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Essay Writing – IMRAD Format – Explanation

The IMRAD format is a very useful model to use when you are conducting research. It allows you to organize your research paper in a way which is consistent with standardized formats for papers. In short, the model stands for: Introduction – Method – Results – And – Discussion

Source: Swales, J and C. Feak (2000) English in Today’s Research World: a Writing Guide, Michigan: Ann Arbor

Introduction

In the introduction, you will touch on topics leading up to your central research topic. This includes offering an account of past research that has dealt with the topic of interest. The introduction follows the Abstract which is normally placed immediately following the title. Thus, the following common order: Title -> Abstract -> Introduction -> Method -> Analysis -> Results -> Discussion – Conclusions.

The introduction covers a much wider range of topics as it also includes things that would normally be considered to be in the periphery of a research question. For instance, if your central thesis is centered on current IT trends in Engineering, the introduction could also touch on the historical background to this phenomenon as well include descriptions and definitions of key topics to be covered in the paper. If you are going to use acronyms, it’s important that you at least once – in the beginning – explain what the acronym stands for.

Method

The method section deals with the way by which you have acquired your results. You should also mention the nature of research project, whether it’s qualitative or quantitative in nature. Qualitative research papers – which are typically found in the social sciences – investigate the how and the why of decision making and usually have a smaller but more focused sample size. Quantitative research however make us of systematic empirical tools to quantify and assess data sets by means of statistics and/or computational techniques. The latter is very common in the natural sciences. Finally, the research questions could be stated in this section.

Results

In this section, you present your results. These are the actual findings that you’ve compiled in conducting your research and could include statistical data or the results from interviews. It’s important that you present and compile your results in a manner that is coherent and easy to follow. Remember to be thorough as this section is the central part of your thesis.

Discussion

In this section, you will explain what your results actually ‘mean’. How do they correlate with your int ital research questions? What interesting relationships did you discover and how do you think this could be explained. You can also mention any limitations on your research and explain why the reasons for these limitations. The discussion could be ended with suggestions for future research. Following the discussion, you can have an independent header entitled ‘Conclusions’ in which your conclusions are stated in a straightforward manner.

How To Write a Cover Letter

The What

Writing a cover letter that stands out can be the difference between attaining the job of your dreams and not being considered at all. A competitive listing may receive hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants which means that the statistical chance of them choosing you is relatively small. Although a well written cover letter is not sufficient to guarantee that you get the job you desire, it is almost always a necessary component.

The covering letter is of huge importance and should be considered a vital ingredient as far as your application is concerned. This is why the “cover” letter is typically the first page and not an appendix (although it is becoming increasingly common to attach the cover letter as a separate document). Whereas your CV/resume is meant to offer the reader (i.e. the hiring staff or potential manager) a brief summary of your accomplishments and qualifications, the covering letter serves to demonstrate your ability to express yourself. In essence, the resume is akin to the foundation of a building which carries the weight of the structure whereas the cover letter is more like the finishing/interior design which is perhaps not the most vital component of a building but most certainly the attribute that attracts the eye the most.

The cover letter points out to the employer that you have the qualities the job requires, and it makes a statement about yourself and how suitable you are for the job. It should give that je ne sais quoi, the personal touch that your CV intrinsically lacks.

According to a recent study¹ conducted in the United States, a full 42.9% of employers required the applicants to submit a cover letter for each and every position they applied to. Only 29.8% felt that cover letters weren’t important or that they simply didn’t have time to read them. The remaining 27.4% had no opinion in the matter. Another study ² published by an American firm credited as the world’s first and largest accounting and finance staffing firm states that 91% of the executives polled for the survey felt that cover letters were valuable in the evaluation of candidates. Although historically, the cover letter was typically sent as a hard copy accompanying the resume sent through regular post (“snail mail”). Its use has nevertheless not disappeared with the advent of electronic submissions. As a matter of fact, the study cited previously also states that as much as 79% of managers agree that sending a cover letter online is now the standard procedure.

The 3 Types of Cover Letters

Categorically, cover letters can be put into the following groups:

1. In response to an application: This type of cover letter is written in order to secure a known job opening. It’s directed, well tailored and specific.

2. A prospecting letter: This type of cover letter is uninvited and is meant to describe, in general terms, your abilities and how these fit the company’s requirements and/or culture. You’re essentially inquiring about future positions.

