Wheres Bernards watch when you need it

Recognise this image?? seen this sort of epic messiness before? is it a photo of your office? if it please don't post it on the net nobodies interested in your failings. To the blog yes hello again I'm here to mildly entertain while at the same time boring you with the most amount of bollocks i can spew out about this magical and wondrous topic we all love call... ohhh its time management *puts away party poppers*.

Time is precious, for those of you confused by the title you either had no childhood or you were not sad enough to watch it in the first place either way this daft looking kid was possibly the best time keeper of all time unfortunately he is not you! Not to rain on your parade or anything... Any who none of that matters this blog is topical and i will try my best to keep it that way.

So the topic well Bernard's watch stopped time and there is not one person who could no really do with it as there never seems to be enough hours in the day these days.

Time management is a skill at the end of the day. It does require techniques to master it and id go as far as saying that time management is possibly the most challenging aspect of uni life it cannot be spoon fed as it revolves around your lifestyle and you have to self direct it taking several key factors in to mind that allow for maximum productivity and that's what i plan on discussing.

So the first key factor is the obvious one 'Organisation'!! Without being organised then its completely pointless even thinking about time management as this magical factor is the key to getting those extra hours playing Call of Duty or getting drunk you know whatever floats boat and tickles your pickle. So to get organised well its actually the easiest to do but the hardest to keep in my opinion, it is really all down to how slobbish you are as this comes naturally to neat freaks as i like to call them. Having all your work categorised and easily accessible immediately saves time as it prevents the annoying thumbling around desperately searching for that one important document or whatever it may be in a sea chaos that wastes unnecessary time.

Once over that road block its to the number one killer when it comes to time management, this is of course distractions! We all know this one is hard especially with game art students as there is a tendency to be an attraction to boycott work in favour of game playing shenanigans and yes probably with the mentality of if its time enjoyed then its not time wasted. To get past that its quite difficult and needs allot of will power. This will power is the second key to efficiency and maximum productivity. The best way to get over this is to make sure that days are planned out with a fair share of breaks where these activity's can be done, though naturally sometimes things interrupt plans and everything goes a bit pear shaped and this cannot be helped but it does not warrant a panic.

When it comes to arranging and sorting out how to organise your day in a readable manor it really depends on what tools you have to display it. With allot of phones these days heading in the personal organiser direction it gives that option of not using old fashioned paper to organise as obviously its more portable than your average sketchpad. However if you are a broke ass student and living only marginally better than your bog standard pikey then naturally the sketchpad may be the better choice.

As you can see above i have posted my timetable for a few weeks ago thanks to the magic that is the picture button. Now yes it is the old fashioned way of doing it with paper and no I'm not quite a pikey but anyways i just find this method the better of the two for me as my phone plays up like a trouble child on crack. To the point, I'm not saying you should lay yours out like this but it just to give you an idea. When making a timetable it is crucial to consider priority especially if it involves deadlines and this priority is the third key factor of time management.

Fortunately between the time of me writing the above and writing this i have created a tool for creating timetables and printing them and yes sure i could have deleted the text above or rewritten it but for some reason i have a fear of the delete button probably due to me deleting several important work documents on my friends fathers computer when i was younger i soon associated that button with clip around the ear. Its been made with game art in mind and contains a preset system that is fully customisable. Yes it looks a little ugly at the moment but i was thinking printing efficiency before remember that most people don't care ha. So i will pretty it up soon with a more fancy template.


http://www.warpedoutentertainment.co.uk/images/timetable.swf
This brings me onto tools. As with this little program i have made tools can help save time and organise out your week with ease and the easier this process is made the more efficient a person can be with their time and tasks.

Tools are handy for what ever job you have to complete and researching new tools is well worth the extra time as they can benefit you in the long run and often produce better results in half the time. For example i recently spent 2 nights drilling all of zbrush's and cs4's features into my head and sure this effected my timetable, in fact its made it so i have not completed a task in time but now that extra knowledge will help me produce much better work. So taking that time out is immensely worth wild.

To skip back a while before i went off on this tangent i was about to discuss the third key factor this of course being priority.. Now i know your not thick but i still have to write about this. Prioritising work is extremely important. You don't want to spend time on something that isn't necessary straight away so sometimes its best to get it done in the order it was first set! Naturally though ability can play its part in disturbing this because not everyone is good at everything and to achieve the level of others in a subject it may take more time but this is usually balanced out by another subject being easier to handle, so this is the fall back subject and probably gets left till last.

This could also work the other way around of course meaning that the easy one is out of the way first relieving some pressure and allowing focus to be concentrated on just the hard topic (oh no I have gone cross eyed!)

So the main 3 factors to remember when it comes to time management are Organise,Prioritise and Will power and though i didn't write this blog in that order this is the order it should be in but my main issue which i need to work on is organise :) and apart from this blog this is also reflected in my messy sketchbook. As you can also see i have posted a picture left illustrating it in a way that gamers should find visually appeasing. So we all have things we need to work on and now is the time to sort it out before it gets to much and our heads explode or worse!!!

Oh yes while on the matter of heads exploding there is one more thing! When using time management to arrange your life please please please dont forget your 'you time'!! It is extremely important to relax as a 'burn out' can end with you further behind on work or complete mental collapse which of course nobody wants! So yes dont overwork, be sensible with time!

Right and that's the end of another mind blowing blog entry by me if it didn't have the desired effect and blow you mind then its likely that you were thinking about blowing you mind in another way out of bored-ness and for this i apologize... deeply... thanks for reading bye!!!