does homework help with time management skills

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How Does Homework Help with Time Management

Many experts who provide professional homework help claim that dealing with home assignments regularly helps a student manage their time better. Solving your tasks, you’ll not only increase your knowledge on the needed subjects but also improve your skills with managing time.

How Homework Makes You Manage Your Time Better

• It makes you more disciplined.

If you have a lot of home tasks to deal with, it’s likely that you won’t have the time to procrastinate. You’ll begin your work soon and use the time you have effectively rather than take unnecessarily long breaks after solving each assignment.

• It helps you set the priorities.

Having plenty of home tasks to solve, you might not have the time to engage in all activities that you’ve planned for the day. As a result, you’ll have to learn to prioritize your actions and drop some entertaining activities for the sake of more important things.

• It helps you assume how much time you’ll spend on each activity.

Popular site Homework Help Desk confirms that if you regularly deal with different tasks, you’ll be able to calculate how much time you’re likely to spend on each particular homework assignment. This way, you’ll be able to assume how much time your entire set of tasks will take you to complete. As a result, you’ll know how much free time you’ll be left with after your work and will be able to plan your day better.

• It helps you learn to complete long-term tasks on schedule.

There are many types of home assignments that a student cannot complete in one day, like creating a research paper, for example. If you learn to manage your time properly and deal with such assignments in time, it’ll greatly help you in the adult life. It’s full of long-term planning.

Time Management Tips: How to Do Your Home Tasks Faster

• Start early. It’s recommended to begin dealing with your assignments during the breaks while you’re still in school or college. If you don’t have a clear understanding of how some of your assignments should be dealt with, you’ll have an opportunity to consult your teachers or other students.
• Keep your workplace organized. Once you return from school or college, it’s advisable to begin solving your home tasks immediately in order not to waste your time. Make sure that your workplace is convenient and that all the materials and instruments needed for your work are always kept in one place.
• Focus on your tasks. It’s important to make sure that nothing will distract you from your work. Switch off your television set and mobile devices. Use the Internet only for educational purposes. If it helps you concentrate, you may switch on quiet ambient or instrumental music.
• Work on one subject at a time. It’s not recommended to mix the assignments from different subjects. This might ruin your concentration. As a result, you’ll spend more time on the working process. It’s important to complete all the tasks in mathematics before moving on to geography, for example.
• Don’t complete all the assignments. If you need to finish your work as soon as possible, you may not work on the tasks that should be submitted in a week, for example. Solve only those assignments that you should submit on the following day.
• Take breaks. If you have plenty of tasks, it’s not recommended to deal with them in one fell swoop. This way, you’ll get tired very fast and the speed of your work will seriously slow down. If you take short regular breaks, however, some of your energy will be restored and you’ll be able to maintain the same working speed and effectiveness.

Getting Help with Homework

A good way to increase your speed of solving home assignments is using the assistance and advice of other sources. Enjoy the quality of professional essay writing services provided by  CustomWritings.com . Here are some other options that you may use:

• Inviting other students for help.

You may gather a study group consisting of you and several of your classmates. It’s likely that together, you’ll be able to solve even the most difficult tasks rather quickly.

• Taking educational courses.

If you have serious difficulties with a particular subject, you may go to a special educational center and sign up for additional courses in it.

• Hiring tutors.

Another way to get qualified college homework help is to hire a personal teacher to provide you with lessons in a particular subject.

• Dealing with writing companies.

On the web, you may find a lot of agencies that can complete your home tasks in exchange for payment. You may use this option when you don’t have enough time to work on your tasks by yourself.

As you can see, dealing with home assignments helps you significantly improve your skills with managing time. If you follow the correct guidelines, you’ll be able to complete your work in a very short period of time. To increase the effectiveness of your work, you may also go to different people for help.

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How Does Homework Help With Time Management

The motive behind the exercise of homework is to keep the student abreast with the daily goings-on of the class and through thorough practice improve the student’s foundation in a particular topic. Besides those, homework develops one’s researching capabilities since often it extends beyond what is just being taught at school; it is a furtherance of the student’s knowledge and for that the student often has to spend a quite an amount of time looking up the internet or the library for some kind of aid.

Time Management

In-time submission is a universal pre-requisite for any piece of work. Marks deduction, denying to consider the homework or other such penalties on failing to meet the deadline act as a form of driving force for students. Students, therefore, are forced into putting their priorities to check and order them accordingly. In future, when in employment, these students have to meet several such deadlines and then it will be this exercise of college homework that would come in handy.

In addition, college assignments help with time management by enabling us to order our priorities. In this way, we get clear up some time for ourselves and engage in things we love doing, have a hobby. We can binge-watch TV shows, have a movie-marathon, go on a long drive and what not. Yet all of it without compromising on the important stuff since we will learn, eventually where to draw the line.

Recruiting help

Not everybody can master the management task. After bouts of driving around with friends, social networking, binge watching TV shows there is not much energy nor enthusiasm that could drive some out of their bed or couches to invest the remainder of their time into a productive exercise of homework, not even if he is made to write down a million times, in order to ascertain, the numerous benefits of this exercise.

Besides the non-enthusiast, there are those who just could not make out time from numerous engagements. There are many who genuinely cannot do homework, some probable conceptual fault that has remained unclear. For such folks, expert advice and suggestions are advisable. But how does one know whom to trust? The internet is flooding with homework help websites that are made up of a bunch of fraudsters.

How are online homework services helpful?

Offline or online, homework services offer a great deal of relaxation to those with too much on their desk and those who always love to relax. Employing expert professionals, these services go to the core of the problem a student is facing with a particular topic that his/her homework deals with. They will not just write the answers to your questions but also improve your understanding of the topics so that you do not have to seek further assistance from such service providers. The services are reasonably priced and can be availed 24*7.

teaching you to manage homework effectively

Importance of Time Management for Students: How Homework Helps

Time management is a critical skill that can make or break a student’s academic success. Whether in high school or college or just a graduate student working on a thesis, managing your time effectively can help you set your priorities straight and reach your full potential.

Homework, in particular, plays a crucial role in helping students develop good time management skills. With the right strategies and techniques, you can use homework to create a schedule, prioritize tasks, and stay on top of your workload.

This article will explore how homework helps with time management and provide tips and tricks for making the most of your time.

Time management importance for students: why should they take it seriously?

Before we examine how homework can help students with time management, let’s evaluate its importance.

As you might already know, time management is planning, organizing, and allocating time effectively to achieve specific goals or objectives. It typically involves developing priorities, creating a schedule, and manufacturing strategies for achieving tasks efficiently.

So why is time management important for students?

Time management is important for students because it helps them prioritize their tasks, meet deadlines, and balance their academic and personal responsibilities. Effective time management allows even the most average students to make the most of their time, reducing stress and improving their academic performance.

Additionally, good time management skills are essential for success in college and the workforce, as they help individuals become more productive and efficient in completing tasks.

How does homework help students with time management in their schoolwork?

Homework can help students with time management in several ways, some include:

• Prioritization

Homework assignments provide students with a clear list of tasks that need to be completed, which helps them prioritize their time and focus on what is most important.

Homework is typically given with due dates, encouraging students to plan and schedule their time accordingly.

• Accountability

Homework helps students develop a sense of responsibility for their learning and progress. It encourages students to take ownership of their time and use it effectively.

Homework allows students to practice time management skills such as planning, scheduling, and prioritizing. It also offers long-term benefits that will serve them well in college and the workforce.

It is important to note that homework alone is not enough to develop good time management skills; it should be combined with other techniques such as creating a schedule, setting goals, and breaking down large tasks into smaller manageable chunks.

School homework management software: what is it and how does it work?

A critical aspect of homework time management is using various educational software that supports organizational learning. Various types of homework management system or software are available to help students and teachers manage and organize homework assignments. Some popular options include:

• Google Classroom

This free platform allows teachers to assign and collect homework digitally, provide feedback, and communicate with students.

• Show My Homework

This web-based platform allows teachers to create, assign and track homework. It also offers a student calendar, which allows students to view and keep track of their homework assignments.

• My Study Life

This is a cross-platform planner for students, teachers, and lecturers, which helps them to manage their classes, homework, exams, and assignments.

• Microsoft Teams

It’s part of the Microsoft 365 suite, and it allows teachers to assign homework and communicate with students, and also students can collaborate and communicate with their peers for assignments.

• Blackboard Learn

It’s a Learning management system (LMS) that allows teachers to create and manage homework assignments, and grades, and provide feedback to students. This software can help students to stay organized and keep track of their assignments, and also helps teachers to easily manage and monitor student progress, provide feedback, and communicate with students.

Bottom line

Now, if you’re ever asked how does homework help with time management? Time management is an essential skill for students, and it can be particularly helpful when managing homework. You can emphasize how they help create schedules, set goals, establish routines, and take care of students’ physical and mental well-being.

Developing good time management skills improves student performance in school and helps develop a sense of discipline and responsibility that will serve them well in their future endeavors.

Students Struggle With Time Management. Schools Can Help

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When I started teaching, most meetings I had with students had nothing to do with class lessons. They would come into my office, sit down, and whimper, “I’m stressed out, exhausted, and my life is all over the place.” Sometimes bursts of tears would ensue. They aren’t alone: Solid research shows that students feel that society is more and more demanding of them. Mental-health issues in young children and teenagers are on the rise.

