Personal effectiveness is a universal need and this is because being personally effective can lead to one having more control over their daily life, being more focused as well as being super productive. It is important that as students we take up personal effectiveness to effectively understand ourselves, enhance our skills, and at the same manage ourselves while reaching our full potentials.
Many people like to mistake personal effectiveness as working oneself till you feel worn out. But personal effectiveness is not about being productive while working yourself to the bones, under pressure, and having your whole body crashing afterward. Personal effectiveness is how much we as individuals can achieve and how productive we can be with a minimum amount of stress attached to it. This simply means that as students, we can be productive and reach our daily goals without being overworked or stressed. But the reality of every Nigerian student is that school is synonymous with stress. And many times it seems to us that we cannot be productive without going through the usual stress every true Nigerian student is said to go through. But the truth of this matter is that we can. Yes! We can be productive and not have to go through the pressure and maximum stress to produce results. Below are ways that can help you in being personally effective in school;
Always start with a self-assessment
what are your goals? What are the things you perceive as most important to you? every individual who aims for personal effectiveness must always start with self-assessments. Many people are usually more serious and productive in the things they count to be important to them. As a student, many times our interest or nonchalance to school work is focused on how important school is to us. This goes a long way to determine the type and amount of e ort that would be put in by an individual. Self-assessment always helps in personal effectiveness because you know what best works for you. As a student, if reading in the morning works for you then you should stick to that. If you know that reading right from the first day of the beginning of a new semester would give you the best results, then do that! Every individual must find him/herself. Know what works for you!
Learn time management
As students, time management is a skill everyone should strive to have. How well do we manage our time? Do we know how to differentiate important tasks from urgent tasks? What does our priority list look like? Are we doing the right things at the right time or we are doing the right things at the wrong time? How many hours do we spend on our phones daily and how many hours do we spend reading our books? Which is more important? The above questions and others in line with them not stated here are very important questions we need to ask ourselves as students. Time management is simply the process of planning how much time we as individuals spend on specific activities and setting a time frame on when we would achieve them. It is not just okay to simply make a list of things to do with specific time allocated to them but what is most important is sticking to what has been scheduled. Not sticking to the schedule often time leads to procrastination. Once procrastination sets in, then so does pressure and stress. This is because a decision has been made by the individual to move what should be done today to tomorrow. And so, a task that was simply important but not urgent ends up becoming very important and very urgent because of constant procrastination. When the tasks become very urgent, the pressure would certainly kick in and so would stress. Although the task might end up being completed, that individual has put him/herself under unnecessary stress that could have been avoided and as such that cannot be termed as personal effectiveness. When time management is learned, and things are done at the right time the individual is relieved of maximum stress and would be able to avail himself maximum rest.
Recruit your stakeholders
Many of us students know that just academics might not take us far and so we get involved in extracurricular activities. Many of us join organizations and clubs to add more skills and experiences to ourselves. Some of us end up in executive positions and have responsibilities to fulfill. Often time, things might get choked up especially when you are trying to balance them with school work and as such you need stakeholders that can help make things a lot easier. If you are the president of the organization and you feel choked up, your vice and other members of the organization are your stakeholders. It is okay to entrust some of these responsibilities to them to have breathing space. In other words, it is okay to ask for help. Your stakeholders are people you can count on when things seem to be more than you can handle.
Develop an ideal week
What are the things you have lined up to do for the week? What are the ways you are going to achieve them? How much effort do you need to put in achieving them? What do you need to put in place? For every new week, you must define your boundaries. Note the things that you must do in that week and the things that you can move (usually tasks that are not urgent). It is also important that you batch repetitive tasks. Tasks that look similar, you can try putting them together and working something out.
Relax!
It is also important to cave out space to regenerate. After going through the whole week and staying up to date on the things you need to do, it is ideal that you also take time to relax! Go to lunch or dinner with friends, visit the cinema to watch movies, or stay at home and Netflix and chill. Whichever it is, it is okay to relax once in a while, this would also help a lot when it comes to being personally effective because you tend to be relaxed and comfortable and energized to go back to work. Take a break!
Conclusively, personal effectiveness does not just lead to being productive but is also an important trait that encourages increased productivity and improved levels of happiness, and improved academic performances for students.
AASA PRESS UI 