Time Management Tips: Enjoying your Student Life
When you are still studying either in high school or in college, did you find yourself struggling with your schedule?
Did you have group studies cancelled frequently to give way to other appointments? Did you have problems in attending to your review sessions and your soccer tem practice before?
It is just three of the thousands of queries, which pertain to time management. It is common knowledge to everybody that scheduling and time managing is important especially on the lives of the students.
Once you encountered problems in your schedule, it can cause complications both to your academic and social life. You will feel guilty or frustrated when you missed important appointments and deadlines.
This article discusses all the possible tips to an effective student time management. It will show how to set an effective schedule, priorities, and personalizing your time according to the most and least important activities. So have a check on the preceding sections to save and enhance the time that you have.
Tip No.1: Have Yourself a Personal Time Survey
Before listing all the stuffs you need to do, it is wise to first determine how you will you use your time. Having a Personal Time Survey will help you in estimating your time on different activities.
It will also help you to identify what are the most important and garbage stuffs in your schedule.
So how is it works? List all the possible activities that you want to do the whole week. Estimate the amount of time you spent on each activity and multiply it by seven. It will give you the estimated number of hours of an activity in a week.
After getting the estimates for other activities, add it all and subtract the sum from 168, the total number of hours per week.
The remainder that you have obtained is the hours you have allowed yourself to study.
Tip No.2: Construct your Time Schedule
Although there are ready-to-use time schedules, it is better that you make your own one. Personalizing it will help you to edit your schedule like changing the time you will do this stuff and others.
First entry of your time schedule should be all the necessities. List your classes, meals, and others. Be sure that the time is exact; avoid getting too late or too advanced.
Enter your study time. It is recommended that you set your study on a time that you are energized. For instance, it is best to review your class notes soon after class.
You can allot 10 minutes as a study break. You can determine the possible study times using the personal time survey discussed earlier.
Tip No.3: Never be a Perfectionist
Nobody is perfect—that is the unwritten rule. Always set achievable objectives; do not aim to do something perfectly. If you did not achieve it, you will be just wasting too much time on it and at the same time paralyzes you from progress.
Tip No.4: Learn To Say “NO”
It is difficult to turn people down, but you need to if it is for your own welfare. For instance, your friend invited you for a social gathering later this evening, but you have already planned a group study with your classmates that night to review for your upcoming examination the next day. Which is important, socializing or your future?
If you do not know how to say “No” in a polite manner, read the following items.
• It is not the person that you will turn down—it is his proposition. Let him understand that you are not rejecting them—is just what they want to do.
Tell him the reason why you are not joining him in the social gathering. He will understand it.
• Express your willingness in what he is offering to you. Let us say you are really interested but you can not make it tonight. Tell him that once you have free time then you will accompany him.
• If possible, give him an alternative. Tell him that he can pay a visit to their other friends and tell them about the gathering that will happen.
Tip No.5: Learn to Prioritize
Some people do not know how to prioritize. They tend to forget important stuffs and concentrate on other things and learning their mistake in the end.
How to set your priorities? If you do not have an idea, then you can try the ABC to-do list. It works like this: Make your list of activities and group them into three, the A, B, and C list.
The contents of A list are those that need to be accomplished on that day. The contents of B list are those needed within that week. The contents of the C list are the things that are due for that month. You can also make some innovations from this method.
Tip No.6: Combined Several Activities, if Possible
While on a bus ride to school, you can listen to some pre-recorded lesson on a particular subject. While on shower, you can have some mental review of the things that you will include in your list. Be creative. If you can combine other activities, do so.
Tip no.7: Stay Focused
You did not create your to-do list and time schedule just to make it as props to your love interest or crushes. Stick whatever you have indicated in your schedule.
Reprioritize what you have not finished yesterday. Always stay updated. After all, your task is to finish whatever you intended to finish on a particular day. There is strictly no excuse for an abandoned or forgotten job.
Tip No.8: Give Yourself a Break
Remember that you also need some time together with your family and friends. You also need some break after your studies or reviews. If the weather is fine, you can go fishing with your brother or your best friend in the nearby lake.
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.
You will find it hard to do all of these tips, but with enough determination and discipline, you will find out later on that you are having a good time with your family and other people around without thinking of other things to do tomorrow.
Enjoy your student life!
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