3. With intent to network: This type of letter requests either information and/or assistance in your job search.

This article focuses on the first category as this is perhaps the most common and therefore the most useful.

The Why

The reason to submit a cover letter is fairly straightforward. The cover letter offers you a chance to stand out from the crowd and allows the employer to assess your background in a way that cannot be done by merely scanning through a CV. There was a time when one could easily land a job with a simple and to the point resume. Unfortunately, those days have passed. In order to be considered as a serious contender these days, one will need to submit a cover letter that can demonstrate why they should choose you!

Back in the good o’l days, a person could land a job easily with a very brief CV and no cover letter. Unfortunately, much more is needed in this day and age to land a job. It’s important to submit a well written cover letter even if the position you are seeking doesn’t require one. The only case in which you would avoid writing a covering letter is when it explicitly states that no such document should be sent. In any other case, it will either constitute a vital component necessary to be considered eligible for the position or at the very least, help improve your chances buy making you stand out from the crowd.

The How

Perhaps the most important element of the cover letter is that it should be tailored for the specific position that you are seeking. Avoid using a generic cover letter that you send indiscriminately to different positions. Instead, take the time needed to customize each message and be sure to highlight aspects of your career or educational background that are relevant for the position in question. There should be no ambiguity that the cover letter is directed specifically towards the person reading it.

Issues that have to be covered

– The purpose of your application
Are you seeking an internship, a full time position or something else? The reason for writing the letter should be explicit and clear to the reader in the first few lines.

– What makes you the best candidate
You need to highlight the skills that you possess, the experience you’ve gained and the knowledge you’ve acquired that makes you the perfect candidate for the position. To accomplish this, you need to read the job description carefully and make sure you understand what’s needed from you.

– How did you hear about the position?
Did you stumble upon it by searching for positions related to “x” or perhaps through a flier or through a referral? This should be evident in the letter.

– Earliest date you can begin
Are you available immediately or can you only begin at a specific date? This sort of information should be included in your letter, perhaps near the end of the message.

– Your personality
The cover letter needs to be able to offer a glimpse of your personality. Although it is nearly impossible to convey something as intricate as one’s personality in a few lines, it still needs to have that personal touch. It goes without saying that you won’t be able to compress you personality into a brief document spanning 1-2 pages. However, one should be able to at least gain a glimpse of who you are even if that glimpse only reflects one small fracture of the whole puzzle.

Layout

The layout of your cover letter is important, there’s no denying that. Having that stated, it is by no means as important as well written content. A lack in design might be overlooked but a clumsy written piece is most definitely going to be discarded. Here are a few tips to consider when designing your cover letter:

Font type: Times New Roman is a standard font type that delivers time and again. If you want to try something different, I would recommend Arial (but use a smaller font size), Calibri or possibly Myriad Pro. Avoid at all cost fonts that look comical or childish such as Comic Sans.

Font size: 10-12 px depending on the font. Certain fonts are inherently larger and can therefore justify a smaller font size and the reverse is also true.

Margins: The default margins in Microsoft Word are generally set to 1 inch (2.54 cm) all around (top, bottom, left and right). No need to tinker with it unless you know what you’re doing.

Number of pages: Always keep it between ½ page and 1 page unless you have a very good reason to deviate from this. In the survey cited earlier ³ 19% of employers argued that the cover letter should cover an entire page,
46% insisted that it should only be half a page long whereas 24% indicated that the shorter the length, the better. The remaining 11% had no particular preference. The important lesson to take from this is to never surpass the 1 page length unless you have good reasons to do so.

Keep in mind that a cover letter that is sent electronically does have certain characteristics that separates it from its physical counterpart. For one thing, the signature block containing address information is typically placed below your name in an e-mail but at the top of the page in a hard copy. In the e-mail letter, you will have to consider writing a good and captivating subject line. Sometimes, this line has already been specified by the employer and in such cases, make sure you comply to their standards. If not, keep it simple, descriptive and interesting. An example of the former is “Refnr:250 – Proposal Engineer – John Johnson” and the latter: “SEM Expert Seeking New Opportunity”. Although there are many other ways to write it, it should always be clear what type of message it is.

