2 Time Management Tips I Wish I Learned in School
These are the time management tips I wish I learned in school! If you're ready to stop procrastinating, rushing around, and feeling drained... keep reading!
We constantly hear how important time management is... but is anyone teaching you how to actually do it? When I was in school I felt like everyone was telling me I needed to manage my time better... but no one was actually talking about how I could get better at it. That's why I'm giving you two easy ways to improve your time management skills, right away.
First, here's something to remember when you're working on your time management:
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to to fill the time allotted for its completion.
When you read that, I want you to think of it like this: tasks absorb extra time unless you limit them.
Here's an example: Let's say you forgot you had a paper due, and you realize the day before. Whether you start the paper at 8am or 8pm, you're still finishing it at midnight to turn in. Either way, that paper is getting done. You want to set time limits on tasks to prevent your work eating away at extra time unnecessarily. ⌚️
Time Management Tips You Can Use Right Now
The Eisenhower Matrix
What's great about the Eisenhower Matrix is that is helps us prioritize our tasks and give our time to the tasks that are most important. The Eisenhower matrix requires us to get really decisive about what matters most - a necessary skill for all successful individuals.
The Eisenhower matrix asks you to evaluate your to-do list according to two principles: importance and urgency. The matrix is split into 4 sections: urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important, and not urgent or important.
1. The urgent and important category is your top priority. These are tasks that add value, are time sensitive, and are related to your long term goals, like studying for a test tomorrow, preparing for a college interview, and practicing for a theater competition.
2. The tasks that are important and not urgent are usually the things that make the biggest difference and add the most value to our lives... but are often the first to get bumped when things get busy since they don't have a deadline. These tasks are associated with long term goals or bring you joy, but they're not time sensitive - so you need to decide when to do it. These are things like spending time with friends, exercising, researching colleges, or learning a language on Duolingo.
3. The urgent but not important category is where you want to strategically get rid of things or make them easier for yourself. These tasks don't add real value to your long-term goals, but they are time-sensitive. You might think of these tasks as interruptions. They could be emails, laundry, your parents bugging you to clean your room, or busy work assigned in class.
4. The tasks that are neither urgent nor important don't contribute to your long term goals and are your best candidates for deletion or minimization. These are usually distractions and time-wasters, like scrolling on social media without realizing it, setting up an elaborate organization system, or reorganizing your entire room because you were looking for one notebook.
Now that you have an idea how the Eisenhower matrix works, why not split your to-do list into the 4 categories so you can get started on what's most important and urgent first?
The Pomodoro Technique
Now that you've prioritized your to-do list, you can use the pomodoro technique to split your work time into reasonable 20 min chunks to increase your productivity and focus.
The pomodoro technique is very simple, but it's not always easy to practice. It requires that you fully commit to focusing on your work during the work period, without distractions.
Here's how it works:
1. Pick a task to work on, that you can commit to focusing on for 20 minutes.
2. Set a timer for 20 minutes and remove distractions.
3. Work on your task or goal for the full 20 minutes. If you are someone who gets distracted, I recommend keeping a "brain dump" paper next to you where you can write down random thoughts and come back to them at the end of the work period.
4. Evaluate your session when the 20 minutes was up. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART! Ask yourself what worked, what didn't, what you could improve on, what you would change next time. Taking this time to reflect will help you strategically improve your approach for next time.
5. Take a 5 minute break (get up, stretch your legs, make a coffee, reply to a text) and then repeat the process.
What's great about the Pomodoro technique and the Eisenhower matrix is that they are both tools you can start using right away - like now!!
Other Helpful Tips
Focus on Process, Not Product
Focus on your commitment to the process and the use of your time, not if you finished on time or not. You want to prioritize being effective at managing your time over just being fast.
Eat That Frog!
Sometimes getting the hardest thing out of the way first can help inspire you to keep going, and it definitely helps you avoid procrastination!
Schedule a Quitting Time
Remember Parkinson's law! Unless you set an end time, your tasks will expand to fill the entire day. Decide on a time when you will be done working before you start your tasks.
Have a Backup Plan
When you are first building your time management skills, you're going to have really unreasonable expectations about how much you can get done in one hour or even in one day. It's important to be flexible, make adjustments, and have a backup plan to get better at time management.
I hope these tips will help you manage your time to make it through the end of the semester, especially when you're juggling spring activities, AP Exams, coursework, and more!
More Help With Time Management
Time management is one of those things that we know is super important, but no one takes the time to teach us exactly how to do it. That's why I teach so much about time management inside the Student Success Membership. Not only are there multiple video trainings on managing your time, but there are tons of resources to help you with your time management too - and new content is being added every month!
Right now, you can test drive the entire student success membership for 14 days for just $1! If that sounds too good to be true, don't worry - you can cancel anytime. But I'm sure you won't want to, once you see all the trainings and resources inside! Just click the image above to get started.
