Time Management
Okay, I know what you're all thinking: "Here we go again, someone telling me I need to use a day planner to keep my stress levels low... I barely have time in the day to do the things I need to do, none-the-less to take 20 minutes planning out my day/week! Plus, who follows those things anyway?" Well, I'm here to tell you that you don't actually NEED a day planner to schedule your time better.
If you didn't participate in the values vs priorities lesson from last week, I suggest you go back and take a look at that because it plays the most vital role in your ability to manage your time well.
Once you've figured out your values and prioritized those, we can start looking at how you schedule your week. The things that you value most should be getting the most attention. For example, if you value family, work, and school, those should be the top three consumers of your time.
If you look at your week and realize that the thing you spend most of your time on is work, and you value work, then that's great! Now, look at the second place position in terms of time spent. Are you spending a lot of time in front of the television? Do you value that time or is it just being used as a stress reducer? Could you be doing something else, like having dinner with a friend or doing homework? If playing video games or watching TV is important to you, allow that to be given time each week. Others may not understand your values, but you do and that's all that matters.
The hardest part about managing time well isn't finding more time to squeeze things into, it's not wasting the time that you have. It's so tempting to sit down and binge watch an entire season of your favorite show, but how do you feel when you go to bed and realize you didn't do certain activities which you value, such as going for a run? If you had homework to do and instead spent time on social media, you'll wind up stressing yourself out more as it's now been piled into less and less time until you don't feel that you have any time left in the day to do it.
Sometimes, time management isn't about self-control at all, but rather about over-booking yourself. I am all too guilty of this myself. I'll wind up planning to work 40 hours a week, spend 20 hours at my internship, spend another 4 on homework, spend another 6 on snowboarding, spend another 3 on rock climbing, spend another 5 on training my animals, and 5 on the gym. After all that, I often find myself wondering why in the world I don't get enough sleep *cue eye roll*. Sometimes, somethings gotta give. If you pile on your week like I do, you need to look at your list of things you spend time on and figure out what you could sacrifice time from. For me, I cut back on the amount of time I spent snowboarding and rock climbing. I still go, but I don't do both in a week. And once the snowboarding season is over, that solves that problem and I can go back to climbing every week. It isn't easy trying to cut back on the things you really love, but if you don't value those things as much as the rest, it's worth it to give yourself a little more downtime.
While it might take a little self-control at first, you'll feel better having had spent time doing something you value and enjoy instead of something you simply enjoy (such as time with family instead of playing games on the computer). Also, if you're so overwhelmed that you're missing out on important things such as sleep, it's time to cut back and let yourself breathe. This is particularly important for students, as we tend to pile on a lot on top of classes and work, trying to fit a lot of fun things into the week as well, but sometimes, you just need an evening off.
If you didn't participate in the values vs priorities lesson from last week, I suggest you go back and take a look at that because it plays the most vital role in your ability to manage your time well.
Once you've figured out your values and prioritized those, we can start looking at how you schedule your week. The things that you value most should be getting the most attention. For example, if you value family, work, and school, those should be the top three consumers of your time.
The hardest part about managing time well isn't finding more time to squeeze things into, it's not wasting the time that you have. It's so tempting to sit down and binge watch an entire season of your favorite show, but how do you feel when you go to bed and realize you didn't do certain activities which you value, such as going for a run? If you had homework to do and instead spent time on social media, you'll wind up stressing yourself out more as it's now been piled into less and less time until you don't feel that you have any time left in the day to do it.
Sometimes, time management isn't about self-control at all, but rather about over-booking yourself. I am all too guilty of this myself. I'll wind up planning to work 40 hours a week, spend 20 hours at my internship, spend another 4 on homework, spend another 6 on snowboarding, spend another 3 on rock climbing, spend another 5 on training my animals, and 5 on the gym. After all that, I often find myself wondering why in the world I don't get enough sleep *cue eye roll*. Sometimes, somethings gotta give. If you pile on your week like I do, you need to look at your list of things you spend time on and figure out what you could sacrifice time from. For me, I cut back on the amount of time I spent snowboarding and rock climbing. I still go, but I don't do both in a week. And once the snowboarding season is over, that solves that problem and I can go back to climbing every week. It isn't easy trying to cut back on the things you really love, but if you don't value those things as much as the rest, it's worth it to give yourself a little more downtime.
While it might take a little self-control at first, you'll feel better having had spent time doing something you value and enjoy instead of something you simply enjoy (such as time with family instead of playing games on the computer). Also, if you're so overwhelmed that you're missing out on important things such as sleep, it's time to cut back and let yourself breathe. This is particularly important for students, as we tend to pile on a lot on top of classes and work, trying to fit a lot of fun things into the week as well, but sometimes, you just need an evening off.
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