The pressure of meeting multiple obligations in college can create stress and impact on a student’s quality of life. Depending on your course commitments, it can be a challenge just to keep up with the volume of work let alone attend social events, spend time with family or work to earn some money. In order to get great grades and have more time for other activities you really need to be on top of your game. That’s why you need to learn time management. Student time management helps you to better prepare and plan how you spend your time.
When it comes to time management and college students, productivity is the key. If you are easily distracted or take longer than you should to complete tasks then you need to become more effective and efficient. If you add up the time that gets wasted due to procrastination it is possible to waste an entire day due to poor study and organizational skills. In order to improve your effectiveness you need to learn student time management. This will help you to become more effective with your use of time.
Student time management will teach you how to structure and prepare a schedule. What is called for is an allocation of priorities. By knowing ahead of time what your main priorities are you can ensure that they get attended to first. Prioritization helps you to deal with tasks when they need to be done. Just about every student can relate to having to cram or put in an all nighter just to finish a paper or prepare for a test. The purpose of the schedule is to avoid this scenario. By staying on top of your course requirements you can finish your assignments ahead of the due date and better prepare for tests.
Time management for students also helps you to establish your personal strengths and weaknesses. Some students work better in the morning whilst others are more effective at night. By knowing which scenario applies to you, you have a much better chance of creating a schedule that allows you to get the most work done when you are most productive. This is an important principle that is often overlooked. If you find yourself struggling with your study or focus you might need to examine how you go about your study. It is possible that you just need to switch around your approach to avoid pushing yourself when you are unproductive. It is better to schedule recreation or downtime when you need to recharge.
Student time management also encompasses goal setting. Setting goals is a way to benchmark your progress. If you want to get great grades to get your perfect job then you will need to be well organized to provide sufficient time for study. Learning to study bite sized chunks of new material can help you with your retention rate. This superior technique helps you to commit the work to long term memory and eliminates the trouble that many students have with absorbing high amounts of material in a very short space of time.
Take the time to learn student time management. It could be the single most important skill you can acquire to help you get great grades and enjoy your college life.
Andrew Chambers is the author of ‘Time Management For Students’. Get his free 5 day e-mail course on student time management for tips and insight on improving the use of your college time. Further Reading: |