Important Time Management Skills For College Students

Time Management is what we call life management. At college, students have a great deal of free time, and how they use it can make the difference between a student who struggles and one who succeeds. Also managing your time effectively is never an easy task. As a student, you have many new responsibilities and priorities, all of which compete for your time and attention.  Since we all get the same 24 hours in a day, why is it that some people achieve so much more with their time than others? The answer to this is good time management.

It’s important that a person should develop effective strategies for managing his/ her time to balance the conflicting demands of time for study, leisure, earning money and job hunting.

Planning is the key:  As much as you hate to admit it, making lists of things to do, taking the time to think and plan for the next day, the next week, the next month, is critical in taking control of your own time. Carry a pen and paper or organizer wherever you go. At the simplest level your reminder system could simply be to use your diary to write down the things you need to do, including appointments and deadlines.

Setting Goals: Set yourself specific and clearly defined goals, and make sure that these are realistic and achievable. Thereby setting SMART goals i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound goals is important. To do this, you first need to examine your present situation and assess what goals are important to you and what action you need to take to achieve your target.

Prioritizing: It’s important to list the tasks you have to do in a day and to sort these in order of priority, and then to devote most time to the most important tasks. This avoids the natural tendency to concentrate on the simple, easy tasks and to allow too many interruptions to your work later.

Avoiding procrastination: Procrastination is one of the things that badly affect the productivity of an individual. It can result in wasting essential time and energy. It should be avoided at all costs. Also it could be a major problem in both your career and your personal life.

Don’t Try To Multi-task: Most of us feel that multitasking is an efficient way of getting things done but the truth is that we do better when we focus and concentrate on one thing. Multitasking hampers productivity and should be avoided to improve time management skills.

Good time management requires an important shift in focus from activities to results: being busy isn’t the same as being effective. Better time management can lead to improved concentration, better overall organization, and higher grades and, most importantly, it will also reduce individual’s level of stress.  Also by organizing your time more effectively, person will find the right balance between his/ or her leisure, rest and study time and the on top of that person will feel happier.