Motivation and Time Management can make a big difference in peoples careers. Good time management can ensure that you make the most of your day, but without motivation, then it is useless. Sure you can have a timetable set up to ‘guide’ you through your day, but if you look at it and go, ‘ugh, boring, ooh so and so is on the TV’ why bother. Motivation is a key factor in life and without it we wouldn’t move forward.
Let’s look at time management. Not long ago I recorded all my time spent to see how well, or should I say badly, I spend my time. Here is what I ended up with over the duration of a week:
15 hours lecture time
22 hours self directed study
31 hours gaming
62 hours sleeping
18 hours eating, cleaning, random crap
20 hours unaccounted
As you can see I really aren’t using my time very well. The main problem I have is the fact it is very easy to get carried away. For example, whilst playing Team Fortress 2, I’ll say to myself, “right, just one more map”. Now, a map will usually take about 30 minutes until the server changes level, once you get going it is very easy to get carried away. “Just one more”, “ooh love this map” etc. Before you know it I’ve spent an extra 2 hours playing without realising. It also doesn’t help when you are playing with friends. Another similar situation is with sleep. At this age, we only really need about 6 hours sleep to function properly, but when you wake up and you are nice and warm in your comfortable bed it is so easy to fall back to sleep without realising. I say to myself, “just 10 more minutes”. Minutes quickly turn into hours and before you know it is 1 o clock in the afternoon. I find that putting my alarm on the other side of the room helps.
On the other hand, I always feel that I have done more work than I have. I look back on what I have produced in the last x amount of hours and realise I haven’t actually been work constantly. When I think about it I have wasted half of it due to distractions.
Having a good working environment ensures that you can make the most of your time. The trouble today is most work is done on the computer, which also have games, the internet, chat programs, music and more. Any of these can keep a person distracted for hours at a time without them realising. What I have done to prevent such distractions is this, deleted all the game shortcuts off my desktop, as well as signing off of chat programs to prevent more distractions. Some people I know have to have something going on in the background such as music or a TV program as they cant stand the silence, personally I don’t mind having some peace and quiet once in a while and can happily sit there working in silence, just as long I am enjoying the work. That’s another thing, passion.
Being passionate about your work will make a big difference to your motivation. You will find that if people are given a tasking based on something that they are passionate about the outcome will probably be of a higher quality compared to something they aren’t interested in. As for myself, I will happily sit down and model a vehicle in 3ds max simply because I enjoy it, ever since I was a young child I have been interested in vehicles. On the other hand, if I am told to model a character I find it much harder to concentrate on the task, become easily distracted due to the fact I’m not interested in characters and become bored. Another example would be this; during the summer I went to beaulieu for the mini cooper register. After looking around I sat down and drew my friend’s mini, which took roughly 4 hours. I enjoyed every moment simply because minis are something I am passionate with. Also the weather was pretty much perfect which helped. When we are told to go out and draw people in the streets of
I feel that having breaks is important. Some people like to work for several hours at a time non stop until they have finished what they had planned to too. Personally, I have to take small breaks every hour or so, otherwise I can become bored or frustrated. I also realised that even though I think I have worked for say, 4 hours straight, I haven’t, I’ve probably worked for about 2, maybe 3. Sometimes I ‘hit a brick wall’ when modelling, simply not knowing what to do next, or how to overcome something. Having a break helps me to relax and clear my mind. I also find that having two or three projects on the go at the same time can be useful. If I get stuck with one or fed up with another I can switch to a different project, and then come back to the original one, now that I have relaxed. I tend to spend up to 3 hours on a project until I call it a night or switch to another, any more and I tend to lose interest. One thing I have learnt is to never play games whilst taking a break. Do this and time may fly by without you realising until it is too late.
Right, well im not really sure what else to put as of yet so i do a quick sum up. To make the most of each day I need to cut down on games and sleep big time. Ideally I should have about 42 hours of sleep a week, about 6 hours a day, as this is all you really need. As for games, simply uninstalled the majority of them will help, along with removing the desktop shortcuts to any remaining. The hours saved can then be spent on self directed study. Having a timetable will also help plan out each day, otherwise I could easily sit there wondering what to do for an hour.
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