Students didn’t come to me because I’m a therapist. Neither had my course anything to do with mental health. They came to me because I’m the time-management guy—I’ve been doing research on time management for years. They came to me because of a simple but insidious assumption: If I can be just a little more productive, everything will be all right.

Why do students think productivity is the answer to their malaise? Because that’s what they’ve been told their whole life. By parents, television, the internet, peers, coaches, and, yes, schools. Schools play a major role in instilling this productivity mindset in young children, according to Vicki Abeles , author of Beyond Measure , a splendid book on how school performance pressures harm students. This mindset, especially in excess, can make students’ relationship with time fraught. If being obsessed with productivity makes students tired, anxious, and depressed, then the way schools think about time is neither conducive to their well-being nor, ironically, to their long-term productivity.

What would it take to make dramatic and effective changes to how schools think about time? Obviously, much of our obsession with productivity does not start with school. Public policies, culture, parents’ socioeconomic background, and a host of other factors play a major role. But historically, schools have been where children learn about time, punctuality, and schedules. Maybe it’s time for schools to use that power to teach students a healthier way to use their time. Here are a few actions school communities can take at a local level.

1. Conduct time-use surveys. We don’t really know what we do with our time until we measure it. That’s why governments around the world have been conducting time-use surveys for decades. These surveys essentially ask people what they do every half-hour or so over a 24-hour period. When we scale this up to a whole population, we get a clearer picture of how people use their time and whether it makes them happy and healthy. That’s how we know, for instance, that people who spend less time watching TV and more time with people are happier than those who do the opposite.

Why do students think productivity is the answer to their malaise? Because that’s what they’ve been told their whole life."

With time-use surveys, schools can better understand where students’ time goes, which is the first step toward tackling time issues. Doing this at a local level is key because time-use patterns will likely change from one school to another, especially for students with different socioeconomic backgrounds.

2. Lower the pressure. It’s far from clear whether, past a certain threshold, homework actually boosts students’ grades. The amount of homework assigned to students has increased a few times in the past—at one point the U.S. government feared students would be outperformed by their Russian counterparts during the Cold War. Whether homework is still increasing is not clear, but one thing is: The American public has been consistently in favor of more homework despite contrary expert opinion. Thankfully, several school districts, including in Hillsborough, Calif., and Somerville, Mass., have implemented reduced-homework policies, although not without resistance. These policies can go a long way toward alleviating students’ unnecessary time pressure.

Another worrying trend is the decline of recess time. The logic here isn’t that different from that of corporate employers: Reduce break times so people will spend more time working and thus boost performance. But that logic isn’t supported by science. Recovery, physical activity, and enjoyment are crucial for school performance and well-being, and that’s what recess is for. Reducing recess means reducing the break time necessary to recover the resources necessary for learning and creativity. Fortunately, many schools are now upping recess time, but it’s not just quantity that matters: How and with whom students enjoy recess time are important as well. (For instance, having more adults present during recess time increases physical play and helps conflict resolution among kids.)

3. Intentionality over productivity. Students today have more ways to spend their time than at any other point in history: watching TV, browsing the Internet, piano lessons, acting classes, community service, football, and countless other activities. We also live in a society that encourages busyness: If you’re not doing something at any given time, you’re a nobody.

Schools, parents, and peers push students to engage in a seemingly infinite number of activities, extracurricular or otherwise. These activities can be important for students’ well-being, but too much can backfire, as research shows .

Not only does overscheduling kids with activities make them miserable, but it also fails to teach them an essential lesson: It is better to do a few things intentionally and deliberately than to crowd one’s schedule with activities. An abundance of activities fails to teach children an even more important skill: focus. Doing too many things inevitably saps our ability to immerse ourselves fully in whatever we’re doing.

Schools can help by talking with parents about what constitutes a reasonable—healthy—amount of extracurricular activities. Schools can also encourage parents to think about “digital policies” to govern the use of digital devices at home and how social media and smartphones should be used responsibly. Most importantly, schools should emphasize un structured time. The more time children spend in unstructured activities, the more they learn how to structure time on their own. Conversely, if you structure all of children’s time, they will fail to learn how to structure their own time. This makes sense—how would you learn self-discipline if you’re never given the opportunity? You can’t teach proper time management to people if you manage all of their time.

Schools are said to prepare children for real life, an often busy and hectic place. But does school conspire in making life busier and more hectic? That’s very likely. By fundamentally reassessing the way they think about time, schools stand to make future adults—a future society—happier, healthier, and more intentional with their time. Schools have been teaching us the importance of being punctual. Maybe they should now teach us the importance of healthy time management.

A version of this article appeared in the February 26, 2020 edition of Education Week as It’s Not About Productivity. It’s About Time Management

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20 Effective Time Management Strategies and Tools for Students

Teachers can use these too!

One of the most important life skills for anyone to master is time management. Keeping track of everything that we have to do and carving out the time to get it all done can be a real struggle. Try these time management strategies and techniques, plus find helpful tools for staying on track.

General Time Management Strategies

Time management techniques, time management tools.

These time management strategies work for everyone, helping you set goals and prioritize, then set a schedule to get things done.

Visualize the big picture

Use a calendar of some type to lay out all your big-picture goals for a year, month, or week. Include major projects and assignments, as well as school and personal events. This is your place to get an overview of everything that’s on your plate. Keep items to broad descriptions: “History Project” or “Spring Play Opening Night.” You’ll get into the details next.

Break it down

The next step is to take major projects and assignments and break them down into smaller, more manageable parts. This is an incredibly effective way to overcome that feeling of “I’ll never get this all done!” It also prevents procrastinating on an entire project until the very last minute. Set smaller, more manageable goals with their own due dates in advance of a complete project or event.

For example, imagine your big-picture calendar says “History Project Due Feb. 23.” Breaking that down could look like this:

• Choose topic and presentation method: Jan. 9
• Initial research: Jan. 10-30
• Presentation outline: Jan. 31
• Write presentation script: Feb. 1-5
• Create visual aids: Feb. 6-12
• Rehearse presentation: Feb. 13
• Fine-tune presentation: Feb 14-16
• Final rehearsals: Feb. 17
• Give history presentation: Feb. 23

At first, this method might feel a little overwhelming, because it may make you feel like there’s too much to get done. But as you use it, you’ll see how it can actually make you feel more prepared and in control, and make your time easier to manage.

Determine priorities

Sometimes it’s simply true: You don’t have enough time in a day to get all the things done that you’d like to. That’s where setting priorities becomes vital. In the “Time Management Techniques” section below, you’ll find several different ideas for determining the priority of different items on your lists.

Once you’ve figured out which items are the most important, try a color-coding system to indicate which items get a higher priority. This will help you identify at a glance what you need to do now and what can wait until another day.

Make daily to-do lists

Make it a habit to start each day by creating a to-do list. (Not a morning person? You can do this the night before too.) Include high-priority items, as well as things you’d like to do but may not have to complete. Throughout the day, as you complete an item, revisit your list and check it off. It’s incredibly satisfying to cross things off, and checking in with your list a few times a day ensures you don’t forget important things.

Limit multitasking

Today’s world places a lot of value on multitasking (doing several things at once). But when you’re doing multiple things at the same time, you’re probably not doing any of them well. So keep your multitasking to a minimum. When it’s time to work on something, set your focus to that particular thing. Other stuff can wait.

But some multitasking is OK. For instance, you might throw your clothes in the washing machine, then work on your math homework while waiting for them to be ready for the dryer. Later on, you could fold and put away the laundry while practicing conjugating Spanish verbs out loud. This type of multitasking works because the physical tasks are ones that don’t require much concentration, leaving your brain free for academic subjects.

On the other hand, avoid something like trying to listen to a podcast for your history class while also doing your math homework. Your attention won’t be fully on each, and your learning will suffer.

Remove distractions

Some people are capable of deep focus no matter what’s going on around them. Most of us, though, need to find ways to remove distractions when it’s time to get down to work. Here are some examples to try:

• Turn off your phone, or set it to alert you only in case of emergencies.
• Wear noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs to block out distracting sounds. A white-noise machine or app can help with this too.
• Close miscellaneous tabs in your web browser (like social media or news sites), and use only the tabs you need for your work.
• Go into a quiet room and shut the door. Ask friends and family not to disturb you.
• Check your to-do list before you start to make sure you’re on track. Then, clear your mind of other projects or tasks, and focus on what’s at hand.

Do an end-of-day review

At the end of each day, sit down with your to-do list. Was there anything you didn’t get to? Move it to another day. Did you feel too rushed today? Think about how you might make tomorrow run a bit more smoothly. Where do you stand in terms of your big-picture goals? Take a few minutes to adjust any plans accordingly.

Try a time audit

It’s OK if you don’t get to everything on your list every day. But if you find that there’s never enough time to get things done, you might benefit from a time audit. Over the period of a week or two, write down exactly how you spend your time, hour by hour. Then, look it over and see if you can identify problem areas. You might need to cut down on some optional activities and give that time to high-priority items instead. Learn how to do a time audit here.

The time management strategies we’ve talked about so far are general ways to stay on track and get stuff done. But there are multiple ways to approach some of these strategies, especially when it comes to actually settling down to work. Check out these popular time management techniques and choose one or more that seem right for you.

