With school, homework, friends, and possibly a part-time job, it is important to learn time management skills early on to improve your productivity and quality of work. It would be best to learn these techniques now, so when you get into the real world, it is already routine to manage your hours with everything going on. Here are some ways to help you plan your time wisely.
Planning it out
One way to help manage your time is to schedule your tasks in a notebook or planner, or to set reminders in your phone. Whenever you plan, you know what’s going to happen and can avoid setting up too many activities in one day. Having a schedule can also assist in balancing out your work, school, home, and personal life.
Setting deadlines
Assigning deadlines is an excellent way to work out your time by setting a realistic goal that can be achieved. If you have a really big assignment due, you can set up due dates for small parts of it, so when the deadline comes, it doesn’t take the majority of the day doing a huge amount of homework.
Knowing what is urgent
Many people sometimes have too many events going on in a certain day, and need to know if it’s actually urgent or just something that’s important to do/get done. If anything is urgent, it usually means that it needs to happen with all of your attention or there will be big consequences, like a drastic change in your grade. If it’s something important, it typically means you can do it another time – like an appointment that doesn’t affect you as much as a homework assignment. It is important to do everything that is urgent first and put off things that are not as major. Also, you shouldn’t try to multitask all of your priorities at once, but instead try to put all of your focus into one thing to be as efficient as possible. It is still necessary to do activities that are important, and not push them back until it’s not relevant.
Keeping it clean
Having a messy work space can often lead to losing essential papers and items. Taking too much time searching for papers can often just discourage a person from actually finishing an assignment if they can’t find it in the first place. It is best to not clutter your area and instead have a clean and organized space. Having a neat and orderly area can make finding important items easier, and takes away all of the time that would be needed to search through a pile of unorganized papers.
Picking the best time
Most people have a time period that they work best for completing their task. Whether it’s in the morning, afternoon, or night – it’s best to work when you are most productive. If you don’t, it is more likely you will procrastinate and not get what you need to be done. Even if you are tempted to put off the work, one way to help is to think of all of the activities you can do after your done, and all of the stress that will be taken away once your finished.
These are some ways to aid in managing your daily life and not be overwhelmed by not planning your time. With a lot of people just trying to keep a mental note and often forgetting, using these techniques will help plan your time.