Finally, the handwritten signature should always be included in a hard copy but is of course not necessary in an electronic application.

Content

The primary objective of the cover letter is to make sure the reader understands why you’re the most suitable candidate. In addition to this, the letter has to cover the following issues:

Entice the reader to look at your resume
Explain your motivations behind sending your resume: be specific.
Discuss how you came to this decision. What lead you to apply for this particular position?
Show that you have knowledge about the company and its practices. Show how your skills are relevant to the company’s overall goals.
If you have been referred by someone working in the company, this needs to be included.
If you’ve worked with the company previously, perhaps as an intern or as part of a project, this too needs to be mentioned.
Use examples of your relevant knowledge/experiences that makes you suitable for the position.
Invite the employer to call you or get in touch with you for further information. Unless the employer specifically says otherwise, you can initiate the contact yourself once the submission has been sent.
Provide information answering any specific questions that the employer may have inquired about in the official job description.

The Who

The cover letter is typically sent along the resume and supporting documents to the HR representative or even better, directly to the Hiring Manager. The chances of getting hired are significantly higher if you can skip the middle man and directly send your application with the covering letter to the person who has the final say on who gets in. Unfortunately, a lot of times, the manager will simply redirect you to the HR department where your application will end up in a large pile with other applicants. That’s unfortunate but true. A way to circumvent this conundrum is to look up who the manager for the position is and then attempt to book an appointment with the individual at their office. This will distinguish you from other applicants and give you a chance to explain why you’re the most suitable candidate for the position. Make sure you have prepared some questions that you can pose to this person.

The Where

If the application is sent through electronic means, which is more or less the norm these days, you will attach the cover letter in the manner specified on the job description page. This typically entails sending the cover letter and the resume as separate attachments. In some cases, the cover letter is either attached or “pasted in” the submission form. Be sure to always be certain of how many words you’re allowed to use in the submission form. It’s not particularly fun to have produced a well written, well tailored cover letter which is longer than the required number of words specified by the company in question. If there are no such requirements, you may refer to “The How” section of this article for guidelines in regards to length.

The When

The best time to send your cover letter (along with the rest of your application) is typically on a Monday. Why, you may ask, one Mondays and not on other days? The reason is simple: Mondays mark the new work week and the chances are that the recruiter’s desk isn’t cluttered with new applications. This line of thought is supported by a recent study ⁵ showing that people who send their job application on Mondays have a much higher chance of getting accepted to the next stage in the recruitment process. This result is based on an analysis of over 500,000 job applications showing that job-seekers who apply on Mondays have the highest success rate (30%), compare this to Saturday applications that had the lowest success rate (14%). The reason for this phenomenon is not explained in the study but a common theory is that job-seekers who apply on Mondays are simply more eager than others.

In addition to the above, you should also consider sending the job application as soon as possible since early applicants have a higher chance of getting hired.

Final tips

Here are some concluding remarks.

– Proofread the document
It is of paramount importance that the writing should be free of grammatical mistakes. At the very least, you need to use the spell check feature included in most word processors. In addition to this, be sure to read it out loud; by reading it out loud, you will notice if a particular sentence sounds strange. When you feel content with the quality of the document, print it, grab a marker and start reading. The final reading of the document should, in my opinion, always be based on a printed version even if the application is sent through electronic means. Remember, the person who will be reading the document is probably going to print it out and for this reason alone, it’s important that it looks nice when printed.

– Let someone else proofread it
You can let either someone who is a friend or a relative read through your cover letter. You would be surprised what they might pick up that you may have overlooked. This is why it’s always a good idea to let someone else offer their insights. It may be that something that felt obvious to you weren’t as obvious to your friend.

Things to AVOID

Do not lie: No job is worth the depletion of your integrity. Always be truthful, the truth always comes out in the end anyway. Also, by lying you have to keep track of all your lies and everything that happens from the rest of your career will always be based on an untruth.
Do not spit out cliches.
Do not make claims that you can’t back up, even if they are truthful. If you say for instance that you can speak Spanish, you better be prepared to show that if asked.
Do not sell yourself short: everyone has strengths. Make sure you highlight those strengths as much as possible without using too many flattery adjectives

