Balance your Act: College Student Tips for Time Management
Being in college is a situation that warrants steady nerves and good time management skills. Indeed, college students are dangerously prone to stress and pressure. What with attending classes, studying, working a part-time job, doing extracurricular activities and finding time for social functions and interactions with family and friends, you might find it hard to balance your time properly.
You cannot afford to concentrate on just one particular activity and lose track with the others. You must distribute your time well and avoid tipping over the precarious balance of activities once you have established them.
It is easy to say that you need to balance your act and find time for every responsibility you have engaged in. Still you need a supreme hold over your time management in order that you can balance your college schedule properly.
Here are several college student tips for time management. These will help you stay balanced and stress-free as you go about your everyday obligations as a college student.
1. You have to set up your goals. In Steven Covey’s "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, he shared a very good story of big rocks in a jar wherein the moral is that you need to set out your topmost priorities in life, or your big rocks, first. This way, you will clearly define your ultimate goal and not have to neglect it once other smaller goals or priorities (small rocks, sand and water, in Covey’s story) pile up to occupy your time.
Once you have put in your ultimate goal, then you can set out to determine particular goals. For example, define your academic goals, extracurricular goals and social activity goals. By doing so, you can determine what you want to accomplish in a day, a week, a whole semester and even a whole school year.
Setting goals will help you become more inclined to follow through with them and check them off one by one as you accomplish each.
2. Set your priorities straight. Once you determined what your ultimate and particular goals are, then you will know what to accomplish. Getting your priorities straight means figuring out which tasks you must accomplish foremost in order to achieve your set goals. You can set up a list everyday on what are the activities that warrant your most attention.
3. Get organized. This is a time management discipline and the key to completing your tasks in a timely manner. Identify each goal you have and determine the schedule when they need to be accomplished. A weekly calendar is called for.
Here, you must list your class schedule, set a few hours of review, mark social events, club meetings, exercise time, and any other necessary activity essential to achieving your ultimate goal. . For each activity, make sure you have included the inclusive period for them and deadlines or due dates of accomplishment.
Look up faithfully in this calendar for you to develop a regular routine while managing to balance your time on numerous tasks.
4. Remember that procrastination is a deficiency. When you allow procrastination to seep into your being, it will cause you to fail miserably in balancing your time. Once you have set out to accomplish a task or plan on doing an activity, by all means, do so. Do not ever neglect a schedule or forget a due date.
Beware of the habit of putting off for tomorrow what you can do today. This kind of attitude will result to stress and excessive pressure on your part, which is not healthy.
5. Make use of each extra minute wisely. You can accomplish small tasks during some situations when you find yourself with nothing to do, like waiting for the bus or sitting idly in between classes. These circumstances are good opportunity to accomplish simple tasks that will constitute the completion of larger tasks.
6. Identify the time of day when you know you are most productive. By identifying the time when you have more energy to work, you will know when to start and finish challenging or demanding tasks.
Meanwhile, during the time when you have less energy to work, dedicate them to less challenging jobs. Implement this time management strategy and see how you will get more tasks accomplished in each day.
Develop a well-maintained time management plan involving these tips and you will achieve better time management skills as you mature. You will also become a balanced all-around college student!
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