College Tips: Time Management And College

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Being a student in college warrants steady nerves, good judgment and excellent time management skills. College students are extremely susceptible to stress and pressure. Lets face it, attending classes, studying, paying bills, doing outside activities and finding time for your family and friends, you might just want to pull your hair out.

As a student, you must not concentrate on just one particular goal or activity and let everything else got to hell. You need to distribute your time properly and stick to a strict balancing act.

It is easy to say that you need to balance your activities and find time for every responsibility you want to or need to engaged in. Still, you to management your time in order to balance your college schedule properly.

Here are few college tips for time management. If you use these tips properly, you will stay balanced and stress-free as you go about your everyday obligations as a college student.

1. Set your Goals! In Steven Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” , he tells a very good tale of big rocks in a jar wherein the moral is that you need to set out your topmost priorities in life, or your big rocks, first. This way, you will clearly define your ultimate goal and not have to neglect it once other smaller goals or priorities (small rocks, sand and water, in Covey's story) pile up to occupy your time.

Once you have set your top goal, like graduate college, then you can set out to determine secondary goals. For example, define your grades, family and personal goals. You need to determine what you want to accomplish in a day, a week, a whole semester and even the rest of your life.

You must write down your goals! Then check them off one by one as you accomplish each.

2. First things first. Once you determined what your goals are, then you will know what you need to accomplish. Getting your priorities on order means figuring out which tasks you must accomplish first in order to achieve all your goals. You must set up a list everyday on what are the activities to be accomplished and in what order.

3. Get organized. This is a time management skill and the key to completing your tasks and reaching your goals in a timely manner. Identify each goal you have and determine the schedule when they need to be accomplished. A weekly calendar is called for.

Here, you must list your classes, set a few hours of study, exercise time, family obligations, and any other necessary tasks needed to achieving your goal. For each task, include the time period for them and deadlines or due dates of accomplishment.

Use this calendar faithfully to develop a regular routine while managing to balance your time on various tasks.

4. Procrastination is the devil. If you start to procrastination, it will cause you to fail miserably in balancing your time and you will be a failure. Once you have set out to accomplish a task or plan on doing an activity, DO IT. Do not ever skip a task or miss a due date.

5. Make use of extra time wisely. You can fulfill small tasks during times when you find yourself with nothing to do, like waiting for the a train or sitting idly in between classes. These situations are a great opportunity to accomplish simple tasks that will led to reaching your goals.

6. Identify the time of day when you know you are most productive. By identifying the time when you have more energy to work, you will know when to start and finish challenging or demanding tasks.

Meanwhile, during the time when you have less energy to work, dedicate them to less challenging jobs. Implement this time management strategy and see how you will get more tasks accomplished in each day.

Develop a well-maintained time management plan involving these tips and you will achieve better time management skills as you mature. You will also become a balanced all-around college student!

College Time Management tools

Time Management from the Inside Out, second edition: The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule--and Your Life This book provides lots of insight into better time management, something I can certiainly use.