Do you ever feel like the 24 hours in a day is never enough time to get everything you need to do done? Most college students do. Balancing school and homework, friends, clubs, and a job is a huge load to carry. It’s often hard to keep track of when you have meetings, exams, projects, and papers due all at once. Here are some tips you can try to help keep of and balance your schedule(s).
1. Make a list of your weekly routines and things you normally do, including classes, hours at work, club meetings, studying, church, ect, using a daily planner like this one. Then use the hourly planner attached to fill in the times and days for each activity.
2. Now that you’ve done that, look at where you have free hours. Using those hours, schedule in times for each day to study one different subject each day, even if only for an hour.
3. You can make multiple copies of this sheet for every week. This way, at the end of each weekend, before your week starts, you can add new times for everything and add events that might be new for this week.
4. Another way to balance study time is by looking at each of your syllabuses and making a document, or writing in your planner of each courses assignment, paper, project, or exam due dates. By doing this, it will help you utilize your weekly sheet to figure out which subject you should be spending the most tie on and on what days.
5. Another tip is that time management is not all about school and work. You need time for you. If you don’t add this is your schedule, you’ll never have any down time, and that can be extremely frustrating. So make sure you schedule in times to rest and relax, or take breaks. You can even add 15 minute breaks in for every 45 minutes you study. This is actually one of the most effective ways of studying because it helps your brain to absorb what you’re studying better.
6. A tip that goes along with the ones above is to make sure you schedule in times to have meals. If you’re not eating, this will suck away energy from you that you’ll need later. If one day is extremely packed, make a note to pack extra snacks and water!
7. Another good thing is to make a to do list for each day. This will help you prioritize which tasks need to be done today, and those that can wait. Having to do lists help you feel like you’re accomplishing something, and not just wasting time.
8. While reading for each class, make notecards or take notes on key terms in your text. This will make it a lot easier on you when the next exam comes around because you will already have your study materials. Writing things down also helps to familiarize your brain with new material, and your more likely to remember what you wrote down.
9. In the beginning of each notebook, leave a few pages blank in the front for a table of contents. This will be easier to find certain chapters or terms while studying for an exam from a full notebook.
10. The last thing that will help you not just to work on assignments or study, but also to help make new friends in your classes and socialize, is to form a study group. This helps because you have a set time to study, but also is really good, because if you forgot a term or don’t have notes on something, it’s highly likely that someone else in your group does, or vice versa. It’s a great way to balance yourself because you’re meeting new people, and getting work done.