How to Manage Your Time in 5 Steps

At this point of the year, all I want is a day off with no homework and no responsibilities. But that’s a thought for my daydreams. The reality is that I have Grade 12 Sociology, Biology, Chemistry & Maths, and SAC & UCC responsibilities. I wake up at 7 AM and am lucky to go to bed before 12:30 AM. But I signed up for all of this so I’m grateful for every responsibility and opportunity I have.

There are a lot of days when all I want to do after school is watch a marathon of Suits or How to Get Away with Murder. But then I think of everything I have done to get to where I am and everything I have to do, to get to where I want to be and that motivates me enough to begin my work.

I have talked about letting go of procrastination habits before. That helps to get work started. But what should you do to keep going? And to finish before it’s morning again?

1. Maximize and Optimize Your Free Time:

The best habit I have developed in the past few school months may be of utilizing any downtime I have to finish any pending work. Downtime can vary for me. Different teachers finish their lessons with a different amount of time left until the bell. So, at the beginning of a class, I go through a mental list of any work I have due within the next 48 hours, preparing myself to get to work if we get free time. Sometimes, if the free time is towards the end of the class, I finish homework assigned in that class. If the whole period is free, I try making progress with my larger assignments. Then, if I manage to get a free lunch period, if I don’t have to study for a test, I write blog posts. There’s something about being at school that makes me want to be as productive as I could possibly be.

2. Plan:

The only things keeping me on track are my planner, my notes app and my calendar. In class, when I get an assignment or when the teacher announces a test, I open my notes app and jot it down. Then, when I have time, I mark it on my calendar. A lot of times, my submissions and test dates of different subjects overlap on a single day and I have to know what I have to do in the week leading up to it so that I won’t have everything left for the night before everything is due. That is where my calendar saves my life. When I get home, I mark my assignments in my planner to actually make a plan of action of how I’m going to divide my work so that I’m working efficiently.

3. Work in increments:

I think I mentioned in one of my earliest articles that if I don’t have any motivation to do a task, I tell myself to work on it for 5 minutes and then I end up finishing it in one go. This almost always works for me. But what I like to do even more is, when I get an assignment, I start it right away. I either begin with my research or analysis or introductory paragraph, depending on the subject. This gets me past that barrier of having to start an assignment when I’m least motivated. Then, I gradually finish it (if I don’t finish it in one go). This way, I’m not engulfed by any stress or anxiety of having to finish a 6-paragraph social scientific essay outline in one sitting.

4. Set Achievable Goals:

As mentioned above, working in increments and gradually finishing your work will yield quality content as compared to working in one go the night before. But when you have a lot of work due on the same day, even working gradually can feel like a lot. Which is why you should set achievable goals for yourself, for each day. I have 4 classes this semester and each class has something important on Monday. My goal each day, for the past week was to finish at least a quarter of the work in one sitting. The drive always allowed me to do more, but a couple of times, I let that drive go to move on to the next assignment. This is also important if you want to do well in all your classes and not just one.

5. Prioritize:

I feel like I’ve talked about how important prioritizing your work can be. Right now, I have 4 classes, 3 extracurricular responsibilities, this blog, and a social life to maintain. But obviously some things in that list are more important to me than the others; academics, this blog, clubs, and then, if there’s any time left, my social life.

I took a little time to understand what my teachers are like when it comes to homework and deadlines. My Biology and Math teachers are meticulous when checking every student's homework. Whereas, my Chemistry teacher is a little more chill with homework assignments. My Sociology teacher is pretty much like a university professor. She gives us our assignment and expects us to have it done by the due date, but she doesn’t necessarily remind us every day about it or call out every student that misses the deadline. To her, it’s our responsibility to submit our work and that is all. This helps me rank my subjects in order of which assignment I should finish first and which homework can wait.

I fit my extracurricular work into the small crevices in my daily plan. And I always keep a little bit of time, about 10 minutes, to write down what happened during the school day, to make my life easier when I go to write my weekly recount. Besides that, whenever I get an idea for a blog, unless I’m doing something due the next day, I go straight to writing the post.

Make your own list of responsibilities and rank them in order of decreasing importance. Factor in environmental factors. For example, if you have 4 subjects and 1 extracurricular responsibility, but your parents want you to help take care of a younger sibling, you have appropriately gauge how that affects your priorities and consider if that itself becomes one of your priorities.

This article was done in 2 increments and everything else was, sadly, prioritized over it. But with my planner, I knew exactly when I would work on it. So that’s an example of applying all of the above. If you have any more tips to share with the world or if you have any further questions, comment below or email me at rueshi25@gmail.com. -Aarushi