References

Hilden, Eric (2010). The Center for Career and Life Development at Saddl
eback College. Available here. Accessed 2014 Feb 20th. ↩
Robert Half (2012), Covering All the Bases. Available here. Accessed 2014 Feb 20th. ↩
Hilden, Eric (2010). The Center for Career and Life Development at Saddl
eback College. Available here. Accessed 2014 Feb 20th. ↩
Virginia Tech, Cover Letter: types and samples (2013). Available here. Accessed on 2014 Feb 20th. ↩
Farnham, A. Monday Best Day to Look for a Job (2013). ABC News Blogs. ↩

How To Overcome Procrastination – Help and Solutions

Charles Dickens once famously remarked: “My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.”; pertinent advice for all that are listening, one must agree. The reasonable person within us tends to agree with this sentiment, it is after all only logical to not postpone important work until tomorrow when it can just as easily be finished today. Alas, if only life was as easy as following the reasonable voices within us. Instead, although we instinctively agree with the aforementioned quote, often we tend to act in agreement with another quote.

This time uttered by Mark Twain, who quipped: “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well”. A lighthearted joke, I am sure. Unfortunately, from experience I think we can both agree, seeing as you´re currently reading this, that this lighthearted quote has defined much of our existence.

Enough is enough! In this guide, we will discuss how to overcome procrastination and offer a few possible solutions to slay that dragon once and for all. That being said, before we proceed, it might be prudent to shed some light on some of the possible reasons for procrastination.

Common Reasons for Procrastinating

There are various reasons for which people begin procrastinating. Below, you’ll find some of the more common ones. The best way to begin treating this problem of yours is to first acknowledge it, then understand it and finally face it.

The task seems too big.
I need not remind you that all great things started out simple. If the task is very large, instead of putting it off into the future (and thus make it ‘bigger’); deal with it today by breaking it up into smaller, more manageable tasks.

The lack of motivation
If you’re putting of the work because your lacking motivation, then you’re in deep waters. You need to remind yourself of the importance of this endeavor, not the importance of the task itself which may be small in magnitude but rather the importance of the mission itself. This brings me back to the old tale of the two construction workers. Once upon a time, as the tale goes, these two workers were standing side by side constructing what to the naked eye seemed like a wall. A passer-by asked one of the gentlemen what he was doing to which he responded: “I am building a wall”. The onlooker then turned to this colleague who choose to give the answer “I am building a hospital”. Now, even though the men were working on the same project, the construction of a new hospital, only one of these two individuals had his mind set on the greater goal. Although the task might have been putting up a few bricks, the overall endeavor was much greater than that.

Likewise, you will need to understand and properly value the greater picture. Do not let whimsical desires obfuscate your vision and make you loose sight on the things that are truly important.

How common is it?

The short answer: too common. According to a study by Steel (2007)¹, a staggering 80-95 percent of college students procrastinate, particularly when it comes to writing assignments and other forms of course work. In an earlier study published in 1997 by Green et al², procrastination was identified as the main culprit responsible for failed PhD studies. One would figure that academics who have pursued this line of work would be better apt to combat procrastination but reality says otherwise. This gives us even more reason to avoid procrastinating.

Procrastination solutions

Like most complex problems, you won’t find any quick fixes to procrastination. However, there are many potential solutions that can be tried.

Establish a routine
Develop the urgency of now

Conclusion

Finally, I would like to conclude this article by reminding you that if you do not deal with your issues today when they are the most pressing; you will most likely regret it in the future. Imagine all of those times when you had wished that you had started earlier. Well, today you have the chance of a life time. You have the chance to start ‘earlier’ – today – so that tomorrow or next week or next month, you will be able to look back and not feel the slightest regret as a result of procrastination.

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65-94. ↩
Green, K. E. (1997). Psychosocial factors affecting dissertation completion. In Goodchild, L. F., Green, K. E., Katz, E. L., & Kluever, R. C. (Eds.), Rethinking the dissertation process: Tackling personal and institutional obstacles. New Directions for Higher Education, 99,. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 57-64. ↩

How To Prepare For an Exam

Do you have an exam coming up? Waste no more time, start preparing right now.

There’s an old but true saying that those who do not prepare for success are preparing for failure. Passing your exams with high marks is not a particularly difficult task. The successful student plans his/her exam long before the actual due date.

