Nigel Cares: When to say 'no'

By Steve Lloyd
Vice provost

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying "If you want something done, give it to a busy person."

There is some truth to this catchphrase, especially if the busy person has excellent time management skills, the additional task is not overly complex, and the totality of tasks to manage does not become overwhelming.

We like to think of ourselves as having special abilities to multi-task, but a large body of research suggests that the more we divide our attention among tasks, the more each task suffers.

We simply have limited cognitive resources and exceeding those limitations causes stress.

The relationship between stress and performance is complicated. If you plot these two variables on a chart, the resultant performance curve is shaped like an inverted U (i.e., the Yerkes-Dodson curve).

Perhaps surprisingly, mild stressors can increase performance. A little anxiety before the test can be a good thing if it motivates you to study and helps you to be more alert and focused. However, as stress increases, the psychological and physiological effects on performance become detrimental and can manifest as more serious psychological and physiological responses.

The key in life is always to find balance and choosing the right ways to spend your time can help you to create that balance! 

We know you have a lot of demands on your time perhaps including work, family obligations, spiritual activities, and wellness activities. Hopefully, there is time left over for a few social engagements and hobbies.

As a student at UNG, we certainly hope that your academics are among your highest priorities. After all, learning and preparing for a career are the reasons you are here! Creating a calendar with blocked time for classes, homework, assignments, projects, study time, test and test preparation, etc. is an excellent strategy for prioritizing your academics and protecting the time it will take to engage in deep learning.

Did you know that for each course credit hour, there is an expectation that students will spend an additional hour per week outside of class or lab engaging with that course? Have you accounted for that in your scheduling? 

Some extra-curricular activities are too important to put on hold and should make it into your calendar, but others may represent things you will have to set aside for now.

No great achievements in life come without a healthy dose of hard work and sacrifice. As new opportunities present, how will they affect the time and effort devoted to your academics or other priorities and how will they affect your psychological and physiological wellbeing? 

As you learned above, overcommitting your time is likely to have a negative impact on your learning, which will likely manifest in grades or worse. Sometimes you simply need to say no (or not right now) so you can stay well and keep focus on your academic goals.