Time Management 101
Either you run the day, or the day runs you.
That’s some hard truth right there and I’ll be the first to admit that yes indeed, I am guilty of letting the day run me sometimes. Although once in awhile you need that after a long week or couple of weeks of grinding it out. But I have seen one too many friends fall into the trap of poor time management, which has resulted in them pulling all-nighters, not getting assignments done, last minute cramming and suffering from general exhaustion which is never good for studying. I have seen many Snapchat pictures of notes everywhere with “StuDYING” as the text.
As someone who is a slight organizational freak, not an expert by any means, I’m going to share some tips around time management that have helped keep me on track. Time management has been key to helping me get through this semester, mostly out of necessity.
It’s been a crazy season with the rugby team this year. Although we’re lucky to have all our regular season games in Victoria, your weekends get taken away for double headers, then we qualified for Canada West in Edmonton so we flew there for four days.
After winning Canada West we qualified for Nationals with a short turnaround, which meant we had to fly to Kingston, Ontario for a week in early November.
After Nationals, I had a very short two-week time span to catch up and get ahead because I was lucky enough to be named to the Canada Senior Women’s Maple Leafs tour to England which was from November 22-December 6th…Very rough timing having to miss the last two weeks of the semester!
But have no fear, time management is here.
1. Write it down. Call me old fashioned but there’s nothing quite like scratching something off a list or your agenda and getting the satisfaction of looking at a cleared productive day. Or if you really hate pens and paper that much, you can put it in your phone. Writing it down just helps remind you to complete something before you even get the chance to forget it.
2. Invest in an agenda. This goes hand in hand with the above, but I live by my agenda and would be lost without it. You can get some pretty fancy ones from stores like Chapters downtown or you can get them for free from the UVSS. Check the UVic Bookstore, too.
3. Plan work time. This sounds slightly counter-intuitive considering what this blog is about, but planning your time and setting specific time allotments to work on assignments or do readings around other activities can help push away the temptation for procrastination. Thus leaving more time for later when you’ve already finished your work to Netflix.
4. Focus on what you can control. There’s no point stressing over dates because that’s not going to get the assignment done. You can’t control when the professor makes an assignment due, or when a midterm is, but you can control how far in advance you complete the assignments.
5. Plan time for yourself. When you purposely plan time to Netflix, you’d be surprised how many shows you can get through…almost like how much work you get done when you plan!
“Because everyone needs time to chillax for themselves” – Emily Jackson
If you need any more tips or are looking for a good read, Eric Barker’s blog ‘Barking Up The Wrong Tree’ has some great posts. Here’s one on How The Most Successful People Manage Their Time.
