Effective time management

1 _________________ Time flies and if you want to reach your goals, you have to make your days productive, not to plan anything to kill time and remember that time is money. With some effort you can make your days more efficient. They say there’s a place for everything and everything should be in its place. How about your plan? Do you have a plan or strategy for organizing your clock and commitments? With discipline, you can be an effective time manager.

2 _________________ The first step is to make planning a habit. Remember that what can be done anytime is done at no time. Do not focus on one day, focus on the whole week.

3 _________________ Stephen Covey made a masterful illustration using a bucket, some sand, and several rocks of various sizes. He explained that the sand represents all the busy work that we have to do — must-dos. The bucket represents all the time we have for all the demands of our lives. What happens with most of us is that we fill up our buckets with the sand first, and then we can only put a few rocks on top, and there’s no more room for the rest. What he suggested is that we put all our rocks into the bucket first, and then fill in all the available spaces with the sand. And miraculously, everything fits in our container! This is the philosophy you need to employ when you schedule your week. Identify all your big rocks, and block out the time to handle these first. Then worry about the sand afterwards. We have to make sure that we handle the important stuff first, and not let the busy work consume our days.

4 _________________ Don’t plan the every hour of your day and week as it may turn out to be crammed with activities. Leave some time for you to catch up when the unexpected happens. Learn the art of juggling your activities and adapting to unplanned changes.

5 _________________ Learn how to say no. It’s more important than you may think. We have to learn how to say no when it’s needed or else we won’t get anything done. There is a lot of disturbing elements around us.

6 _________________ Once you have your days scheduled, you need to exercise discipline and stick to what you planned. Do everything you can to eliminate distractions and really focus on what you have to do. You will be amazed how much more productive you can be. Remember that procrastination is the thief of time!

7 _________________ Don’t forget to leave sometime for yourself to think, ponder, and for emergencies. If you are going to work for 10 hours, for example, make sure you leave 2 hours for pondering and emergencies. At the end of the day, reassess how your day went. Did you accomplish everything you wanted to do? Was your day beneficial?

A Why Planning Is Necessary

B Who Needs Planning?

C Discipline, Discipline, Discipline

D Be Flexible with Your Time

E The One Word that Can Save You Tons of Time…

F Learn to Prioritize

G Schedule at Least One Week at a Time

H Assess Your Day

Task 9. Fill in the table with the words: to mop, to do, to shovel, to rake, to make, to mow, to clean, to wash, to dry, to vacuum, to polish, to sweep, to dust, to cook, to scrub, to take out/to throw out, to water, to iron.

	A House Chore Verb	Things to Do
		the floor, the windows
		the floor, the porch, the steps, the driveway, the pathway
		the furniture, the ceiling, the window sills
		a meal
		the laundry, the dishes
		the room, the house, the apartment, the windows, the cooker, the oven
		the dishes, the floor, the windows, the dog
		the dishes, the surface
		the furniture, the car
		the floor, the working surface, the bath, the toilet
		the carpet, the rug
		garbage, waste, trash
		the grass, the potted plants
		snow
		the leaves, the weeds, the grass
		the lawn, the grass
		the laundry, clothes, curtains
		the bed

UNIT 4. leisure activities: pastime, hobby

Дата добавления: 2014-11-08