The importance of time management for students.
Poor time management strategy can drag you down.
Plan poorly and you’ll constantly find yourself running behind everything.
Wake up late.
Turn assignments late.
Hate yourself.
Repeat.
Do this long enough and you’ll go around screaming: ”school sucks!”. Well, there’s some truth to that but honestly it’s mostly you and your terrible time management skills.
Fix it and life will feel a little better.
Let’s jump into tips.
You need a calender for time management
This is one of the most important time management strategies for students.
Without a calendar, you can’t tell clearly see what assignment is due when, if you have multiple deadlines on the same week, or if you have deadlines the same week as multiple tests.
And not having this clear sense leads to incredible stress.
So make yourself a calendar.
Here’s what to do:
- Hop on Google Calendar to have access to your calendar. There are so many fancy calendar apps but I highly recommend Google Calendar because it’s available on multiple platforms. And it just works
- Bookmark that link on your computer so you can get to it right away
- Download the Google Calendar app on your phone - Android version or iOS version
- Look through your syllabus and schedule
- Upcoming test dates
- Assignment due dates
- Project group dates
- Add your class schedules
Just doing this will make you gain 3 things immediately:
- You’ll see how much free time you have.
- You’ll eye ball the stressful weeks ahead to prep yourself.
- You’ll start feeling more in control and on top of things going on.
So get on it now!
Here’s an example calendar from the University of Bath.
Time management in classroom.
If you attend a class and feel like you got nothing out of it, it’s partly on you and partly on the professor.
Actually, it’s probably fully on you.
Always remember:
For any class lecture you find useless, you’re behind. Why? Because that’s just more time you’ll need to study and catch up on what you didn’t understand.
Do this for multiple classes and in two weeks you’ll feel completely behind.
So this means you need to get really good with managing your time in class.
The key is to get really good at taking notes.
The better you take notes, the easier your studying will get. The easier your studying gets, the more time you’ll save. The more time you save, the more you feel on top of things.
Do you see it my friend?
Everything is connected!
One favorite note-taking strategy is to play the one-takeaway game. Here’s how it works. Immediately after a class ends, ask yourself this:
”What is one take away from this lecture?”
If you answer this, you’ve begun the step to store what you learned in your long term memory. If you can’t answer that you’ve lost and you should shake your head in disappointment.
You can also learn more about how to take notes effectively in college to up your note taking game.
Starting earlier than you think is a must-have time management skill.
Have you ever been caught in this madness?
You have something to do.
And you tell yourself you have more than enough time to do it. Then when you start, you realize ”holy mo, I don’t have any time.” You go through this stress, finish.
And promise yourself ”NEVER AGAIN!!”.
Then the next time you do the exact same thing. You estimate poorly. And you’re back to rushing again.
Some people like to think that the last minute pressure is great for motivation.
Yeah, that’s a trap and you risking poor grades.
Well, turns out it’s a whole thing in Behavioral Psychology.
It’s called Planning Fallacy.
The planning fallacy refers to a prediction phenomenon, all too familiar to many, wherein people underestimate the time it will take to complete a future task, despite knowledge that previous tasks have generally taken longer than planned.[source]
What’s funny is that me telling you now won’t change the fact that you’ll still become a victim of it.
It’ll affect:
- your plans to do your readings on time.
- your plans to study earlier for a test or exam.
- your plans to get a head start on a huge project or term paper.
All the time you estimate will be much longer than what you actually imagined it’ll take.
But for real, what can you do?
Start earlier.
I’m serious.
Like you need to start earlier than you think you should start because the time will just be longer. Skip this tip and I promise that you’re headed down the path of endless stress.
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