1500 word Essay

Time management and motivation.

Time Management: Time management refers to a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals. (wikipedia definitions).
Motivation: The psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behaviour. (Princeton wordnet). This essay is about time management and motivation and its uses.

Some time management skills include; goal setting, planning, prioritising, decision making, delegating, and scheduling.
Goal setting is setting targets to achieve with in a certain amount of time. Its useful for big projects which can be broken down into smaller parts.
Planning is an important skill to do, with a lot of things you will find you can't do something without having done something first, for example you can't do a uv unwrap with out first having made the model.
Prioritising goes hand in hand with planning its the ability to figure out the importance of a task and to put it ahead of less important tasks.
Decision making is crucial for time management if you spend to long making a decision about what to do and when you will find you have no time left.
Delegating is the process of passing on work to other people, for example a secretary will do filing for their boss.
Scheduling is a little like planning but can involve things like time tables and is a more definitive form of time management.
One important aspect of time management is to not overwork. You need to make time for breaks and enjoy yourself whilst still sticking to the deadlines. If you are overworked and tired your work will suffer.
Some important applications of time management in the world are things like logistics, military manoeuvres, business management.

The uses of time management in logistics where logistics is having a certain number of objects which could be; people, cattle, supplies or vehicles and providing it with suitable transportation, are; planning and scheduling among others. Planning is used to work out how long it will take to reach where it needs to be and how much transportation is required. Scheduling is then used to make sure everything is where it should be in the least amount of time.
Military manoeuvres require precise time management to see the manoeuvres are a success. This requires synchronicity and a high level of scheduling.
Business's have to be run in real time so time management means money. The more efficient the workers and the quicker the responses to market change the better the business will do.

Some good examples of time management are time tabling, and building a hierarchy of tasks. These are good examples because they show prioritisation and scheduling. Some bad examples of time management are taking work as it comes, and leaving work until just before the deadline.


Motivation is a large and diverse subject so this will be a summation of some of the major points and ideas behind it. Motivation is an intent towards a goal. Motivation can be split into intrinsic and extrinsic behaviour.
Intrinsic motivation is doing something like a jigsaw for the satisfaction of having done it or for the enjoyment of the puzzle. Intrinsic motivation is usually found in people who find enjoyment of being in control of a situation.
Extrinsic motivation is an incentive. For example money and threats of violence are the most common extrinsic motivations. Things like trophies and rewards for doing well are also good examples. Though it has been found that an abundance of extrinsic motivation leads to a decrease in the subjects intrinsic motivation.
Self controlled motivation is a sign of emotional intelligence. Someone may be intelligent by normal standards (such as intelligence tests) but not willing to apply their intelligence to anything. The idea of self controlled motivation is that someone will consciously dedicate time and effort towards getting something either for the intrinsic or extrinsic rewards.

A lot of things have come about because of certain motivations, such as great master pieces, wars, even some self mutilation. Some of the motivations that cause these outcomes are things like love, and war, and money. Some famous things that have been done through these motivations are things like the fall of troy, van Gogh cutting off his ear, even the song green sleeves! With the right motivation people have been known to move mountains, or at least go through them.
One of the most famous examples of motivation was the Russian Tzarina Alexandra Fyodorovna who gave up her influence to Rasputin under the motivation that he would heal her son.


Ever since I can remember, I've always worked hard but it was never within the time limit, and because of this, most of it was never finished properly or to the quality that I would of liked it to be. This was not because of my skills, because they have always been improving but because of my really poor time management. After listening carefully to Mike's lecture's I've decided to try harder to make changes in the way that I work. There is a lot that Mike has advised us about and I have fully understood, which is rare because most of the time I feel so confused.
However some of the things I want to try and work towards are, Planning, timetabling and practising. For example if I have been set a project and my deadline is in 2 weeks time, I could plan what I need to to for the different stages, research, development and final(s). Then time table it all out so that I give myself the first week to finish it in and the second week, if needed I can make changes or improve it. This way I would have a lot of spare time to do other work as on the course we have overlapping projects.
I also listed Practising, what I mean by this is, to do more than one piece, this way I have more options in final, more development and more understanding of what I'm learning by not making the same mistakes twice. On another note, I've not been using my Dmuga Facebook account as much as I should be. I find critiques really helpful, but I get shy about people looking at my work in progress, like its not meant to be seen because its unfinished. However I do need the help so I'm setting it as a goal to get more work up as I'm doing it. If I can keep this up for all of my projects and finish it all just about on time, then I would be happy to present all of my hard work to the whole of game art.
For motivation all I have to do is keep reminding myself of the reasons I'm doing this, but if I Manage my time better it will work out.


In conclusion time management and motivation are very important towards the course and possible jobs in the future. Motivation is primarily extrinsic for the course as the rewards are grades, and the fact that we are paying a lot of money to study here. There is also the intrinsic value of learning new things and having a marketable skill. My personal motivations are; my family, because when I am back home in my country, I see different family members working so hard and they are so motivated, its very encouraging. Also for a long time I wanted to prove myself to my parents, that my chosen route of education is not a waste of my time, and effort.
The future, motivation to do well in my work now means I finish with better grades which helps towards more options in my chosen career path. Also I want a degree that will help me get a job in something I enjoy doing.
Other people, I like to see other people happy and smiling, and if my work can do that its a good motivation for me to work harder.
Satisfaction of completion, I like the feeling of completing a project in time and with my best efforts.
Time management is very important to the course and the jobs that follow after it. The course and the jobs that follow are all project based, this means that a lot of things will have overlapping deadlines. These overlapping deadlines mean that scheduling and prioritising are important as otherwise nothing will be done on time.
Whilst thinking about all of this I realise just how much I'm lacking in the way of time management skills, and because of this my motivation is not put to full use. Causing me to rush most of my work for a deadline. I really don't like working like this so, as I've mentioned, I'm going to try to put Mike's Lectures to full use, taking more note of where my time is being wasted and doing a lot of thing I've wrote.