term, you need to get motivated and should have solid path to follow along. Motivated students are tend to be more optimistic and focuses on learning process. In contrast, unmotivated students are tend to be outcome driven and look for shortcuts. I must admit that I'm in the latter category but luckily I'm motivated to fir in the first category soon.

As we all know, we can't get motivated every single day. There's time when you just want to lay down and do nothing. That's when the motivation strategies comes in to aid you.

I learned two important strategies related to motivation this week:

Academic Fears and Exploring Rewards.

I applied above two strategies to my NSD 225 class. I made a chart with three lists specifying three academic fears in order they are most important. For example, I listed three academic fears I have for the NSD 225 course. In the second column, I described the worst result that can happen due to my fears. In the third column, I described the positive things that may happen. In the last column, I listed solutions that can help me get the positive outcome. This strategy helped me to see what can happen if I don't do enough work for the course and what can happen if I try my best. It's really useful because it let's you see both sides and really make you motivated to get the positive outcome. If I feel like I'm not doing my best for other courses, I will be applying this strategy to make myself get motivated again.

For the second strategy, exploring rewards, I applied it to my NSD 225 course. This strategy is simple enough to apply to all of my other courses. All you need to do is make a simple three column chart and identify rewards in each category that you think that can motivate you. For example, in three column chart, list rewards for No-cost rewards, Low-cost rewards, and High-cost rewards. In each category, I listed some of the rewards that can help me get motivated and get works done to claim those rewards. It works really well because of it's simplicity and efficiency behind it's minimalistic approach.

Academic Fears (NSD 225)

Exploring Rewards (NSD 225)

Overall, this week's lesson on motivation is really important and might be one of the most interesting section of the course. Because, really, motivation is the key to success. If you are motivated, you can do it. You got to this far, so why not try harder to climb higher?

You seized hill, it's time to seize the mountain.