Eisenhower Decision Matrix

President Eisenhower developed this matrix and used it to help him prioritize his tasks. He looked at each item to evaluate it by importance and urgency, then broke them into four categories:

• Do First: These are urgent, important tasks with high priority.
• Schedule: These are important tasks that aren’t quite as urgent.
• Delegate: You may be able to delegate less important but still urgent tasks to someone else.
• Don’t Do: These non-urgent, unimportant items can be eliminated entirely or postponed indefinitely.

Here are some possible student examples for each category:

• Do First: Homework that’s due tomorrow takes top priority, as might doing laundry if you’re out of clean clothes.
• Schedule: Set aside time (see Time Blocking) for smaller parts of long-term projects, such as research time or writing an outline. That could be today or one day in the near future.
• Delegate: Students aren’t always able to delegate their tasks, but they can ask for help. For example, if your schedule is incredibly tight, you could ask your dad if he’d be willing to throw your clothes in the dryer when the washer is done.
• Don’t Do: These are often bad habits you need to break, like surfing the web aimlessly instead of working, or texting your friends for hours instead of doing your chores.

Find out much more about the Eisenhower Matrix and how to use it for time management strategies here.

ABCDE Method

This is another time management strategy for prioritizing the tasks at hand. Assign each item a letter:

• A: Highest priority
• B: Should do soon, if not today
• C: Could do, but no serious consequences if not done
• D: Delegate or ask for help
• E: Eliminate from your list

This is very similar to the Eisenhower Matrix, with a little more flexibility around should-dos and could-dos. Learn more about the ABCDE method here.

Most Difficult First (Eat That Frog)

This method is based on a quote often attributed to Mark Twain: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

In other words, don’t put off the biggest, hardest tasks. Get them out of the way first. Then, everything else you have to do will seem easy in comparison.

For some people, though, this concept can be counterproductive. If you’re already feeling overwhelmed, tackling something extremely difficult can be too much and cause you to shut down entirely. In that case, it’s just fine to choose smaller, simpler items. The key is to make progress, one step at a time.

Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a simple time management method: You work for 25 minutes at a time, then take a 5-minute break to rest and recharge. Simply set a timer for 25 minutes, and focus on one single task until it goes off. Then, you can spend 5 minutes stretching, resting your eyes, or checking your social media feeds. When the 5 minutes are up, set the timer for another 25 minutes, and get back to work. If you do four 25-minute sessions in a row, take a longer break afterwards. Learn more about the Pomodoro Technique here.

If 25 minutes seems too short and you’d like a little more uninterrupted time, try Flowtime instead. This stretches out both the work and break time proportionally. If you work for 25-50 minutes, take an 8-minute break. For 50-90 minutes, you get a 10-minute break. And if you’ve been at it for more than 90 minutes, take 15 minutes to recharge. Learn about Flowtime here.

Parkinson’s Law says that work will always expand to fill the amount of time available. Timeboxing seeks to shrink tasks back to the size they truly need to be. When you timebox, you set a specific amount of time for a task and complete it within that time.

In other words, you might look over your study planner and decide that you need one hour for tonight’s geometry and chemistry assignments, plus you’d like to spend another hour working on your English essay.

Set a timer and work on your geometry and chemistry for an hour, with no other distractions. When the timer goes off, reassess and adjust your goals as needed. Since you have to finish that homework tonight, you’ll probably need to add more time if you’re not finished.

Your English essay isn’t due for two weeks, though, so if you’ve boxed out one hour for working on it today, that’s all you need to do. Set a timer, determine your goals for day, and get to work. When the timer goes off, you’re done for today.

Here’s more on timeboxing.

Time Blocking

This method is similar to timeboxing, but it involves setting blocks of time aside on your calendar for specific tasks. For example, you might block out 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. each day for daily homework, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. for working on your biology research paper, and 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. for piano practice. Some people like to start each day by blocking time out on their calendar, figuring out how they’ll make the most of their time. Find out more about time blocking here.

Once you’ve selected some time management strategies to try, you’ll find plenty of tools to help make them work. Check out these top time management tools for students, from planners to timers and beyond.

Student Planners

Traditional paper planners come in a variety of styles, with some made especially for students. The most important thing is to choose one you’ll actually use, and keep it on hand at all times. See our selection of the top student planners here.

Planner Apps

Planner apps and online calendars are nice because you have access to them everywhere you go. For students, we really like:

• My Study Life

See more details on each of these here, plus more options.

Study Planners

Study planners are specific to academics, and they are a simple way to keep track of both short-term and long-term assignments, projects, and more. Check out these free printable options:

• Develop Good Habits: Study Planner
• Alex Marie: Weekly Assignments Due
• Sophia Lee: Homework Planner Pack

Time Management Apps

Planner apps are a good start, but other time management apps can help you stay on track by eliminating distractions or setting time limits. Here are a few to try:

• Pomofocus : A free online 25–5 timer with the ability to add a task list for each work segment
• Rize : An AI productivity coach that uses time tracking to improve your focus and build better work habits
• Forest : Eliminate distractions, stay on task, and grow a digital forest to celebrate your achievements

Bullet Journal

Bullet journaling has a lot of benefits, and some page setups are especially good for time management:

• Daily Schedule
• Project Planner
• Study Tracker

Check out our big roundup of bullet journal ideas here.

What time management strategies do your students find most effective? Come share your thoughts and ask for advice in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, ultimate study skills guide: tips, tricks, and strategies for every grade ..

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How Student Time Management Skills Can Increase Your Productivity

In high school and college, there may be much more to do than your schoolwork — perhaps you’re involved in clubs or extracurriculars, work a part-time job, and want to maintain a healthy social life on top of caring for your well-being. This jam-packed schedule is a reality that many students face, and it can make time management seem like a never-ending chore.

A hectic schedule makes it especially important for students to establish routines and plan time wisely to stay abreast of commitments; however, staying organized can be challenging when you don’t have a plan for how to manage your time. Implementing practical student time management skills may help ensure you're only spending time on your priorities so you can avoid the panic of a fast-approaching deadline.

Understanding time management

It can be overwhelming to know where to begin when it seems there are a thousand things to do. When it comes to getting things done throughout the day, there are two factors to consider: what you need to do and how long it will take to do it. Many people find it’s best to get it out of their head and onto paper, so they think through what’s on their plate and jot it down on a to-do list. A list is a great start, but it won’t tell you how to fit it all into your schedule. This is where time management comes in.

Time management involves knowing your responsibilities (to yourself and to others), being aware of the commitment each responsibility requires, and being aware of the times of day when you tend to be most productive.

Common barriers to effective time management

Developing effective time management skills may be easier said than done. Several barriers can make it challenging to manage time efficiently.

Perfectionism

For people who don’t quit until the final product is “perfect,” it can be challenging to transition from one task to another. 

Distractions

Social media is a very  common distraction , but it’s not the only one. You may choose to delay schoolwork in favor of social events, or perhaps you interrupt your study session for a quick nap. 

Expectations

Community is a significant aspect of student life. You may find it taxing to manage your time when you want to give energy to your friends, roommates, classmates, and clubs to which you belong. 

Procrastination

Do you ever find that you’re constantly busy but aren’t actually getting the important things done? You might sometimes put off important tasks by focusing on less critical activities. 

When a task brings on feelings of stress and anxiety, it can be tempting to avoid it for as long as possible instead of tackling it head-on.

Time management and productivity

Have you ever gotten a weekly screen time summary on Sunday only to discover you averaged six or more hours of screen time a day? Or maybe you started to look at classes for the next semester, and three hours go by before you know it.

Implementing efficient time management strategies can improve your organization, reduce your procrastination levels, boost your focus, and experience greater efficiency throughout your day. 

Increased organization and prioritization

In his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen Covey refers to four quadrants of time management. Most actions in a day can be classified as urgent or nonurgent and important or unimportant. It’s ideal to spend most of the time focused on important but nonurgent tasks. For students, these tasks might include studying for a test coming up next week or creating an outline for a paper due next month. 

For some, this strategy might seem counterintuitive: Doesn’t it make more sense to attend to urgent tasks ahead of everything else? While urgent tasks are associated with a pressing deadline, prioritizing important (but not urgent) tasks sets you up to have fewer urgent tasks on your longer-term to-do list. Adding to an outline every week or completing your designated responsibilities for a group project ahead of an urgent deadline can reduce the urgency (and stress) you might otherwise experience if you were to put them all off until the due date.

Decreased procrastination

When you plan ahead for how you will spend your time, you’re much less likely to succumb to the temptation of procrastination. You’re better prepared to hold yourself accountable to the schedule you’ve set for yourself instead of getting sucked into the vortex of social media scrolling. 

Enhanced focus

When you have a clear idea of what tasks are most important for you to accomplish, it becomes much easier to focus on those activities and spend less time on things that matter less. At any given moment, you know exactly what requires your attention. 

Improved efficiency

Have you ever started cleaning your room, found something interesting, and realized you got distracted for over an hour? It may help to set a timer or chunk cleaning tasks into less time-consuming segments. Time management gives you back control over your day.

Time management tips for students

You probably won’t visit the gym for the first time and be ready to bench press 300 pounds. Like your biceps or calves, time management is a muscle you can strengthen over time. The same strategies won’t work for everyone, so try different techniques until you discover the most effective way to keep yourself on track. 

