Time Management

You need to manage time effectively if you're going to be successful. Better time management skills can improve your grades, help you keep stress in check, and help you be competitive in the career you undertake following your college or university education. Time management systems often fail because they the expectations of them are too unrealistic. Some people don't start a time management system until they're already falling behind in their work. They take on time management as a way of catching up. They try to cram all of their work into a period of time that is too short. The people who are trying to follow crammed schedules often fall way behind their intended pace and desert the plan altogether, which results in more time trouble.

To be successful in time management you first have to set some goals. It might help to divide your goals into time frames (important goals, mid-term goals, long-range goals) but it is not completely necessary to do so for the exercise to be useful. All you need to do is think of a handful of goals to get started. Once you have a set of goals, it is useful to break down the goals into manageable steps. Breaking down your goals makes it easier to begin them one small step at a time and to reduce procrastination.

After setting some goals, time awareness and time tracking is the next step you should follow. It will help you manage your time well if you know where your time actually gets spent. One helpful way of determining your actual usage of time is to track your time. Instead of writing things down that you are planning to do, write down things that have already been done. Doing this helps you get to know yourself because this method will draw attention to many of your habits that you might selectively ignore. At the end of every hour write yourself a quick note about how you actually spent your time for that hour. If how you spent your time doesn't match an already planned activity, simply enter a comment as to what you really did during that time. This way you will be able to analyze patterns that appear in your use of time and make adjustments to improve your efficiency.

The next step is planning. It is important to keep in mind that the purpose of scheduling is not to enslave you to your planner, but to record your decisions about when certain things should happen. This works best with a weekly or monthly planner. However, make sure you spend a reasonable amount of time on each task that you have written down.

Once you have set your goals, figured out where your time is currently spent and decided on a plan that will help you to reach your goals, the next step is to take action. As you begin working on the tasks, keep your focus on doing the best you can to complete what you have set out for yourself. Some things will take longer than you planned. Some new tasks will emerge. The main thing is to do the very best you can to follow the plan and monitor your progress so that you can learn from your good and bad experiences along the way.

Certainly, you will need to make adjustments to your plans and your time management habits. As you come across time troubles, keep in mind that some are predictable, some are not; some are controllable, some are not. For those that are not controllable, stay calm and get back on track as soon as possible. For time troubles