In this post, we will briefly discuss how to prepare for an exam in a rational and efficient manner. To do this, we first need to know where you stand in terms of the exam date. The best way to handle an upcoming exam differs depending on how much time you have to study.

For this reason, I have therefore divided the issue into 3 separate scenarios:

A – You have 2 months or more to prepare
B – You have 1 month or less to prepare
C – You have 2 weeks or less to prepare

A – You have 2 months or more to prepare

This is the optimal situation. You start preparing the moment you know the exam has been announced. Don’t be fooled with the fact that you have a lot of time left before the actual writing of the test.

This will make you procrastinate and fool yourself that you are going to study tomorrow when in fact you are only postponing the inevitable.

The first day: Strategy!

Spend the first day formulating your strategy. Make sure you are aware of all of the required reading for the course. Skim through the entire textbook and try to produce a reading schedule and a preliminary deadline for when you need to be finished with the reading of the book. The deadline is important, make sure you keep it!

An example of preliminary planning is shown below. In this example, only the first few days are show, hopefully it’s enough to get the picture.

The rest of the days: Implementation!

In the case above, the required textbook had 208 pages + a few handouts and practice problems. With an average of 5 pages per day + day at the end of the week reserved for repetition only, one will conclude the entire book in about one and a half month. This leaves you about 2 weeks to review everything.

Remember to specify a deadline for when all of the reading needs to have been completed. Make sure this deadline is – if possible – at least 1 week before the exam date. This way, you’ll have time to revise what you’ve learned. This is how knowledge sticks. It is through the medium of repetition in which information becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes wisdom.

You can’t know what you haven’t internalized and in order to internalize something you need to repeat it; out loud, on paper, with your classmate and so forth. The more you discuss the topic you’re studying, the easier it becomes to remember it. The same reason people remember things they’ve read or watch, i.e. they speak about these things often.

B – You have 1 month or less to prepare

If you have about 1 month to prepare you can still produce great results, depending on how much you know about the topic, the difficulty of the exam etc. The modus operandi is not much different from the case above. What you need to do is simply create a schedule where you would need to work twice as much on a daily basis to finish all of your reading + eventual practice problems/old exams before the exam date.

If you have less than 1 month to prepare, it is still possible to get good results but you have to start studying immediately!

C – You have 2 weeks or less to prepare

So it happened. You are in the tight situation of having only 2 weeks to prepare for an exam. If this was intended by your professor it might not be a big of deal since the scope of the exam will not be as big as if you had had 2 months or more to prepare. However, if the course was indeed intended to go on for 2 months or more and you have only started studying right now, you are in some deep trouble! Don’t worry though; it is still possible to produce decent results even though you have such limited time. It’s time to go into emergency mode.

EMERGENCY MODE

Emergency mode means that you will have to put anything that is not as important as passing this exam to the side! That means that you will most likely have to forget about meetings friends, going out for shopping, leisure activities, sport and so forth. For the next few days, you will need to eat, sweat and breath the topic that you are studying.

As before, begin the first day by planning. This time however, we are planning to cover the most important parts first, knowing well enough that we might have to skip some parts. It’s survival mode and in survival mode you think about the essentials first and foremost.

1. Triage!

Triage is what they in the medical community call the priority system that is used in emergency situations in ER rooms in hospitals and similar places (such as during rescue operations, disasters such as floods etc). The people who are in the direst need of medical service are those who get served first so for example the person who was in a severe car accident gets to be treated before someone who had a minor wrist injury. This is how you need to treat your exam.

2. Important vs Less important

You need to know the following:
– What are the most important chapters?
– Which parts are less important (keeping in mind that less important does not mean unimportant)?
– Which types of problems are in the most likelihood going to be included?

3. Study, Study!

Start studying, cover all the essential parts first and make sure you have mastered them. Once you have learned these, you are ready to move on to the more advanced examples/chapters. Don’t waste any time what so ever doing anything that is deemed less important than your studies. Until the exam date, you must be focused on passing that exam.

Educational Quote #7 – Removing Obstacles

It’s time for a new edition of our educational quotes series. Today, we will deal with a topic that is tremendously important for students. It’s about knowing what keeps you back and then remove those obstacles.

