Working patterns - how do you really spend you time?

Many people have different ways of working, but it is not just about how you work it also about how you organise your time. How can a person adjust there working pattern, to get the most out of the time they have to work on something?

Two weeks back I was set a task to help solve these questions, this involved making a note of the time I spent doing things for an entire week. From there I would review this and come up with a better working pattern.

Here is a quick overview of how my time was spent for a week:

15 Hours a Week –Lectures

23 Hours a week – Self Directed Study

39 Hours a week – Playing games

16 Hours a week – Other (e.g. Eating, Reading, Watching TV)

56 Hours a week – Sleeping

19 Hours a week – Unaccounted for

After looking at this I found out that I am actually only doing between 2 and 4 hours of work a day, which came as a bit of a shock because I really felt like I was doing a lot more work. I also I found that the time I spent playing games was as you can see was a little too much, every now and then I would stop working to play a game for half an hour but that never really happened, half an hour turned into an hour and so on an so forth.

I reviewed the time spent and re-planned how I should use it, and this is what I came up with

15 Hours a Week –Lectures

50 Hours a week – Self Directed Study

45 Hours a week – Game play & Other (e.g. Eating, Reading, Watching TV)

40 Hours a week – Sleeping

18 Hours a week – Unaccounted for.

Based on this I am over doubling the amount of time spent doing work, and less time is spent doing less productive things such as playing a whole 39 hours of games.

But here is a question a put to you. No matter how much to plan your time, what do you do when you are just incapable of concentrating on your work? With the reviews coming up shortly, the stress of making sure I have everything ready for it is getting to me. I feel like I have so much that I need to do, and yet I am unable to concentrate on almost anything. I think all I can say at the moment is I am looking forward to the Christmas break, I think I need it