{"id":29757,"date":"2016-11-08T13:56:41","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T18:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=29757"},"modified":"2016-11-09T09:34:27","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T14:34:27","slug":"adventures-in-time-management-finding-time-for-my-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2016\/11\/08\/adventures-in-time-management-finding-time-for-my-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Time Management: Finding Time For My Career"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Setting up Forest\u00a0before tackling one of my essays<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nOne of my goals this year\u2014as a Career Centre blogger and as an undergraduate student\u2014is to focus more on my career through exploring different jobs, networking, and building my skills and resume. However, as midterms and essays and extracurricular activities started to pile up during October, I realized I wasn\u2019t contributing as much time to developing my career as I would like.\r\n\r\nIn university, I think it\u2019s just as important to strengthen your employability as it is to get an education. An undergraduate degree is usually just four years. After that, you\u2019re in the work force for most of your adult life. Thinking about this partly motivates me even more to prepare for life after graduation, and partly sends me into a panic.\r\n\r\nSince October was not as balanced as I would have liked, I decided to try out Forest<\/a>, a productivity and time management app. It didn\u2019t go quite as well as I thought it would, but it did yield some career insights.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\"A<\/a>
Aaaand we're off<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nForest initially sounded super helpful. Basically, whenever you want to get some work done, you \u201cplant\u201d a virtual tree. You can then set a timer within the app for whatever amount of time you want to work for. (I set mine for thirty minutes). As you work for thirty minutes, the tree will grow\u2014unless you exit the app. If you switch apps to goof off on your phone, the tree will die and you will have to start over. The incentive is to create a \u201cforest\u201d by staying focused and \u201cplanting\u201d more trees.\r\n\r\nI downloaded Forest with the hope that it would help me break up my tasks for this weekend\u2014writing two essays, studying for a midterm, catching up on readings, writing this blog, and working on some personal projects related to my career.\r\n\r\nAlthough the idea of Forest is great, and the app itself is probably helpful to many, it didn't help me balance my weekend as much as I would have liked.\r\n\r\n
\"A<\/a>
I had \"worked\" for thirty minutes... but it didn't feel like it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nMy main issues were that:\r\n