A Few Time Management Tips
It’s one thing that all people often wish they had more of: Time. We often want more, but rarely can get it. Besides reading Mitch Albom’s book “The Timekeeper,” here are some tips to help create more time in your day at college.
Tip 1: Evaluate how you’re using your time.
The first would be to take a step back and look at what you’re giving time to. Earlier in this school year, I had three jobs, was a club leader, a peer minister, and attended student senate every week. They were all good things to be a part of, but collectively, they were taking up way too much of my time. So, I had to drop a few of them. I ended up dropping the clubs that I was a part of, for a few reasons. Some I no longer had interest in and some just weren’t living up to what I thought they’d be. I still have the three jobs, but I definitely have more time now than I had before.
Tip 2: Look for more time in your day.
The second tip is looking at where you can take advantage of free periods of time during your day. You’ll be amazed at how much time this adds to your day. Personally, I’m the kind of person who likes to start something and get it done in the same time period. I don’t like breaking things up; however, if I can work on different things in smaller parts, then I end up having more time at the end of the day. So just find what works for you!
This second tip comes with a bit of a caveat. You need to be intentional about using that newly discovered time well. Personally, I often start those periods of free time by talking to friends for a bit. Often, this can result in me hanging around with them for longer than I should. In those cases, the time just disappears. Being intentional about using your free time wisely could result in less stress later.
Tip 3: Planning
A third tip is to have clear ideas of what you want to use your time on in each day. I’ll talk more about this in a later blog, but one piece of advice I can start with is using a planner. There are a few benefits to using a planner. For one, there are many varieties of planners to use, so you can get one that fits your planning style. Another benefit is that having some sort of plan can be very useful for getting things done. Personally, I usually make a list of tasks that I’ll want to accomplish on a given day. I write these down in my planner and I work on whichever one I feel like working on when I have the time to (currently, I’m working on my task of getting a blog written today). Your planning style may be different from this. You may be the kind of person who likes to have completely planned out when you’ll be working on different tasks during the day. That’s great! It doesn’t really matter how you plan it as long as it works for you.
Application of these things will lead you to having more time in your day. Then comes the fun part of deciding what you’re going to do with all that extra time.