As the folk singer Sandy Denny once sang: who knows where the time goes? If you’re bad at time management, you’ve probably asked yourself that question a lot. It can seem like you never have enough time to do the things you need to do. You’re always scrambling to get things done under the wire. It doesn’t have to be this way! You can be more productive and live a much less stressful life by being more intentional and strategic about how you manage your time. If the old saying is true that time is money, here’s a few tips on how you can spend your time wisely.
Focus On Priorities
There is an organizational concept in healthcare called triage where doctors tend to patients in order of most urgent need. The person who stapled their finger needs help, but they’ll have to wait for you to help the gunshot victim first. Triage is a useful tool to apply to your own time management. Look at your to-do list: what are your top priorities? What are the things that need to be done ASAP, and what can be put on the backburner if need be? Is there something that will negatively impact your life if you don’t take care of it today? Knowing what is urgent and what can wait is critical to good time management.
If you’re having trouble setting priorities, another invaluable lens to use is wants versus needs. What do you NEED to do? Prioritize the needs; the wants are important too and shouldn’t be neglected, but unless they have a hard deadline on them they should be the action items on your list that get pushed back if you need to make room on your schedule.
Commit To A Schedule
Few things are a stronger indicator that you won’t do something than saying “I’ll get to it eventually.” When it comes to getting things done, ambiguous deadlines and vague timelines are committing to failure. Make a schedule and stick to it as much as you can. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to schedule every single thing on your list with Swiss watch precision; we all have busy lives, and sometimes priorities can change because of circumstances. Giving yourself some flexibility is important. The trick is to schedule blocks of time to get things done during your day. Earmark a chunk of time for focused work. Maybe you have a block for school work, a block for errands and chores, and a block for networking and social activities. What you do within those blocks can change from day to day; what’s important is committing to that time and being productive within that block.
In order to properly schedule your time, you need to know how much free time you have to work with. Audit your time: how much time do you need for work, home responsibilities, self-care, studies? Do you have enough time to do all the things you want and/or need to do? If not, what could you do to free up more time? What can you de-prioritize?
It also helps to know WHEN you’re most productive. Do you find you have a lot of energy in the early morning, or are you a night owl? If you live with family, when do you have the home to yourself and can work without distraction? When are you most relaxed? Try to fit in your blocks of time in these moments of respite and peace when you can concentrate on tasks without anyone or anything else pulling your focus.
Use Tools
Once you get a schedule figured out, write it down on paper. There is a proven correlation between physical handwriting and memory retention. This is one of the reasons why having a physical day planner to write in can be an effective organizational tool. Time management apps can also be useful to track your to-dos and monitor your progress. Put deadlines on calendars and set auto-reminders on your phone and email to give you a nudge for important deadlines.
Don’t Wait Until The Last Minute
Procrastination is the enemy of time management. The temptation to put things off until the last minute can be tempting. Who amongst us hasn’t had the experience of cramming frantically for an exam the night before, or burning the midnight oil to finish a big assignment? Procrastinating can be self-defeating on several levels. We overestimate our own capabilities and the time we’ll have to get things done; procrastinating puts us under an immense amount of pressure with very little wiggle room to complete your objectives. Procrastination can increase your stress levels. You’re also increasing the likelihood that you’ll drop the ball on something, or do a poor job of finishing your work/studies because you’re in such a hurry.
Procrastination also does a number on our cognitive faculties. There is a proven link between cramming and poor memory retention. Waiting until the last minute to tackle a subject is setting yourself up for failure; even if you manage to retain enough to muddle through your exam, odds are good you won’t be able to recall that information later. This can be a real problem for your studies because most courses presume that you have retained the information you’ve already learned so they can continue to build off that foundation. Cramming might get you a short-term victory if you’re lucky but you’re setting yourself up to struggle in the future.
Article by Austin Brietta
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