Hello and welcome to one of my last gr.9 blog posts. In this post we will be talking about PGP the new outside of timetable course!

PGP this year was divided up into 3 sections. Goals, productivity and the 7 habits. We met once a month after school to discuss how we were doing with the assignments. Personally I didn’t like this course as it was quite a bit more work, but mainly because it was outside the timetable because who likes staying after school?

We started off the year talking about goal setting. We read this book called What Do You Really Want by Beverly k. Bachel. We had to fill out the forms (worksheets) in the book into a journal and submit them. This was my least favourite part about PGP because I don’t really like to get personal about what I want to do and all that.

We then moved on to the productively section of PGP. In this part we learned a lot about how to be productive and ways to stay on task, as well as given tools to stay on top of work. We learned about time vampires. Those are the people/ apps/ sports/ pretty much anything that distracts you. We also learned about time blocking. Time blocking is a very useful tool that will help a lot if your like me and struggle to get work done on time. To time block just open calendar on your mobile device and put in blocks of time. I block mine by the hour. Then you know when to work, play and when you have time to go out and hang with friends.

What my time blocking looks like

The other part of productivity was a tool that we got, Things. Things is a very useful app. You just add stuff into things and set a due date, then Things will send you reminders and even put it into your calendar. It’s a really great app that I would recommend to anyone. It also has a ton of tutorial videos, so if you get stuck you can just go watch one of them. It’s also compatible with just about anything. iPad, phone, or computer Things will run.

The final unit we did this year in PGP was the 7 habits. The 7 habits are 7 great habits that are almost a necessity. If you develop these habits then you’ll be golden for the rest of your life.

1. Be proactive

2. Begin with the end in mind

3. Put first things first

4. Think win-win

5. Seek first to understand then to be understood

6. Synergize

7. Sharpen the saw

If you want to know more about the 7 habits, feel free to look it up or I suggest reading Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey.

For the end of year project In this course we had to make… a time machine! The idea behind this project was, what was something that you know now that you wish you knew at the start of the year. For me I didn’t really know where I wanted to be at the beginning of the year so I decided to focus on Habit 2.

I ended up making an infographic for my artifact.

That was PGP this year. I hope you enjoyed.

-Emerson