The following words were uttered by three time heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, regarded by many as not only the best boxer in history but the greatest athlete in sport’s history.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe. – Muhammad Ali

We all have pebbles in our shoes, pebbles that hinder our progress and make it difficult for us to proceed. The ‘pebble’ differs between individuals, for some its made up by laziness for others it all about procrastination. Whatever that pebble may be, you need to make sure to remove it and focus on the path ahead. An education is not something you acquire over a short amount of time, rather it is something that demands time & energy.

Instead of focusing on the scale of your education, focus instead on the little everyday obstacles that hinder you from achieving your academic dreams.

This is all for this weeks installment of education quotes. Stay tuned for some more inspirational quotes coming up.

College Freshman Tips

Soon to have your first day of college? Nothing to be afraid of, although it can be perceived as somewhat tantalizing at first it will become easier once you get a hold of it.

How To Study For Exams

Interested in knowing how to study for upcoming exams? In this post, we’ll go through the most important parts of the process which unfortunately tends to be overlooked far too often.

1. The urgency of NOW!

I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon pertaining to studying. For some reason, when it comes to exams, people tend to worry a lot more about their exams than they they do actually preparing. If you are currently worried about an upcoming exam, why not harness that negative energy into something positive instead? Whenever you start getting worried again it becomes time to hit the books. Do not succumb to procrastination. Do your studying and do it now!

2. A road map helps a long way

Always keep your exam date near to heart. Time tends to go by pretty fast, you may be surprised that 3 weeks left have all of sudden turned into 5 days left. Don’t let this happen to you. Organize your studies and memorize all of your test dates. Put them up on the wall if necessary.

A good way of constructing your road map is to first set the date for your upcoming exam, then outline all the major topics that you would need to have covered until then. Finally, you can divide these topics into smaller tasks, describing the everyday tedious “on the ground” “getting your hands dirty” work that simply has to be done. This could be something like reading chapter 3 or solving problem 5a.

**3. Compile an I Don’t Know Paper (IDKP)**

This is something that I personally like to do. Whenever you begin a new course, start out by getting a piece of paper or a text document and then start recording all of the things that you need to understand before the test date. These are the things that we intend to ask our professors but instead we put it up and thus forget about it until it’s already to late. By collecting all of the I Don’t Know’s in a IDKP, you can then, at the end of each week seek out the answers to these questions either by asking a colleague or your professor or by simply going to your local library and/or the internet.

Either way, don’t let it go unanswered or you will regret it later on when sitting during the exam only to have realized that your intended inquiry is now an exam question. The the motto is: Answer your own questions before they become exam questions!

4. Are you on track?

It’s easy to neglect work, even easier when it comes to education. That’s why you should appoint one day at the end of the week for the sole purpose of tracking your progress. Are you on track? Have you finished the tasks that you’ve outlined in your road map? Have you answered all the questions that you have been thinking about? If not, then no play for you until you’re back on chart.

Sure, missing out on one day isn’t that bad. The problem my friend, is when one day becomes two days and two turn into three and so on. Days tend to accumulate pretty quickly. If you’re behind schedule you should strive to get back on schedule as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more difficult it will become to get back on track.

What To Bring To College?

Looking for a guide on what things to bring with you to college? Well, look no further! In this post we go through some essential items that you need to bring with you on your way to college.

To Do List Template

What’s a To Do List?

A to do list, also called task list is a simple way of organizing the things you need to get done. Most of us have some experience with writing to do lists, however few people have actually thought about how to use them in an efficient manner, utilizing its full potential. In this post we’ll cover the basics of to do lists as well as offer some deeper insights.

Paper

A piece of paper, simple and affordable. I recommend you to download the to do list template provided in this post, it will save you the time and energy of doing it yourself.

A pen/pencil

It’s been around for thousands of years and still as good as always. I personally would recommend that you use a regular pencil for these purposes. That way you’ll be able to erase, edit and add new entries as you go.

Objectives

A clear idea of the things needed to be planned for. A to do list is no good if it’s only partial. If you want your to do list to be as effective as possible you’ll need to first have a very clear picture of the things that you need to have done and at what date they need to be finished. Also, you’ll need to know the scope of the project, is it small, medium or large? When is the deadline, what happens if the deadline is not met? These are important parameters that have to be taken into consideration before you can write everything down.

Further Tips

1. Step by Step

Don’t feel overwhelmed with all the things ahead of you. Remember the old Chinese proverb that says; “A journey of 10,000 miles starts with one step.

