Time management is the bane of every college student's existence—and also undeniably the most important skill to develop for the working world. Between classes, coursework and extracurriculars, somehow you have to find the time in a measly 24-hour day to get everything done and still manage to squeeze in some sleep at night. But never fear, young padawan, because I am here to make the process of managing your time a little bit easier.
1. Make a calendar or ten for big events.
You're gonna need all the calendars. A calendar for your exams, projects and papers. A calendar for your sport games, choir rehearsals or club events. A calendar for any other big obligations for your time like family cookouts or 21st birthday parties. Keeping track of when things are due and what other activities might cut into your study time the week of that big exam is vital to keeping ahead.
2. Use an agenda.
When you're focusing on big projects, it's easy to let the little things like daily readings or two-point homework assignments slide. Don't. Buy yourself an agenda and write down your homework as it's assigned, and for the love of God, try to do it. That two-point homework might mean the difference between a B+ and an A when it comes to your final grade.
3. Block your time.
And what I mean by this is: make another calendar (I use Google Calendars on my phone), but this time, for your day-to-day life. Block out everything you do in a day—your classes, practices, meetings and mealtimes. Look at it closely. Do you have 20 minutes between when you usually finish lunch and your bio class? Great! That's 20 minutes you can use to get a head start on your chem homework. If you have a long break between obligations, you can schedule that to work on larger, more time-consuming projects.
4. Identify your time-wasters...and cut them out mercilessly.
We all have them. Whether it's scrolling mindlessly through Facebook or cramming in a five-minute YouTube video before class, we all have ways of procrastinating on what we should be doing. One way of identifying your time-wasters is to start writing down, minute-by-minute, how you spend your time for a week, and then go back and look. Time wasting is much harder to ignore when it's staring you down in plain black and white.
So then, how to stop? You can try to willpower through the urge, but I recommend the more drastic route: app blockers. There are many, many app blockers available for your phone and your laptop that you can set to block a particularly alluring app or website for a certain amount of time so that you can actually get some work done. Willpower fails all of us sometimes, so it's great to have that cold reminder of what you're supposed to be doing.
"But Alexis," you say, "I have to have my Facebook scrolling time." Well...
5. Schedule your downtime.
Shockingly, I'm not advocating that you become a workaholic who devotes every waking moment to productivity. You can have your downtime; you've earned it. But, for those of us who find it difficult to stay productive when we should be, it's useful to schedule your downtime for a particular hour or two of the day as a reward for, hopefully, all of the hard work you've done. I honestly believe there's something psychologically relieving about writing DOWNTIME in a two-hour block in your calendar. It's so much easier to relax without the specter of all the work you meant to do looming over your head, isn't it?
6. But be flexible.
I am a very organized person, so my advice stands best for very organized people who enjoy having every moment of the day plotted down to the letter. However, there's something to be said for flexibility. Life gets in the way sometimes, so if you've had a bad day, it's okay to shove off some of your work 'till tomorrow. Likewise, if something exciting comes up during your usual study time, like a camping trip or a concert, do the thing! College is about making memories more than anything else, and you won't remember the studying nearly as well as you'll remember all the fun you had with your friends.
7. It's okay to quit.
A huge part of time management is knowing when you don't have enough of it. There will be times when you want to take on more than your schedule can reasonably fit, but sometimes you have to say, "I don't have the time or the energy to do this." It's okay. Your club leaders will get it if you suddenly have to drop; there are always more semesters to come back and try again when you have more breathing room in your schedule.
Bonus: Do not pull all-nighters!
Don't! I'm serious. Don't do it. It's counterproductive, you won't remember anything you studied and you'll be too exhausted during the exam to do as well as you would've if you'd gotten a reasonable night's sleep. All-nighters are a huge part of college study culture, it's true, but that doesn't make it a good part. If you're managing your time right, you shouldn't ever need to pull an all-nighter except in some pretty extreme circumstances. And if your day is just so packed that you feel you have to, you might want to reconsider your priorities.