Set clear goals and objectives

The best goals are specific. Instead of setting a goal to do some reading for your English Literature class this week, decide how far you want to read in the assigned novel. An example of a clear goal might be, “Today is Monday. I will read through chapter five of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Friday night.” This explicit goal empowers you to break down the goal in a realistic and more manageable way — to achieve it, you will need to schedule time to read at least one chapter a day. 

Prioritize tasks

To prioritize tasks, decide what’s most important, then break that down into what’s urgent and nonurgent. Urgent tasks typically need to be done immediately; this may include printing a paper due in class today or studying for tomorrow’s test.

Time blocking

Time can slip through your fingers like sand at the beach. With time blocking , every hour of your day is counted and planned for. If that seems too overwhelming, you might consider time blocking a section of your day, like the portion you spend focusing on your schoolwork. Time blocking works by helping you set aside chunks of time for important work and prevents you from switching tasks excessively and taking an unnecessary amount of time on each task. 

To time block your day, start by listing tasks that need to be done and how much time you estimate they’ll take. Then, divide your day into half- or one-hour chunks and assign tasks to each block of time. Don’t forget to add a buffer between each block for relaxation. There’s no need to fill every minute of the day with work!

Time management techniques

No single time management technique is suitable for everyone. Here are a few strategies you might consider implementing to better manage your time and stay focused while you work.

Pomodoro technique

To use the pomodoro technique, set a timer for a designated amount of time you know you can focus. One of the most popular intervals is 25 minutes. Complete focused work for the entire timer, and once it sounds, give yourself a short five-minute break. Use these breaks wisely and fill your cup by taking a short walk or eating a nutritious snack. After your break, resume work for another 25 minutes. Once you’ve completed several cycles, give yourself an extended 20- to 30-minute break.

Rapid planning method

Created by Tony Robbins, the rapid planning method (RPM) helps you focus on your overall vision to bring it to life. To implement the RPM, write down everything you need to accomplish that week and group similar tasks. Then, create a four-column chart that lists each task, its result, the purpose of the task, and the steps you’ll take to get there. Seeing everything laid out in this manner can be highly motivating for some.

Parkinson’s law

Have you ever noticed that your work will take as long as you have until the deadline? Many tasks expand to fill the amount of time allotted to them, even if they could be done more efficiently. To overcome Parkinson’s law, implement strategies to work more efficiently within a smaller chunk of time. Perhaps you decide to go to the library without your laptop charger, so you’re forced to finish your paper before your computer dies. 

Resources and tools to develop time management skills

If you’re struggling to manage your time effectively, it may help to work with someone who can guide you through scheduling your day. Many college campuses offer student service centers where such support may be provided. If this kind of support isn’t available to you, there are also other support mechanisms you can turn to. An online therapist could help you work through the barriers preventing you from developing your time management skills so you can build a schedule that works for you. 

In a study examining the efficacy of self-help online therapy and therapist-guided online therapy, researchers found that while both helped decrease anxiety symptoms, therapy led by a mental health professional was the most effective option . 

By working with an online therapist through a platform like BetterHelp , you can improve your mental health and strengthen your time management skills. Online therapy may be beneficial for students whose schedules vary from day to day. Using BetterHelp, you can choose the best meeting format for you, be it via video chat, phone call, or in-app messaging.

If your dorm room is occupied or your shared apartment is noisy, you can use an open conference room in the library or an empty classroom in an on-campus building. A residential adviser may be able to point you to additional spaces that guarantee boundary. As long as you have a stable internet connection, your online therapist will be available for your appointments.

• Time management in college: Tips for success Medically reviewed by April Justice , LICSW
• The Mental Health Effects Of Time Management Medically reviewed by April Justice , LICSW
• Time Management
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How My Homework Helped Me With Time Management

Students often find themselves struggling with time management as they get older. This article will explore how homework can help students learn to be more responsible for their time, organize their workloads, and plan their days better.

Table of Contents

Introduction

As a student, you probably know the importance of time management. After all, there are only so many hours in a day, and you must use them wisely. Homework can help you to develop good time management skills.

When you have homework, you must plan your time carefully to complete it. This means you have to be very organized and efficient with your time. You can’t just start working on your homework whenever you feel like it; you need to sit down and figure out when and how long you will work on it. This can be tricky, especially if you have other commitments like sports or extracurricular activities.

However, managing your time and completing your homework efficiently will free up more time for other things. And, as a bonus, your grades will probably improve too! So, doing homework can be helpful if you’re struggling with time management.

What is Time Management?

Time management is the ability to use your time wisely to accomplish more daily. It involves setting priorities and ensuring you use your time wisely by first working on the most critical tasks.

Homework can help you with time management because it forces you to prioritize your work and use your time efficiently. If you have a lot of homework, you need to be able to figure out what is most important and work on that first. This can be an excellent skill to practice to learn how to manage your time better.

In addition, homework can help you learn how to budget your time. You may have limited time to complete your homework, so you must be careful about how you spend that time. This can teach you how to be more efficient with your time, which is a valuable skill.

How Homework Helps with Time Management

Homework can help students learn essential time management skills in academic and real-world settings. By teaching students how to budget their time and break down larger tasks into smaller, more manageable steps, homework can help them develop the time management skills they need to succeed in school and their future careers.

In addition to learning essential time management skills, homework can help students develop other vital skills such as organization, prioritization, and task completion. These skills are often transferable to other areas of life, allowing students to better manage their time inside and outside the classroom.

While some students may find homework a burden, when used correctly, it can be an invaluable tool for helping them develop the time management skills they need to succeed.

Tips to Improve Your Time Management Skills

If you struggle to complete your homework on time, it may be time to start thinking about improving your time management skills. Here are a few tips that can help:

1. Make a list of all the tasks you must complete, including homework and other commitments. This will help you to see exactly what needs to be done and plan your time accordingly.

2. Try to set aside a specific time each day for homework. This will ensure you have enough time to focus on and complete the task correctly.

3. If possible, break up your homework into smaller tasks that can be completed over time. This can make the overall job seem less daunting and make it easier to stay on track.

4. Use any spare moments during the day to work on your homework. Even if it’s just for 5 minutes, every little bit helps!

5. Seek help from others if you find the task challenging. Sometimes another person’s perspective can help get the job done efficiently.

My Personal Experience

I remember when I was first assigned homework in school. I thought it was the most pointless thing ever. Why did I have to do more work when I was already doing it all day at school? But as I got older and my workload increased, I started to see the value in homework. It taught me how to manage my time better and get work done even when I didn’t feel like it.

Now that I’m in college, managing my time is more critical than ever. There’s a lot on my plate with classes, extracurriculars, and a part-time job. But I can juggle everything without feeling overwhelmed because of the skills I learned from doing homework.

Homework may not have been fun when I was younger, but it’s helped me in the long run. If you’re struggling with time management, don’t be afraid to ask for help from your parents or teachers. They’ve been through it before and can offer some valuable advice.

Overall, doing my homework helped me improve my time management. By juggling different assignments and deadlines, I was forced to learn how to prioritize and use my time more efficiently. This skill has been incredibly helpful in school and my personal life. If you’re struggling with time management, I recommend trying homework!

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Effective time management for students and professionals

Graduate students often have hectic and stressful schedules. You may need to balance classes and homework with a demanding day job. Add childcare, chores and other responsibilities, and you can quickly have an overwhelming to-do list. 

Set yourself up for academic and professional success by improving your time management. Effective time management techniques can help you complete tasks faster and reduce stress as you work on your graduate degree and throughout your career. This guide reviews effective time management tips, including goal setting and task prioritization. 

Assess personal time management habits 

Time management is “the decision-making process that structures, protects, and adjusts a person’s time to changing environmental conditions.” People who excel at time management have three related strengths: 1 

• Awareness of the limited nature of their time and how they spend it
• Arrangement of goals and tasks into a productive schedule 
• Adaptation to disruptions and evolving priorities 

You can improve your time awareness by reflecting on your current time management strengths and weaknesses. Spend a couple days tracking your time in a planner or calendar and see where you go astray or what your productivity patterns are. For example, you might complete tasks quickly once you start working but spend too much time procrastinating beforehand. Or maybe you get distracted by scrolling on social media or watching television. Identifying areas where you need to improve can help you set goals for determining the best time management strategies for you. 

Embrace goal setting and task prioritization 

Goal setting can help you decide how to invest your limited time. There are two categories of goals: 2  

• Short-Term Goals: Specific objectives you can achieve in a short time, such as completing a class project or networking with three people in your industry 
• Long-Term Goals: Objectives that you work to accomplish over an extended period, such as earning a graduate degree and becoming a senior manager

The SMART model can help you set short- and long-term goals. SMART objectives are: 3

• Timebound 

By setting goals with SMART characteristics, you can improve task prioritization and set realistic deadlines for progress. 

Task prioritization

Task prioritization is key to project management and accomplishing goals. Prioritizing tasks can be done by terms of:

• Importance: Tackle the most critical tasks to a project's success first, or get things out of the way that require other's buy-in first and leaving things you can do on your own for later
• Urgency: Set deadlines and try ordering your tasks by due dates to stay ahead of what's next and to stay focused despite a busy schedule
• Complexity: Enhance productivity by working according to your energy levels for example working on more complicated tasks when you're at your most awake and energized

However, you decide to work on prioritizing tasks, plan ahead on large projects and remember to avoid multitasking and focus on one particular task at a time.

