Time management

Photo by: John-Morgan

Ideas for managing your time

Meeting deadlines for work and school can sometimes seem overwhelming. Managing your time may help you to be more organized and meet the deadlines you have. Here are some suggestions for maximizing the time you have available:

Set goals. It may be a good idea to think about what you need and want to do with your time. From this, you can set your goals, which may help you to manage your time more effectively. You may want to check out the fact sheet on Putting your goals into action for more information.

Project plan. Ever had a big project to do for work or school and never quite know where to start? It may help to write down all the things you need to do to complete the project and list the order in which you can do this. This can give you some direction and help you to form a timeline.

Use a planner. Writing down appointments, homework, or things you have to do may help you to keep track of what’s on. This way you may avoid things catching you by surprise. Use a wall calendar. Having a calendar that shows everything that is on during the month, or even the year, might help remind you of events that are coming up.

Turn the phone and internet off! If you find that you are being distracted by the phone or internet, it might help to disconnect them or let the calls go to voicemail on for a while. You can always call people back later.

Be flexible. Sometimes situations change and you may need to re-adjust your goals or work plan to fit in with the changes.

Balance your time. Having a balance of activities in your life may help to avoid you burning out. It is a good idea to find time for relaxing, being active and hanging out with friends. Spending time relaxing or re-energizing yourself may help you with your work and study.

Talk to someone. It is not uncommon to have lots of things we need to get done and this may make it difficult to manage your time. If you are finding these hard it may be helpful to talk to a teacher, lecturer, or counselor. Check out the Get Help section for more information about how these people may be able to help.

Procrastination

When you have something that needs to get done, it can often become easy to find a million other things to do instead. If you have a paper to write, you might decide to clean your room or take out the trash, even if you normally dislike those tasks, just to put off writing the paper. It becomes especially easy to procrastinate if an opportunity pops up, and you feel as though you will still have enough time to take advantage of it and finish your paper.

Though it can be tough to break the habit of procrastinating, you will be glad you did in the long run. If you save everything until the last possible second, you are bound to stress out, not produce your finest work, become sleep deprived, and possibly miss out on something that pops up last minute. For example, if you have a paper due on a Friday, you might hang out all week, watch TV, go out, and assume that Thursday night will be more than enough time to write the entire paper. Even though you are not writing the paper all week, you still have it looming over your head. You can put off actually starting the paper, but you will probably still be thinking about the fact that you need to write it.  Once Thursday night rolls around, you will likely become extremely overwhelmed.  You may realize that you needed to do research for the paper beforehand, or that the paper is actually much more difficult than you originally thought it would be. You may then become very stressed out, wondering how you are going to finish the paper in time, and you may even pull an all-nighter to get it done. Additionally, a friend might call you up on Thursday and tell you about something fun going on that you will have to miss, because you cannot procrastinate any longer.

Realizing the potential consequences of procrastinating can help you break the habit. Try using some of the above techniques to organize your tasks and goals, and make the most of your time. When you first find out about something you need to do, such as a new assignment, don’t just put it aside for later. Read it through or look into what you will need to do, so that once you actually begin the task, you will not be surprised.

Plan out how much time you think you will realistically need to complete the task, giving yourself extra time just in case. Working on something in smaller, more frequent sections makes the entire task much easier than trying to do it all at once. If you just write one page of a five page paper, each day, you will be finished in less than a week. You may not even have to miss out on anything that you want to do this way, because you will still have free time each day.

The next time you have to complete a task you do not want to do, try breaking up the amount of time you will need to spend on it, or just try getting it out of the way early. You’ll notice that you’ll be stress-free, and it will help you develop great time management skills for the future!

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