📘 Part 3: Saving time

This episode's vocabulary

Planner (noun) - a document or software program that helps you plan something.

Schedule (noun) - a list of planned activities or things to be done showing the times or dates when they are intended to happen or be done.

Handy (adj.) - useful or convenient.

To neglect (verb) - to not give enough care or attention to people or things that are your responsibility.

Drain (noun) - something that makes you feel very tired.

Force multiplier (noun) - something that increases the effect of a force.

Intrinsically (adverb) - in a way that is an extremely important and basic characteristic of a person or thing.

Efficient (adj.) - working or operating quickly and effectively in an organized way.

Questions and Answers

M: What can schools do to help students learn time management?

R: Well, where I'm from, schools make extensive use of things like visual timetables for young children. And I think they give older students planners for them to write their schedules in. That's quite handy, since they can see examples and experiment with their own ways to plan their time.

M: Is it necessary for children to learn time management?

R: It's probably a good thing for everyone to know for things like work and studies, but it wouldn't be the most important thing or be about managing your time according to someone, at least according to someone else's vision. It's important to see how it can improve life in some circumstances, but not all.

M: Do people who can manage time well become successful more easily?

R: Surely, that depends on what sort of success we're on about here. If it's productivity, then managing time well can allow you to get more done. But people are not just producing machines. They have lives outside of that. So if people only focus on the productivity side of things and neglect relationships, they might be less successful in that area, and overall, probably.

M: Do you think parents should be responsible for teaching children to save time?

R: It's certainly an important set of people to have involved in the process, since parents are the ones who ideally spend the most time with children. I don't see why others can't be involved, though. Especially if it means involving other members of the family and them helping each other out, then they can learn how to do that at the same time.

M: Does technology help people save time?

R: It certainly can, though, it can also be a drain on time, energy and resources too. You can use the calendar app to organize your day efficiently, but if you lose access to it, then you could have serious issues trying to recall everything that you have on. Technology is more of a force multiplier than anything intrinsically good or bad.

M: What can people do to save time?

R: I mean, surely that depends on the situation again. Generally, they can avoid less efficient ways of doing things. So instead of going to the shops five times a day for five different things, they can go to all of them at one time and in some sort of route, if possible, to make it more efficient.

M: Hey, thank you, Rory, for your story!