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You will find times in the workplace (and certainly here at college) when you have to do a lot of writing in very little time. Today’s #TuesdayTutorial provides advice on how to structure your time and get a piece of writing done under a deadline.
The Lynda.com video Writing Under a Deadline (33m 38s) includes tips that will help you begin, write, and finish a project on time. You will hear advice on establishing a timeline, organizing your ideas, staying focused, and polishing your work before you submit it. Even if your time is tight now at the end of the semester, it’s worth investing some time in this video:
Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.
11 Comments
I think these videos really help in throwing together, what most of us already know. All of us have been in a situation where we have less time than we need to finish a project, paper, or even homework assignment. I like how the videos give a plan to set out the objectives, and outline the assignment. Before coming to college, I would always despise writing outlines and planning out what I will write in a report or essay, but the further I get in my academic career, the more I see that having a loose plan, helps me finish assignments quicker. It is kind of like investing a lot now, and getting a high return later. It does take time to get a well formatted outline done, but if you take the time to make it good, then writing the final assignment becomes so much easier. Even on tight timelines, knowing what the main points of your argument are, will allow for the assignment to be more clear, and make more sense. I would definitely suggest following some sort of structure similar to the one explained in the video when you’re on a time crunch.
I found this series helpful as the semester is closing and deadlines are looming. The video that really stood out to me was about “establishing a timeline” and emphasized how when you make a timeline it is best to start at the end and work your way backwards. I have usually started from the beginning with the end in sight, but I think the new approach is better because it ensures wiggle room and that you will have sufficient time for the project when you start making your timeline with the due date. I will use this approach as I’m making my study schedule for final exams and compiling all of the work I need to complete for this course and my other courses.
After reviewing several of the videos of this course, I feel like we got great practice with our genre analysis project. When we made the proposal we planned out a schedule, including when we would set up interview in advance, and hopefully left ourselves some wiggle room to submit. We also knew what resources we would have and a general outline. Of course this is not realistic when you have a shorter deadline or when you dont have a rubric/outline. I like the idea about recording yourself because its so much easier to talk out loud than force yourself to start writing a draft. I actually have an echo, and I speak to Alexa about random ideas when they come to me (in case anyone else has one!) the most important point from the videos I watched was the tip about PLANNING AHEAD. There are so many external factors you need to consider just as she mentioned in the video (holidays, other peoples schedules, weekly publishing dates, etc.) I probably won’t be interview as a doctor but I will still need to consider things like time zone differences, patient schedules, monthly journal publishings, grant deadlines. and other things that impact my final deadline. This was a a great lesson! Just remember, the key is to remain calm, focused, and organized.
I agree. I think planning ahead is so important in a project and giving plenty of wiggle room before the deadline. In my construction management class, we talk about project scheduling for construction projects and breakdown the workflow into manageable portions with the number of days that the section of work will take. When making the schedule, you also consider what the early start date/early finish date is and the late start date/late finish date is. This helps you determine whether that section of the work will throw off your entire project timeline if it is delayed. The same mentality can be used for writing projects or deadlines in the workplace.
Yes, I agree that wiggle room is important to a schedule. Without it, the schedule would shift and maybe fall apart if the deadline cannot be met. On a side note, I used to make a lot of camp rosters for groups of people when we go camping or travel on a trip. In these schedules, I would always include down time to let people rest before doing another set of activities. Otherwise, they’d slack off in the following events and not want to do anything. Likewise, a flexible schedule was really helpful for the Genre Analysis Project because it had multiple components: research, progress reports, group feedback, and rough drafts before the final project.
I totally agree with you. I think recording myself is easier than writing down an outline, and recording myself can save more time, so I can pay more attention to finish my project. Planning ahead is also really important, which can encourage me to finish my projects or assignments before the deadline. Meanwhile, I will have more time to revise my projects.
Since we are at the end of the semester, there are so many assignments and projects due. this is a good video to help us take a breathe. The video has talk about to make a plan for rest of work I need to do. that’s a very nice idea. and also that’s what i am doing right now, i have put all my final projects, presentation, and exams on my calendar. However, my calendar looks so crowd now, it makes me feel even more scary, lol. Overall, i think it’s a good way to help you organize the things, and help you don’t forget something. Furthermore, making a plan is the easy part, the key is to implement it. then you will be benefit from it.
Dealing with deadline stress can be quite a pain, especially at the end of the semester. This video was definitely helpful in depicting how to setup a plan to be successful when dealing with deadline stress. Personally, I find writing out all of my final projects, papers, and exams on my calendar to be very helpful. I allocate a specific amount of time for each project or exam to allow for proper time to work or study. In doing so, I am more efficient with my time and I finish in a timely and organized manner. This year I am lucky enough to only have three in class finals and this courses performance review. Although this does not seem too bad, I needed to utilize my method to set a plan for studying due to the fact that I have two finals in 24 hours. Studying for two finals at once can be quite stressful, but with help from this video and my method, I believe I will be successful.
This video is really helpful. Most of us are facing a problem about deadline stress. Sometimes, I need to do a really big project in a few days, which makes me really stressed and tired. However, I will calm myself down, and write an outline for my project. After that, I can focus on every single point in the sequence, which makes me finished work easier. From this video, I know I need to add all of the deadlines on my calendar and finish them in order.
With the end of the semester right around the corner, I found this video extremely helpful. I have a lot of assignments and exams due in the next few days so this video gave me some very helpful tips on how to deal with the stress from these deadlines, and how to complete my work on time. Like a few other people said, I found the “create a timeline” tip the most helpful. One of my major struggles with schoolwork is not starting it enough in advance. I have a problem with procrastinating all my work until the last few days before an assignment is due. So, I really like the idea of starting at the due date and working backwards to see when I really need to start each portion of an assignment. This class somewhat taught me how to do that with the genre analysis report and creating a gnatt chart. The only thing I need to do now is teach myself how to stick to the schedules I plan out.
This video is very useful since the college life is very busy and sometimes I don’t have a whole piece of time to focus on a big writing project. For me personally, when I’m doing my writing project especially, I’d like to separate it to pieces such as make a table for my ideas, list bullet points, and combine them together. But the last part, combine all my ideas and points, is always going to take a long time. This video says that it’s always be easy to finish the project by put the outline on the calendar which could keep myself on track, In a tight time period, this could make my work more on pace instead of write whole thing at one time and screw things up.