Time management plays a vital role in mankind. In our daily life, we get only twenty-four hours in a day, therefore, we cannot do everything in one day. This creates limitations in our everyday work. In order to manage work, the proper time has to be distributed between social life and school life.
This will help one to complete all his/ her tasks. Time management not only helps us during our school time but it helps us throughout our life.
Planning has to be done in a way that each task gets enough time.
Use a daily schedule template to plan your day
Classes, workshops and school clubs may take up the majority of your day but how you schedule your own time can make all the difference.
Having a daily schedule template in place puts you in control. It will help you stay organized, focused on what matters the most and even help you overcome procrastination.
1. Create bookends for each day
To maximize your time, you need to be purposeful with how you start and end each day. Think about your morning and evening routines and then block in time for your most important tasks.
2. Set aside time for your most important projects
Next, you’ll want to set aside time for your most important projects. This might mean research or writing something completely different. The key here is that you are purposeful about what you are doing and when it is going to happen. If you need help with staying focused during this time you can use some apps that automatically block all distracting websites ( like social media, Youtube. etc) for the duration of the event that you use that app for.
3. Schedule in breaks, social time, and catch-up tasks
Lastly, for a schedule to work, it has to be realistic. This means including time for breaks, food, exercise, social time and all non-school activities that make you happy.
Understand your current time-spending habits
Understand how you are currently spending your time and where you are losing it
Without a clear understanding of where your time goes each day, it is impossible to build a better time management strategy and stay focused.
When it comes to tracking our time, there are some options listed below:
1. Spend a day or two writing a “time log”
This manually tracks how you spend each moment of your day.
2. Use apps like Rescue time
They automatically log your time.
When you are in high school you don’t have an idea about where you are losing your time but it's important for you to know about it. You need to get a clear breakdown of what apps you use each day organized by the time limit you spend on them.
Set proper goals to measure your progress
Goals are a great way to motivate us to complete our work. Unfortunately, the majority of us set completely wrong goals. You should focus on what you can do every day that will help you achieve your goals. This means that we should focus on consistent progress and building better habits.
Suppose you’re tasked to write 15 essays within a month, rather than being overwhelmed by the end goal, set a daily goal of writing 1 essay each day. You will finish your work earlier and get more time to work on your extracurriculars and other obligations.
Try to break large projects into small actionable tasks
Part of proper goal-setting is being able to break large goals down into daily tasks. It doesn’t only keep you focused but it can help you stop procrastinating.
It is common and easy to procrastinate when a project feels like a huge task. Break your project in small steps:
Collect important information about it
Skim their table of contents
Write paragraph headings
Do an abstract of the first paragraph
Be aware of the time limit you give to you work (You probably need more time than you think)
When you start to schedule your tasks throughout your day, it is easy to be overly optimistic about how much work you can do in a day.
You can easily become stressed when tasks take longer than you anticipated
Your schedule gets pushed back to compensate for the extra time you spend
You might take on too much work thinking you have more time than you really do
These few things are really common and stressful too so make sure you give yourself plenty of time to complete your work.
Take breaks at the right time
It is said that our mind naturally craves for breaks every 90 minutes or 2 hours of work.
When you start to feel this way, it is time to take a break. There are a few things that you can do to make the most of your downtime:
Get outdoor if you can, fresh air and natural light are an energy booster
Give your eyes a break- Close your eyes and let them rest or look at something that is 20 feet away from you for 20 seconds.
Eat something that you like- Food that you eat should be high in proteins so that it can boost your energy
Build better habits and routines for long-term success
Create a morning schedule that focuses on getting up early and setting yourself up for a productive way or make sure your evening routine sets you up for success the next day.
Don't forget to spend time on the things that make you happy such as going outside with friends, spending time with family and attending your hobbies/extracurriculars.
Resource Links
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Aanandita is a grade 11 student attending North Delta Secondary School. Her favourite subjects are Math and Science. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career in Sciences.