Study Management Series

Part 3: Time Management

Time is becoming a rare commodity in these days of increased workloads, long supermarket lines, rush-hour traffic and busy social calendars. Procrastinators among us know that stressful feeling we get when all the work we have put off comes running back to bite us.

Maybe you’re a post-it note fanatic who has 137 notes, all filled with tasks, all incomplete, scattered around your desk; maybe you’re a “I’ll just watch one more show/play one more game/eat one more snack before I start my assignment” person; maybe you simply don’t want to study. Maybe one of the strategies below will help you, maybe not, but at least give the idea of managing your time and yourself a wholehearted chance and maybe you will be surprised.

Break up larger tasks
Take the task and look at where it can be split up into smaller tasks and then put each smaller task on the calendar with its own due date. For example, large assignments can usually be split into sections or a large block of reading can be broken up so you read only a few pages per day.

Create a Calendar
By due date, list everything that you need to do on a calendar and give each task an expected timeframe for completion. Then you can plan backwards, knowing that you will need to start specific tasks by specific dates to get them done on time.

Create a Weekly To-do List
Sorting your tasks into a to-do list each week will help you remember to actually do the tasks on your calendar. Sometimes you may even need to make a to-do list for each day if you are particularly busy.

Prioritise
Try an A,B,C system. Top priority items are marked with ‘A’, second priority items a ‘B’ and so on. This will give you an idea of which tasks on your to-do list you need worked on first.

Factor in Breaks
Put time aside in your calendar and/or to do list for things you want to do. Having a light at the end of the tunnel will help you stay motivated to do the tasks you may not want to do.

Delegate
If you can get someone else to do something for you, why not do it! Getting someone to do school work for you is not ethical or honest but getting someone to do something non-course related jobs may free up some time for you to get on with your study.

Will power
Weak will power can often ruin our good intentions but fortunately, will power is like a muscle and can be trained. Things like getting up to change the TV channel a couple of times a night when the remote is right there, putting half of your chocolate cake slice away for later when you really want to finish it or doing one extra set of weights when your muscles are saying no, will help to build your will power so that forcing yourself to study is not so hard in the long run.

Time of Day
Figure out what time of day you focus best and set aside those times for study. Most of us don’t focus well after a large meal or after we wake up so use those periods of non-focus to do tasks that require less brainpower.

Quality of Skills
Try to figure out where your developable skills are letting you down and find out how to improve them. Increase your typing speed to 40 words per minute, learn all the keyboard shortcuts for your commonly used computer programmes or spend 20 minutes with the librarian to become a Dewey Decimal expert and avoid hours searching for books.

There are only 24 hours in a day and, as much as we’d often like to, we can’t change that! We must learn to manage the time we have and manage ourselves so that the tasks that need to be done get done, and we can also find some time to relax.