Most students find that one of the hardest things they have to do in college is managing their own time. There are many reasons for it. Firstly, for most people, it is usually the first time in their lives when they have full responsibility for what and when they do (before, their schedules have been mostly determined by their parents and schools). Secondly, there is just too much to do on campus, and not nearly enough time to do everything you want to and must do. To achieve any sort of success, you will have to make some hard choices. But how do you do it? In this article, you will find some useful suggestions.
1. Be Realistic
Do not bite off more than you can chew. You only have 24 hours a day to work with, and no matter how efficient you are, you cannot do everything there is to do in college. Even if you manage to maintain a hectic pace to keep up with all your plans, it is a surefire route to burnout and nervous breakdown down the road.
2. Plan Ahead
Do not work haphazardly. Always know what and when you are supposed to do. If you have a paper to write in two weeks, start working on it ahead of time. Determine its topic, do the necessary research, get technical issues like formatting and style guides out of the way. Make sure you do not face any nasty surprises at the last possible moment.
3. Set Your Priorities Right
It is better to do a few things well than to fail equally in everything. Some of your obligations are negotiable and flexible. Others are not. Find out which are which and behave accordingly.
4. Do not Neglect Your Health
Set aside enough time for sleep, rest, food, and exercise. Students often try to do more by sleeping less, eating fast food on the go, and neglecting physical exercise. It is a rather bad idea for a variety of reasons. Obviously, it will harm your health both in the short and in the long term. However, it is also unlikely to benefit your studies. You cannot work effectively when you are sleep-deprived, and poor general health will not reflect favorably on your grades as well.
5. Focus on One Thing at a Time
Multiple studies show that multi-tasking is inefficient in about every area of human activity. When you try to do multiple things at once, you fail to achieve good results in all of them. Try to work on only one project at a time and set clear boundaries between assignments. If you write a review of an article, work on it until you finish it or reach a specific milestone, then wholeheartedly move to another task. Do not jump from one activity to another and back again.
6. Set Time Limits
According to Parkinson’s Law, tasks tend to occupy as much time as you allocate to them. And if you do not set a specific time limit for a task, it may eat up an indefinite amount of time. In other words, do not just move from one task to another and work until you finish it. Always have a clear idea of how much time you intend to spend on each assignment. For example, “Choose potential topics for a paper in 30 minutes”. This way, you won’t get distracted by details, spending too much time on trivial tasks.
7. Avoid Perfectionism
The desire to get an assignment just right may seem like a good thing, but only up to a point. For many students, it becomes a sort of procrastination. They spend an inordinate amount of time tweaking little things about their assignment, persuading themselves that they are doing something useful. In reality, they waste time that could be better applied differently. For example, if you have to analyze potential article review topics, you can easily spend hours if not days doing research on each of them and trying to determine which one will be easier to write about. Meanwhile, simply picking one that is more or less OK and writing about it would take a fraction of this time.
8. Take Regular Breaks
You have probably heard that distractions are one of the worst enemies of work and study. However, it is only true for unplanned distractions. Taking planned regular breaks is not just OK – it is the only sustainable way of working for prolonged periods. Make sure you only set aside your work when you’ve planned a break and not because you feel like it, and it will help you remain focused longer.
Time management should be among the first skills you learn in college because without it you won’t be able to successfully do anything else. We all have the same amount of time to work with; the difference between success and failure is in the ability to use this time effectively.
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