2. Be like a Train

The train keeps on moving, each day and every hour you see it travel to its destinations. Be sure to get into the habit of finishing your tasks, anyone with a hand can write them down.

3. Incentives

If you’re having a difficulty in getting your tasks done maybe it could be wise to start offering yourself incentives. You could for instance say; if I finish task “x” and “y” you will get “z”.

4. Break it up

If the tasks are too large in scope, break them up into smaller easier tasks.

5. See the larger picture

There’s a famous parable of two construction workers, both engaged in building the same wall but with different mindsets. When asked about what they are doing the first one says; “I am building a stone wall”. The other however answers “I am building a hospital”. You need to remind yourself of you why are doing these tasks to begin with. Are you learning Laplace Transforms or are you becoming an engineer. The same holds true for any educational or profession.

Work and Study

Is it possible to combine work with studies? If yes, how can this be done? This will be the topic of today’s post.

If you are reading this, chances are that you belong to either one of two categories:

You work & study at the same time.
You intend to work & study at the same time

Since the approach is different in regards to which one of these two categories you belong to, I’ll also deal with them differently.

1. I Already Work & Study

If you belong to this category that means that you are currently employed while studying at the same time. Your main concern is how to make this process as efficient as possible; assuming that there has been difficulties combing the two.

Measuring Your Time

Don’t limit yourself to estimations. If you truly want to know how much time your work & studies are consuming you need to sit down and calculate it on a piece of paper. Don’t be satisfied with writing down only the times that you are working or attending lectures.

Instead, write down all the necessary activities that pertain to that activity, e.g the time it takes to drive to work/school, prepare to work/school and so forth. Only when you measure all things related to that activity you can first begin to visualize how much time you’ll be left with.

Free Up Some Time

The easiest way to begin freeing up some time is to look through all the different time consuming activities (which you’ve already prepared in the step earlier) and go through each one asking yourself the same question: “Do I really need to do this?”. In many cases the answer will be yes but in some cases it will be no. Begin by locating these unnecessary activities.

Optimizing Your Time

Not everything can be discarded of course, so how do you deal with the rest of your activities? Once you’ve examined how much time is at your disposal, you can then begin to optimize your time and focus on the things that produce results. Go through each entry in your list and ask yourself the following question: “Can I optimize this somehow?”

You shouldn’t be doing unnecessary things just for the sake of doing them. If certain lectures don’t provide any benefit to you perhaps it is wiser to not attend those particular lectures and instead focus on working with the material individually, seeking out the teachers assistance when needed.

Other inquiries related to optimization include your method of transportation (can it be quicker, can you perhaps study while commuting?), lunch (can you shorten your lunch hours?) and other daily tasks that collectively take up a lot of time.

I Intend To Work & Study

If are currently either studying or working and you’re thinking of combing these two you’ll need to first investigate how much time the job/studies will take up.

Time Schedule

Create a physical time schedule filling in your work hours and the time allocated for the thing you’re currently doing. Keep one important thing in mind when you’re estimating how much time a particular activity will take up. Never bee to optimistic in evaluating time allocations. It’s better to plan for too little time than too much time. Even though something may seem ‘possible’ to do when calculating it on a piece of paper, it’s rarely as true when doing it in real life. This is because of the ever changing nature of life, things will happen that you didn’t account for. At the very least you should keep this in mind whenever you’re planning for something.

Keep the Primary Fixed

If possible, don’t go all in. I many cases one of the two things (job/studies) is your primary whether that is your studies or your current job. Either way, make sure the one that is secondary only takes up as much time as needed. If you are a full time student who needs extra cash, don’t try to fit in a full time job with once. Take it slowly, if possible part time in the beginning and more and more as you go. Likewise if you are currently working a full time job and you absolutely need this to support your family, don’t risk it all unless you feel absolutely certain that you can manage it.

In short, the primary is the constant, you can’t do much to decrease it’s size without dealing with severe repercussions. The secondary however is the variable in our scenario. Use it as you wish, a little or a lot as long as it does not decrease the size of the primary. The secondary is changed in relation to the primary and NOT the other way around, i.e if studying is your primary and work your secondary then you can work as much as you want UNLESS it hurts your studies because the primary is the key.

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