How to Effectively Manage Your Time
Effective time management is a key skill for all aspects of life. Though many people can acknowledge their procrastination, they never put in the effort to change their habits. The truth is many academic and work-related struggles can be fixed by filling your day with productive tasks. Luckily, using your time wisely does not have to cause burnout or be daunting. In fact, there are a few tips, tricks, and principles that you can use to get the most out of your day.
A hidden aspect of time-management is having the right mindset to be productive. If you think about it, your mind and feelings are what make you procrastinate and avoid necessary tasks. So taking power over your mindset is a crucial step to becoming more productive overall. First, you have to recognize that you completely own your time. Every moment, you have the ability to choose what you most want to do. When you catch yourself being unproductive, you have to ask yourself if watching Netflix is really the best use of your time and how this choice will affect your future self. It’s even a good idea to stop using the phrase “I don’t have time” to get into that productive mindset. The reality is you have the time for whatever you prioritize. You have the time to study everyday, or you can just choose to watch TikToks instead.
Another key idea to realize is that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. This idea is known as the Pareto Principle and it is all about simplifying your efforts to be efficient. Sometimes we get an urge to finish everything at once, but when we attempt to do so, we get burnt out and end up doing nothing at all. This is where the Pareto Principle ties in. If you find that you have a lot of tasks to get done, simply highlight those that absolutely need to get done by the end of the day. Then divide your time between those specific jobs. You don’t have to do everything, just focus on the 20% of your tasks that are the most important. Integrating the Pareto principle will significantly shorten your to-do list, which will motivate you to get your few essential tasks done, and help you avoid burnout.
The final principle of time management is called Parkinson’s law. This law states that work expands to fill the time that is allowed for it. Parkinson’s law is frequently seen in real life. For example, think of a time when you had three weeks to complete an assignment, did you finish it well before the deadline, or the night before? Most people would answer that they only finished the assignment near its due date, or possibly after. This is because you had 3 weeks allotted for the project, which was probably more than enough. Therefore, you kept pushing the assignment off until you had no choice but to do it. Yet if you had set a rigid deadline for yourself a bit earlier, you would have been able to churn out the project quickly. Even if the project had to take the entire assigned period of time, you could have set a smaller daily deadline for yourself to gradually complete the assignment, which again would be a great technique to prevent overwhelm. By sharing your deadlines with others and getting an accountability partner, you can easily ensure that your personal deadlines are adhered to.
Beyond principles, it is helpful to have a set of tips and tricks to implement into your life when using time wisely. First, shorten your to-do list as much as possible. If you ever have a task that will take you two minutes or less to complete, just get it done and out of the way so nothing is looming over you. Second, batch your tasks together. If you have some tasks that you frequently do at separate times, batch it all together into one time period. For example, if you always have to reply to emails, spend a set amount of time each day to solely reply to emails. Another idea is to stop addictive rewards. It is important to have rewards for diligent productivity, especially when you have worked for a long period of time. However you should never indulge in rewards (like watching Netflix) that will occupy your time for more than 15 min. Instead of watching a show after you study, try reading instead.
Effective time management is not only essential, but simple to achieve in your life. By keeping some principles and techniques in mind, studying and finishing assignments will be a breeze. Though procrastination may seem more fun than harmful, the cost of poor time management is the potential efficiency and success in life you could have had.