Create a time management plan 

A time management plan maps out your daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. You can create this plan using a calendar, whiteboard or mobile app. 

Start by adding upcoming deadlines. Next, work backward by estimating how much time you’ll need to complete each task and block off sections of your schedule appropriately. Say, for example, you have a final exam in three weeks. You can block off an hour each day to study to ensure you adequately prepare. 4  

It’s also crucial to incorporate regular breaks into your time management plan. Numerous studies have found that frequent micro-breaks of ten minutes or less increase well-being and reduce fatigue. 5  

Implement productivity techniques for academic success

Graduate students must often juggle classes, study time and extracurricular activities. Learners without strong time management skills can quickly feel overwhelmed and fall behind. 

These productivity techniques can help you manage your academic work effectively: 6  

• Update your to-do list daily 
• Prioritize tasks by deadlines 
• Tackle urgent responsibilities first 
• Start projects ahead of time
• Reward productivity with fun activities 

Master time management as a working professional 

Many graduate students continue working part- or full-time while earning their degrees. Some organizations have fast-paced environments, so you might work long hours on top of your classes. 

Here are several strategies to help you more successfully juggle work responsibilities: 7  

• Change your work environment frequently to reenergize 
• Use the Pomodoro technique, which alternates 25 minutes of work with 5-minute breaks 
• Ask for help when necessary 
• End each workday by planning tomorrow's to-do list 

Improve task planning and decision-making 

It can be difficult to prioritize responsibilities, especially if you have a lengthy to-do list. The Eisenhower Matrix supports task planning by sorting responsibilities into four categories: 8

This approach prioritizes tasks by both importance and urgency so you can allocate your time appropriately. 8

Use time tracking tools and other technology 

Countless mobile apps and software solutions assist with time tracking and task planning. Popular tools include: 

• Todoist: Create to-do lists with prioritized tasks 9
• Forest: Grow virtual trees by staying focused on your work 9
• Clockify: Track the time you spend on various projects 10
• Toggl Track: Use a digital stopwatch to track your time 10

Don’t be afraid of delegation

You don’t need to accomplish everything by yourself. Delegating tasks is almost always necessary to get big projects done and can help in academic and professional settings to save time and decrease stress. 11

Start by defining the task you want to delegate. For example, you could hand off the research portion of a group project or ask a colleague to lead a client meeting. Pick a team member with the required skills and provide advice as needed. 11  

Practice procrastination management

Studies suggest that around 75% of students identify as chronic procrastinators. Habitually delaying tasks can lead to poor academic performance and increased anxiety. 12  Just as important as time management is procrastination management so that you don't give into your worst habits.

Stay motivated and overcome distractions with procrastination management techniques, such as: 13  

• Breaking complex goals down into small steps 
• Setting deadlines for yourself 
• Embracing the risk of failure 

Achieve work-life balance and practice self-care  

Work-life balance refers to simultaneously meeting work goals and maintaining well-being. You can improve your work-life balance by setting strict boundaries between school, work and personal time. You should also reserve time for self-care activities, such as exercising, eating healthy meals, getting adequate sleep and socializing with peers. Giving yourself time for these simple tasks can increase your quality of life and enhance your focus at work. 14  

Prioritize stress management 

How you manage your time can pay off for your mental health. Recent studies indicate that approximately 75% of graduate students feel stressed or very stressed. 15 Using your time efficiently can aid stress management and prevent academic or professional burnout. Students who improve their time management also experience less test anxiety. 16

Enhance your management skills 

Time management strategies aren't just for college students. Managing time takes self-discipline that can help you increase productivity and help you stay organized in all aspects of your life. Master the latest people and time management techniques with Marquette University’s online  Master in Management . You’ll learn crucial leadership skills from industry experts with extensive experience managing businesses across industries. Marquette offers convenient asynchronous and synchronous courses to help you manage your academic tasks with your social life and professional responsibilities. Marquette University also provides many resources to support your success, including the Business Career Center and networking services. Schedule a call with an  admissions outreach advisor today to learn more. 

• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from hbr.org/2020/01/time-management-is-about-more-than-life-hacks
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6176065/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/nc-smart-goals-fact-sheet.pdf
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from hbr.org/2021/09/whats-the-1-productivity-tool-for-me-its-timeboxing
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9432722/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9392870/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from forbes.com/sites/theyec/2022/07/25/nine-work-habits-that-can-improve-your-productivity-and-focus/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10159458/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from forbes.com/advisor/business/software/free-time-tracking-apps/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from us.aicpa.org/interestareas/youngcpanetwork/resources/leadership/managementbydelegationlearntoletgo
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.783570/full
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from hbr.org/2022/05/stop-procrastinating-and-tackle-that-big-project
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8282063/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7483179/
• Retrieved on October 31, 2023, from brieflands.com/articles/jme-112142.html

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8 Time Management Tips for Students

Don't let a hectic schedule get the better of you with these time management tips.

Lian Parsons

College can be a stressful time for many students and time management can be one of the most crucial — but tricky — skills to master.

Attending classes, studying for exams, making friends, and taking time to relax and decompress can quickly fill up your schedule. If you often find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day, this guide will offer time management tips for students so you can accomplish what you need to get done, have fun with your friends, and gain back some valuable time for yourself. 

1. Create a Calendar

Don’t be caught by surprise by an important paper due two days from now or a dinner with your family the same night you planned for a group study session. Create a calendar for yourself with all your upcoming deadlines, exams, social events, and other time commitments well in advance so you can see what’s coming up. 

Keep your calendar in a place where you can see it every day, such as in your planner or on your wall above your desk. If you prefer a digital calendar, check it first thing every day to keep those important events fresh and top-of-mind. For greater efficiency, make sure you can integrate it with your other tools, such as your email.

Digital calendar options include: 

• Google Calendar 
• Outlook Calendar
• Fantastical

2. Set Reminders

After you’ve created your calendar, give yourself periodic reminders to stay on track such as to complete a study guide in advance or schedule a meeting for a group project. Knowing deadlines is important; however, staying on top of the micro tasks involved in meeting those deadlines is just as important. You can set an alarm on your phone, write it down in a physical planner, or add an alert to your digital calendar. The reminders will help to prevent things from slipping through the cracks during particularly hectic days.

Make sure you’ve allotted enough time to study for that big test or write that final paper. Time management is all about setting yourself up for success in advance and giving yourself the tools to accomplish tasks with confidence. 

Read our blogs, Your Guide to Conquering College Coursework and Top 10 Study Tips to Study Like a Harvard Student , for more suggestions.

3. Build a Personalized Schedule

Each person’s day-to-day is different and unique to them, so make sure your schedule works for you. Once you’ve accounted for consistent commitments such as classes or your shifts at work, add in study sessions, extracurriculars, chores and errands, and social engagements.

Consider your personal rhythm. If you typically start your day energized, plan to study or accomplish chores then. If you fall into an afternoon slump, give yourself that time to take a guilt-free TV break or see friends.

Having a schedule that works for you will help maximize your time. Plus, knowing exactly when your laundry day is or when your intramural volleyball practice is every week will help you avoid trying to cram everything in one day (or running out of clean socks!)

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4. Use Tools That Work For You

Just like your calendar and schedule, the tools you use to keep you organized should be the right fit for you. Some students prefer physical planners and paper, while some prefer going totally digital. Your calendar can help you with long-term planning, but most of these tools are best for prioritizing from day to day.

Explore what best suits your needs with some of the following suggestions:

Planners can help you keep track of long-term deadlines, such as important essay deadlines, upcoming exams, and appointments and meetings. They often provide a monthly overview each month, as well as day-to-day planning sections, so you can stay ahead. 

• Papier – Offers a 20% student discount 

If your schedule is jam-packed and you have trouble figuring out what to do and when, scheduling day by day—and sometimes even hour by hour—can help you slot in everything you need to do with less stress.

• Structured app

Note Taking

From class to study sessions to errands, keeping track of everything can feel overwhelming. Keeping everything in one place, whether on the go or at your desk, can help keep you organized.

• Bullet journals

5. Prioritize

Sometimes there really is too much to do with too little time. In these instances, take just a few minutes to evaluate your priorities. Consider which deadlines are most urgent, as well as how much energy you have. 

If you are able to complete simple tasks first, try getting them out of the way before moving on to tasks that require a lot of focus. This can help to alleviate some of the pressure by checking a couple things off your to-do list without getting bogged down too early.

If you are struggling to fit everything in your schedule, consider what you can postpone or what you can simply say no to. Your friends will likely understand if you have to meet them for coffee another time in order to get in a final library session before a challenging exam. 

6. Make Time to Have Fun — And For Yourself

Time management isn’t just about getting work done. It’s also about ensuring that you can put yourself and your mental wellbeing first. Consistently including time for yourself in your schedule helps to keep your mental health and your life in balance. It can also be helpful to have things to look forward to when going through stressful periods.  

Whether it’s going for a bike ride along the river, spending time with your friends and family, or simply sleeping in on a Sunday, knowing you have space to relax and do things you enjoy can provide better peace of mind. 

7. Find Support 

Preparation and organization can sometimes only get you so far. Luckily, you have plenty of people rooting for your success. Keep yourself and your classmates on task by finding an accountability partner or study buddies. Remind your roommates when you need extra space to work on a paper. 

