Requirements are coming soon, teachers are assigning projects, and your workload is getting heavier! With all of that happening at once, has anyone ever told you perhaps at a webinar, seminar, or even a class that stressed the importance of time management in order to stay organized and on top of yourself? You probably thought to yourself, “I need to manage my time wisely!"
But looking back, did you succeed in managing your time? Or did you end up staying late, or perhaps you realized at the end of the day that you were unproductive? Or maybe you want to manage your time but always fail and end up procrastinating? Well, that’s fine because that was my story, and I only learned time management from people who did it. Here are some of the pointers they gave me that might be useful:
Tip #1: Organize your surroundings.
Examine your room or desk to see if it is cluttered. If you have pets, is your dog or cat’s hair all over the place? Are your clothes scattered on the floor? Used cups or canned drinks? Get rid of or clean up anything that is cluttering up your workspace. The path to an organized life begins with your surroundings; having a clean working environment is essential for beginning your time management journey!
Tip #2: Create a place where you can set daily goals.
Goals can be big or small; for some, even taking a shower is a goal, so it's important to set goals and quickly incorporate them into your routine. The question is, where should I place them? You can do it the old-fashioned way by getting a paper pad and writing down your goals and to-do list for the day, but doing it digitally is a more efficient way. I recommend using Notion, a quote from Notion's founder Ivan Zhao stated that “Fundamentally, Notion is a tool to solve people’s problems.” And while the site may appear intimidating at first, a simple Google search yields thousands of free templates from which to choose! Alternatively, you can use Google Keep or the Notes app on your phone to create checklists that you can use to set daily goals.
Tip #3: Plan ahead of time.
Now that you have a platform to list tasks and set goals, you have to plan ahead. It's best to make a list of all the tasks you've accumulated in one day and complete the most important ones first, leaving the less important ones for afterwards. This allows you to stay more organized and calculate how much time is required to complete each urgent task with a deadline within the week.
Tip #4: Determine what consumes the majority of your time and how much time you have remaining to complete your daily tasks.
School consumes the majority of our time as students, but we must also consider other factors such as club activities. For instance, if you’re an athlete, your training and how long this takes, and then look at the time you have left before going to sleep. Let’s say you get up at 6:30 a.m., start school at 8:00 a.m., finish by 2:30 p.m., and all extracurricular activities end at 5:00 p.m. You get home around 6 p.m. and must be in bed by 10 p.m. in order to get 8 hours of sleep. How much time do you have to complete other tasks? In our example, we have four hours to complete all of the tasks, after identifying how much time you have to complete your tasks, we can now proceed to Tip #4: categorize your tasks.
Tip #5: Sort tasks according to how important and urgent they must be.
This is a common strategy that every student should be aware of. To illustrate, if you have five assignments due tomorrow, two of them are due this week, and the last one is due at the end of the month. We can categorize and sort our tasks by making an action plan. Sort your tasks into four categories namely: critical, neutral, low and high priority. Most people would start and finish the first two tasks that must be completed by tomorrow because they are the most important and have more urgency than the other assignments because their due date is the next day. But of course we also have to not spend too much time on one assignment, if you do this you won’t have time for other tasks that are also urgent and critical, thus tip #6: set a time limit comes into play!
Tip #6: Set a time limit for the task at hand.
Start setting timers and estimating how much time it will take to complete each task. In our previous scenarios, the two tasks were a short essay and a short quiz. This is entirely dependent on you and how long it takes you to brainstorm and complete these tasks. Try to maximize your time by completing these two tasks in less than an hour; this will leave you with three hours to complete other tasks. You have the option of finishing the second-most important task, revising for the next day of classes, or taking a 30-minute break.
Tip #7: Include breaks in your schedule at all times.
Don't forget to take breaks, taking breaks boosts one’s productivity but only when you use it correctly. This break could be an episode of a show you're watching, a short walk outside, or even a time to meditate and reset your internal clock. It's critical to understand the distinction between taking a break and procrastinating. Simply put, you procrastinated if your break exceeded the time limit you set. So let's all take a timely break while still completing important tasks!
All seven of these tips allowed me to manage my time efficiently and it can help you as well. Proper time management allows you to use your time effectively, not wasting any of it. Having a great workflow provides unparalleled satisfaction; knowing that you did and completed tasks exactly as planned boosts your self-esteem. It motivates you to keep working and organizing yourself, and it improves your mood and work productivity overall. In addition to this, good time management aids you to control your tasks rather than having them control you, reducing stress, and giving you more time to spend on yourself.
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