Eleven Days, Two Exams and Four Extra Evenings
You are an 18-year-old apprentice at a two-wheeler service centre in Nashik. You work 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., six days a week, with a 45-minute bus commute each way. In 11 days you have the HSC Employability Skills theory paper, and the practical assessment for your service-technician course falls in the same week. Your employer has put you on extra evening duty on four of the next ten days because a colleague is on leave. You have been sleeping about five hours a night, scrolling your phone until 1 a.m., and you have already missed one online mock test. Yesterday your service manager described your job cards as 'sloppy and delayed'. You cannot afford to lose the stipend of Rs 6,000, which pays your exam fee and travel.
1. Sort everything in front of you for the next ten days and state what you will drop or defer, with reasons.
Read the worked answer
Urgent and important - do it yourself, now: the theory paper and the practical assessment. Both have fixed dates and neither repeats this year. Ninety minutes daily, split into three 25-minute blocks, at 5:45 a.m. before the shift, because evenings are the part of the day other people control.
Important, not urgent - schedule it: sleep and job-card quality. These two are the real causes of the missed mock test and the manager's remark, not the exams.
Urgent, not important - bound it: the four extra evening duties. Four is a request, not a contract; accept two, decline two with an alternative.
Neither urgent nor important - drop it: scrolling after 11 p.m. and the second social-media account. That is exactly the two hours you now need.
Deferred: two of the three mock papers (keep one full paper), and weekend cricket.
Deliberately not dropped: job cards. Sloppy cards are the manager's evidence against you when you ask for study-friendly duty. Fixing them is cheap, takes days, and is the strongest lever you have in the conversation that follows.
2. Script the conversation with the service manager. What do you ask, what do you offer, and what must you not say?
Read the worked answer
Timing: ask for ten minutes at the end of the shift, not in the middle of the floor. Then use fact - request - offer - check.
Script: 'Sir, my theory paper and practical are on the 14th and 16th. I have four extra evening duties this week. May I take two of them - Tuesday and Friday - and swap the other two with Ramesh, whose leave ends on the 12th? In return I will finish my job cards before 5:30 every day and clear the pending warranty claims on Saturday morning.'
What I must not say: 'I can't come, I have exams' (a refusal with no offer); 'the work is too much' (a complaint, not a request); anything about the colleague's leave being unfair; or a threat to quit. I must also not promise to study at work - that invites him to watch me.
Why it works: it names the constraint, offers a workable alternative, and hands him something he already wants - job cards and warranty claims. If he refuses, I ask for the roster in writing, and only then approach the ITI instructor for a letter. The direct ask comes first; escalation is not the opening move.
3. Name two habits you will change and one measurable way to check each after seven days.
Read the worked answer
Habit 1 - phone out of the room at 10:45 p.m., alarm set on a clock instead. Measure: note lights-out time for seven nights; target six of seven nights asleep by 11 p.m.
Habit 2 - job cards closed at the bay before leaving it, not in a pile at 6 p.m. Measure: count open cards at 6 p.m. each day; target zero from day three onwards.
Why these two, and in this order: five hours of sleep is upstream of both symptoms - it degrades exactly the checking behaviour that produces 'sloppy' paperwork. But job cards are the visible one, so fixing them first gives the manager evidence within three days, which is what makes the duty negotiation in the previous task credible instead of an excuse.
Weekly review on Sunday: hours slept per night, open cards per day, study minutes per day. If two of the three have not moved after seven days, the plan is wrong - change the timing of the study block, not the target.