Your school’s academic resource center is also there to support you and point you in the right direction if you need additional help. Getting—and staying—organized is a collaborative effort and no one can do it on their own. 

8. Be Realistic and Flexible 

Sometimes unforeseen circumstances will come up or you simply may not be able to get to everything you set out to do in a given day. Be patient with yourself when things don’t go exactly to plan. When building your calendar, schedule, and priorities list, be realistic about what you can accomplish and include buffer time if you’re unsure. This can help to reduce obstacles and potential friction.

Time management isn’t just about sticking to a rigid schedule—it’s also about giving yourself space for change.

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About the Author

Lian Parsons is a Boston-based writer and journalist. She is currently a digital content producer at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education. Her bylines can be found at the Harvard Gazette, Boston Art Review, Radcliffe Magazine, Experience Magazine, and iPondr.

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Time Management Is About More Than Life Hacks

• Erich C. Dierdorff

Your productivity hinges on these three skills.

There is certainly no shortage of advice — books and blogs, hacks and apps — all created to boost time management with a bevy of ready-to-apply tools. Yet, the frustrating reality for individuals trying to improve their time management is that tools alone won’t work. You have to develop your time management skills in three key areas: awareness, arrangement, and adaptation. The author offers evidence-based tactics to improve in all three areas.

Project creep, slipping deadlines, and a to-do list that seems to get longer each day — these experiences are all too common in both life and work. With the New Year’s resolution season upon us, many people are boldly trying to fulfill goals to “manage time better,” “be more productive,” and “focus on what matters.” Development goals like these are indeed important to career success. Look no further than large-scale surveys that routinely find time management skills among the most desired workforce skills, but at the same time among the rarest skills to find.

• Erich C. Dierdorff is a professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Richard H. Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University and is currently an associate editor at  Personnel Psychology.

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Time (or homework) management 101, a common scenario.

Child:  “I just can’t get this homework done.” Mom:   “ But you’ve been working on it now for two hours.” Child:  “I don’t know” (starting to cry).  “It’s just too much.” Mom:   “You never had such a problem getting your work done before.” Child:  (Throwing a pencil) “I hate this – I just want to go out and play with my friends.”

  Sound familiar? Ugh! Sometimes the thought of homework hassles can leave a sense of dread in parents – the fights, the chaos, the begging, and the scrounging for a sharpened pencil!  No thanks! 

But wait: maybe, just maybe, this year, if you do a little homework yourself, you can approach the whole homework scene a little differently.

Time Management Skills

It may be that an assessment of your child’s time management skills is in order.  These “executive functions” are generally not in-born, and helping a child acquire them may be one of a parent’s most important jobs. 

When you find yourself engaging in homework wars with your children, it can be comforting to know that you are not alone. After-school assignments can be one of the most common area of conflict between parents and their children.

A Personal Story

The problem.

When my formerly very organized son went to his first year of middle school, his homework load increased, and the work got harder.  It seemed he was now spending entirely too much time on school work and still was not able to stay on top of it.  It was immensely frustrating for him and for the rest of the family.

Ironically, this was also the year he became more independent and fell in love with bike-riding.  The fall weather was gorgeous and I was torn between letting him bike-ride after school with his friends and making him come right home and get to work. 

If he didn’t come right home and buckle down, I knew there would not be enough time to complete his homework.

But if he didn’t go out and ride his bike, he’d be antsy and not able to get much done anyway.

I decided there must be some way to compromise so that he could do both.

Was improving time management the solution to this dilemma?   

My son agreed to sit down with me and estimate how much time each homework assignment would take.

Then we portioned it out throughout the evening along with after-school fun.  He could ride his bike right after school for an allotted time, then do some homework, and then take a dinner break with more time for homework after dinner.  Additional breaks could be scheduled in between if needed. 

Flexibility was key, so the schedule was altered when projects or essays were assigned, when extra time was needed to study for tests, or if extracurricular events were on the calendar.

When we made the schedule, it was important to give my son a say in how we went about planning the evening; we brainstormed and then compromised on some things.  That way he had a say in the plan.

The Outcome

This turned out to be the ticket to my son’s eventual success in middle school.  While this idea worked for my son, it’s important to remember that because each child is unique, the plan will need to be tailored to fit the child. 

Some children are innately more organized or self-motivated than others, and each child has a distinct method of learning as well as personal feelings about what he wants and what works best for him.

For example, my son was always a very early riser and he insisted that he could finish some undone homework early in the morning before school if he absolutely could not complete it the night before.  While I felt that this plan was risky, I let him try it and it worked for him.  He is still successful with it today as a 10 th grader.  By the way, this would NEVER work for my daughter who is not a morning person.

Time Management Tips

Even allowing for an individual plan, there are still some tried and true tips that could be helpful to all students who can’t seem to get a handle on this time management thing.  These tips need to be adjusted according to what your child is truly capable of for his age.

Address the problem with your child without being judgmental.

Brainstorm ideas to make a plan. Remember that what works for you may not work for your child, and vice versa.

Listen to all ideas, even the ones which are not acceptable to you. For example: If your eight-year-old child says, “I will start my homework at 10:00 p.m.,” listen attentively, but when the time comes to evaluate the items on the brainstormed list, you can tell her that starting so late would not be acceptable to you.

Conversely, let your child state during brainstorming which ideas of yours she can or cannot accept.  Try to meet in the middle.  This lets her know that you value her opinion.

Recognize that time management may not be the only issue that is hindering your child’s success; you’ll have to assess other issues in the child’s life, such as not understanding the work, preoccupation with social situations, or a learning difficulty.

Organizational tips (useful to your child as early as kindergarten) are also important:

Set up a work space where your child can do his homework – this can be someplace as formal as a desk in the child’s room or as informal as a space at the dining room table.

Keep all supplies (pencils, pencil sharpeners, paper, etc.) in a convenient location where everyone knows where they are and everyone knows to put things back so they will be there the next time they are needed.

Gather any specific items needed before starting an assignment.

Have folders/binders for each subject; color-code them: —e.g., math folder is red, social studies folder is blue, etc.

(Best for 3 rd grade and older) Provide a  notebook for your child to write down all homework, long-term  assignments, dates of upcoming tests, etc.

Have your child put all homework and books in his backpack when he is finished his nightly assignments. Set aside a place to keep projects-in-progress.

Remember that becoming organized is a process; it will not happen overnight.  It takes time and patience on your part to encourage your child as he acquires the necessary skills and attitudes.

How Involved Should You Be?

Also consider the balance that parents need to strike between being involved with their children’s schoolwork and taking over responsibility for it.

You want to guide your children and help them develop time management awareness and skills.

However, you need to guard against being the “homework policeman” who is too strict and punitive or who cares more than the child does that the work gets done.

Set boundaries for yourself; it is easy to forget that your children’s homework is their work and a reflection of their abilities, not yours.  Stay separate, yet available, if your children should have any questions or need help.

What matters most in your children’s lives is that you are interested in them and that they know you are “in their corner.“  Be a partner in your children’s education; you’ll never regret being there for them as a source of support and guidance.  

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Table of Contents

Why is time management important for students, 10 time management skills and techniques for students, working smarter to enhance productivity, the benefits of good time management, how well do you manage your time, general time-management tools, time management in practice, implications of poor time management, how to better manage your time at work, choose the right program.

Effective time management is all about achieving the right balance between your homework, university/college life, and your free time. As a student, organizing your days will eliminate stress and ensure that you are productive. The general time management tips for students, such as sleeping well, scheduling, and prioritizing, are some important tips that can help students in the long run. A more strategic approach is required to optimize the time a student has in a day.

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Time management for students (and everyone else) is about making your day purposeful. It is about taking control of the time you have and optimizing it for focus, productivity , and above all, balance. Before we list out the time management tips for students, it is crucial for students to understand why time management is important.

All of us should make the most of the limited amount of time we have in a day. It is very easy to get wrapped up in a fury of various activities and accomplish less. Managing time effectively enables students to become more confident, and organized, and learn more efficiently. Effective time management skills are particularly essential for high school students, as they have to deal with more subjects, tests, assignments, and extracurriculars. Time management techniques can help students be on track and cope with the stress of added responsibilities. 

Following are a few more reasons why time management is important for students:

Enables You to Accomplish Your Goals Faster

Appropriate time management makes one more effective and encourages you to give your best to what you are doing and what you can, thus helping you achieve your goals much faster.

Enables You to Prioritize Your Work

When creating a timetable, you prioritize and arrange essential tasks that need immediate attention. For example, students have to complete assignments before attending a session. A student can fit in time to work on the assignments before attending a study group with correct time management.

Enables You to Get More Done in Less Time

Dedicating a specified amount of time to a particular task helps you focus on it. Instead of working on a given task with no predefined time assigned, you can complete the same task by sticking to a time plan. Without a time plan, you might completely forget to finish a task.

Reduces Stress Levels 

Time management skills can help you prioritize the time required for essential tasks; prioritizing tasks and having enough time to accomplish those tasks means reduced stress levels.

Helps You Become More Efficient

Effective time management helps you to be more focused at school/college/university, thus increasing your efficiency and enabling you to accomplish more within less time.

So, how can students learn to manage time more effectively? We have collated a list of the best time management tips for students to beat procrastination, stay focused, and be more productive.

Efficient time management is one of the primary keys to success, and thus, it is worth learning. Following are time management strategies for students to help them manage their time in the best possible manner.

1. Make Use of a Daily Schedule Template to Plan Your Day

Seminars, classes, and workshops may take up a chunk of your day, but how one schedules their own time makes all the difference. It is essential to master your schedule.

A daily schedule template helps you manage and control your time each day. It will enable you to stay organized and focus on what matters most and even help you overcome procrastination. The method that most successful people from Elon Musk to Bill Gates use is “time blocking”. Time blocking is creating a template for how you intend to spend every minute of your day. Students should therefore follow this method to manage their time more fruitfully.

2. Understand How You are Currently Spending Your Time (And Where You Are Losing It)

Your schedule will offer you an ideal version of your day, but you need to analyze how you spend your time to develop better time management habits. Without understanding how you are spending your time each day, it is impossible to build better time management strategies for students to stay focused.

3. Set Proper Goals to Measure Your Progress

Goals are an excellent way to get you motivated to do school work. However, the problem is that goals are just the result, with you not knowing how to achieve them. So, focus on what needs to be done to achieve that goal by focusing on constant progress and developing better habits. For example, if you need to write a 5,000-word essay in a month, set a daily goal of writing 500 words. If you continue this, you can complete your essay in a week.

4. Break Large Projects Into Smaller, Actionable Tasks

A part of proper goal-setting is to segregate large goals from smaller daily tasks. Doing this will help you stay focused and stop you from procrastinating. It is easy to procrastinate when a project feels like a huge task. However, taking that first step is all you need to build momentum.

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5. Be Realistic About the Time You Need to Complete a Task

Once you begin to schedule your tasks for the day, you may get overly optimistic about how much you can achieve. Psychologists also have a name for this – The Planning Fallacy. One of the most effective time management tips for students is to counter the planning fallacy. Students should add a buffer to their schedule depending on how familiar they are with the task. If it is something that has been done before, then 1-1.5X time must be allocated to the time they think it may take to complete the project.

6. Pay Attention to Your Body’s Natural Energy Highs and Lows

We all have moments in the day when we are more energetic and alert. And if you want to exploit the time you have each day to its maximum, you cannot fight against your body’s natural state. What does this mean in terms of time management tips for students ? Simply put, students should do their most essential work when they feel most energetic. This means scheduling intense projects during energy highs and scheduling passive activities when the body is at its natural low.

7. Take Breaks at the Right Time

Take more breaks to manage your productivity over time. But when exactly is the right time to take a break? Sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman states, “our minds naturally crave breaks after every 90 minutes of intense work. Even if you do not have a timer going, your body will let you know that you need a break by turning sleepy, fidgeting, hungry, or losing focus”. When you begin to feel this way, you know it is time to take a break.

8. Remove Distractions

Between social media, cell phones, and friends, there are so many activities that can distract students from their school work. When it is time to get down to doing school work, students need to turn off their cell phones and sign out of social media accounts. Any amount of time that is devoted to school work must be television and cell phone free!

9. Avoid Multitasking

It may be tempting for students to feel that they can multitask when their schedule is jam-packed. But the more one tries to do it at once, the longer each thing takes. Instead, studies have found that deeply focusing on one task at a time can be around 500% more productive.

10. Build Better Routines and Habits for Long-Term Success

We are what we repetitively do. One of the best time management strategies for students and everyone else is to develop routines and habits that endorse the kind of actions you would like to do more of, for example, following a morning routine that concentrates on getting an early win and prepping yourself for a productive day. Or, ensure your evening routine preps you for an effective next day by setting your goals and schedules the night before.

When planning, prioritize the more extensive, more complex, and time-consuming chores at the beginning of the week (or day), so you may complete them first and relax more as the week progresses. Front-load your week to maximize your chances of success. This is similar to Eat That Frog, a productivity strategy that recommends performing the most important or influential activity first every day to ensure it gets done.

Constant meetings, social media, and an endless stream of emails may make it challenging to create a productive day. Developing effective habits at work will enable you to accomplish your best job regularly. You have two options for increasing your productivity. You may work longer hours if you bring your job home with you. You may also work smarter by boosting efficiency without sacrificing quality. Let's look at some significant benefits of good time management are: 

Stress Relief

One of the primary causes of increased stress is poor time management. When you have a lot to accomplish and are unsure how to do it, you usually perform a rush job under pressure. However, with proper time management, you can schedule your daily chores so that you work smarter rather than harder. For example, you may prepare critical tasks for when you're most productive or set aside additional time for things you suspect will take longer than expected. So, even if you work longer, you will have enough time to complete everything while being calm.

By identifying task completion time, you can use less energy and worry less about whether you can achieve everything you need to do today. Instead, make time to take a break from your typical routine. You may preserve energy for your spare time since time management helps you to plan when your task will be completed before you begin it. Having more free time can help you achieve a better work-life balance and ensure you make time for yourself.

More Opportunities

Effective time management may help you achieve more success by improving the quality of your work. When you manage your time well, you not only provide excellent work on schedule, but you also work without stress. This displays improved decision-making abilities and potential for leadership . In other words, you exhibit traits that are necessary for job advancement. This will provide you with greater and more chances.

Ability to Realize Goals

You may simplify your day and spend less time selecting what to do or how to accomplish it if you use time management to arrange what you need to complete each day. For example, deciding what to do for each step before commencing the project may be beneficial if you have a complex project with an outline that requires several yet unclear phases. The project is then reduced to a short set of activities that give guidance. You save time by preparing your objectives rather than finding them out as you go. This might mean spending less time pondering what you should be doing and more time doing it.

There are several approaches you may use based on your time management abilities and experience, but the goal is to explain a system that works for you and makes sense in the position you're going for. In other words, if you're working in a team atmosphere, discuss an efficient time management approach for teamwork, such as getting everyone acquainted with project management software. Then, discuss the advantages of employing this method for time management. Going into depth about how this technique has worked for you demonstrates to the interviewer that you have real-world experience adopting this way to manage your time and aren't simply making it up.

Time management is critical to your success. You may achieve any goal you set your mind to by using an excellent time planner and master list. These are common time management tools and practices that you should employ to maximize productivity and personal organization. Each of these takes some effort to learn and perfect, but they will pay you back in increased efficiency and effectiveness for the rest of your life.

Prioritization

The 80/20 rule was developed by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. It's believed that 20% of activities are accountable for 80% of results. The purpose of Pareto analysis is to assist you in prioritizing tasks that are most successful at issue resolution. List some of the difficulties you are experiencing. Determine the fundamental source of each issue. Assign a score to each problem and arrange them by cause. Add the scores from each group: The topic should be addressed first in the group with the highest score. Take some action.

Scheduling is the art of preparing your activities so that you may accomplish your goals and prioritize your priorities in the time you have available. When done correctly, it can assist you in realizing what you can do with your time. Ensure you leave adequate time for import duties and only take on what you can do.

Goal Setting

Smart goals enable people to plan and attain their objectives in a reasonable amount of time. It can also aid in improving time management in professional contexts such as school and the workplace. Smart goal planning may give direction for your aims and help you build practical measures to attain those goals if you want to manage your time wisely.

Concentration and Focus

Distractions are a major impediment to personal time management. Close the door to avoid as many distractions as possible. Only pay attention to what you're doing right now.

In terms of significance, describe your top two distractions over the next two weeks. Remember that staying focused during the day necessitates proper sleep habits and enough fluids.

Effective time management entails completing more vital tasks in a single day. Effective time management is more important than efficient time management. The most successful time managers are also the most efficient. Try some time management software. The first time management tool you require is a time planner, which provides all the information you need to plan and arrange your life. The most excellent time planners, whether looseleaf or electronic, allow you to prepare for the whole year, the month, the week, and each day.

We all know that there never seems to be enough time in the day, and as a result, things slip by the wayside. While this occurs to the best of us from time to time, students who battle with time management regularly are doing themselves no favors.

Poor Workflow

Poor efficiency results from a failure to plan and keep to goals. For example, completing related chores concurrently or sequentially is an intelligent approach if many significant tasks need to be accomplished. However, if you plan, you may be able to bounce back and forth, or backtrack, in your job. This equates to decreased efficiency and output.

Wasted Time

Wasted time arises from poor time management. For example, chatting with pals on social media while working on an assignment is a distraction and a waste of time.

Loss of Control

You will lose control of your professional life if you do not know the next assignment. This might lead to increased tension and worry.

Poor Quality of Work

The quality of your work could be better when you manage your time well. Quality is often degraded when things are rushed at the last minute.

Poor Reputation

When clients or your company cannot rely on you to finish things on time, their expectations and impressions of you suffer. A client who needs to trust you to complete a task on schedule will likely look for another service provider.

Your ability to manage your time affects how productive you are each day. You can accomplish more in less time with effective time management, which also helps you feel less stressed and advance in your profession. Instead of just using the following tools as a timetable to complete more tasks, make them represent your values—what is most important to you. When you arrange and calendar your time and make the split-second decisions essential to efficient time management for balance and well-being, remember these principles.

1. Know How You’re Spending Your Time

You need to keep track of what you do with your time to identify any activities or routines preventing you from achieving your desired objectives. You must start and end each day with a purpose to make the most of your time.

You have two choices for keeping track of your time:

• Spend a day or two manually recording your activities in a "time log."
• To automatically log your time, use a free program like RescueTime.

2. Stick to a Daily Schedule

While making a to-do list is a common theme in time and productivity management advice for students, mastering your daily schedule is even more crucial. 

Time blocking is the strategy of choice for many of the most successful people in the world, including Bill Gates and Elon Musk. But time blocking is planning how to spend each minute of your day.

• Create Realistic Timelines: A schedule must be practical to be effective. Plan your study time wisely to increase your study skills. The study techniques of the students vary from one another. This entails scheduling time for breaks, meals, exercise, social interaction, phone calls to loved ones, and all other "non-school" activities that keep you content and motivated.
• Give your undivided Attention: Your best friend in this situation is "self-discipline" and "self-control." If you must take a break, do so, but try to avoid sneaking away to other websites while working. Turn off your phone or put it away until it's time for a scheduled break.

3. Prioritize

1440 minutes make up one day. Within these hours, you must set practical priorities. Setting suitable priorities for your study goals is one of the sage study advice. If you have a lot of material to learn, start breaking it down into manageable chunks and choose what is most crucial. One of the best study strategies is making the most of your morning hours when nobody is awake to disturb you since they are asleep.

• Do immediately: Tasks that are crucial and have clear deadlines, or ones you've put off so long they're past due.
• Schedule for later: Crucial assignments with no set deadlines.
• Delegate: Those tasks that others can execute.
• Delete: Activities you can skip since they are optional to achieving your objectives or carrying out your mission.

4. Tackle the Most Difficult Task First

You should complete your most crucial tasks when you're most energetic. This entails arranging writing or other demanding tasks for when your energy levels are at their highest and reading or other passive pursuits for when they are at their lowest.

Brian Tracy's renowned Eat That Frog productivity technique is quite effective for those who delay or find themselves procrastinating frequently or who may have difficulty avoiding distractions. It suggests starting with the task that is the hardest, most complicated, and most critical, i.e., the one you're most inclined to put off for later. Once you've "devoured that frog," only then should you move on; that too without much stress.

5. Batch-Process Similar Tasks

Task batching is when you organize related jobs or tasks into groups and finish them all at once. Using this method, you can easily cut down on multitasking and extend your time to give all your projects your full attention.

For instance: At around 10 to 11 a.m. daily, organize and respond to emails and organize your digital study materials simultaneously.

6. Set Reasonable Time Limits

Focus on what has to be done to reach and surpass the objective instead of starting at the end and moving backward. You might take a full day to finish two different tasks that could be completed in only three hours if you had a full day to do so. There's a good possibility you'll still reach the earlier deadline if you give yourself a shorter window.

What can you do every day to further your ultimate aim? This entails putting an emphasis on steady improvement and forming improved routines. Even better, seeing daily progress will spur you to do more. Work "expands to occupy the time given to do it," according to Parkinson's law.

7. Learn When to Say No

Our energy levels are limited each day and tend to decrease with time. It is wise to know your limits and be prepared to say no to prevent doing subpar work. Understand your advantages and disadvantages. It is ideal for concentrating on one's strengths and delegating tasks that others can complete more quickly and effectively.

8. Avoid Multitasking

Concentrate on one item at a time to manage your time and commit it to study effectively. Nothing gets accomplished when you attempt to perform too many tasks at once. So, starting with one activity, finishing it, and moving on to another is one of the greatest study- focus- ideas .

When your schedule is packed, believing you can multitask is tempting. But everything takes longer the more you try to complete it at once. Instead, studies show that concentrating intently on a single activity can increase productivity by up to 500% . The American Psychological Association claims that mental juggling comes with "switching costs" that reduce your output. Changing tasks may take a few seconds each, but it adds up if you multitask regularly. Your potential for error also increases.

9. Keep Things Organized

Efficiency will rise if your workspace is tidy and organized because you won't have time to look for paper. Learning how to be organized is a talent that can be known. Start with these fundamentals.

• Maintain a clean work desk: The office's physical surroundings greatly impact how you operate. When your environment is chaotic, you are too. You can also be affected by clutter in less direct ways. Research has demonstrated that your physical settings substantially impact your cognition, emotions, and behavior, affecting how you make decisions and interact with others.
• Coordinate your computer files and shared drives: Loss of files and decreased productivity might result from improperly arranging shared files. Nothing is more confusing than spending most of your working hours searching your system for files. Create distinct folders for your files according to their categories to save yourself the hassle.
• Use a calendar: Using a well-organized calendar, you can manage your time to keep on top of your to-do lists and maintain focus throughout the workday. Although many executives have secretaries who work their calendars, anyone may utilize the same procedures to become more productive.

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Time management for students is highly intimidating, especially when you have multiple things on your to-do list. It is one of the most challenging tasks for students as they are expected to fare well and produce good results while handling the pressures of school assignments, homework, projects, and maintaining a social life. However, with our list of time management tips for students, we are confident that students will be able to come up with an arrangement to ensure that every day is as productive as possible. 

As you know, there is never an end to learning. To make your day more effective, you can always take up courses as a student to boost your career. A PMP® Certification Training  from Simplilearn will help you master core project management tools as a strategic tool for business transformation.

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Time Management Exercise

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Do you find yourself rushing to complete your homework assignment at the last moment? Are you always starting your homework when you're supposed to be going to bed? The root of this common problem may be time management.

This easy exercise will help you identify the tasks or habits that take time away from your studies and help you develop more healthy homework habits.

Keeping Track of Your Time

The first goal of this exercise is to get you to think about how you spend your time . For instance, how much time do you think you spend on the phone per week? The truth may surprise you.

First, make a list of common time-consuming activities:

• Talking on the phone
• Listening to music
• Watching TV
• Playing games/surfing web
• Spending time with family

Next, jot down an estimated time for each one. Record the amount of time that you think you devote to each of these activities per day or week.

Make a Chart

Using your list of activities, create a chart with five columns.

Keep this chart on hand at all times for five days and keep track of all the time you spend on each activity. This will be tough sometimes since you probably spend a lot of time going rapidly from one activity to the other or doing two at once.

For example, you may watch TV and eat at the same time. Just record the activity as one or the other. This is an exercise, not a punishment or a science project. Don't pressure yourself!

Once you have tracked your time for a week or so, take a look at your chart. How do your actual times compare with your estimates?

If you are like most people, you may be shocked to see how much time you spend doing things that are unproductive.

Does homework time come in last place? If so, you're normal. In fact, there are many things that ​ should take more time than homework, like family time. But surely there are some problem areas that you can identify as well. Are you spending four hours a night watching TV or playing video games?

You certainly deserve your leisure time. But to have a healthy, productive life, you should have a good balance among family time, homework time, and leisure time.

Set New Goals

When tracking your time, you may find that you spend some time on things you just can't classify. Whether we're sitting on the bus staring out the window, waiting in line for a ticket, or sitting at the kitchen table gazing off in the distance, we all spend time doing, well—nothing.

Look over your activity chart and determine areas you could target for improvement. Then, start the process over again with a new list.

Make new time estimates for each task or activity. Set goals for yourself, allowing more time for homework and less time on one of your weaknesses, like TV or games.

You will soon see that the mere act of thinking about how you spend your time will bring about a change in your habits.

Suggestions for Success

• Don't work alone. Some of us need support to stick to something. A little competition with a friend always makes things more interesting. Work with a friend, compare notes, lists, and charts. Make a game of it!
• Include your parent. Get your mom or dad involved and have them keep track of the time they waste. Now that might be interesting!
• Negotiate a reward system . Whether you work with a friend or a parent, work out a system for rewarding yourself for progress. If working with a friend, you could agree to provide lunch or dinner for the time-saving winner each week.If working with a parent, you could negotiate an extended curfew for every increased minute devoted toward homework. Perhaps you could even substitute dollars for minutes. The possibilities are endless!
• Have a party for reaching a goal. Even if you're working on your own, you could promise yourself a party as a reward for reaching a specific goal.
• Make it a class project. This would be a great project for an entire class. The teacher or group leader could keep track of progress with a flow chart. When the class reaches a goal as a group—it's party time!
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Time Management: 7 Techniques & 3 Tools to Help Clients

For that reason, time management books, techniques, and software are a dime a dozen.

When guiding your busy executive clients or anxiety-driven patients on a path to better time management, you might not just be spoiled for choice, but overwhelmed.

So, rather than jumping into the deep end, start with this post, where we’ll give you a user-friendly overview of time management literature. We’ll discuss seven core components of time management and how to apply these, along with useful tools and recommended readings for your client’s daily life.

Since time is of the essence, let’s begin!

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Productivity Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients become more productive and efficient.

This Article Contains

The importance of time management, strategy 1: identify and eliminate time wasters, strategy 2: steer away from perfectionism, strategy 3: eliminate procrastination, strategy 4: say no to extra work, strategy 5: determine priorities, strategy 6: focus on deep work, strategy 7: follow the 80/20 way, recommended time management books, time management tools from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message, frequently asked questions.

Time management is a constellation of behaviors that help us use our time effectively to satisfy the demands of our personal and professional lives. Although the definition of time management varies from one domain to the next, Aeon and Aguinis (2017, p. 311) provide the following clear, person-centered explanation:

“a form of decision-making used by individuals to structure, protect, and adapt their time to changing conditions.”

These three components cannot be reduced to a single panacea, capable of addressing any and all time management issues. Instead, different strategies — like the ones outlined in this post — address various components of time management.

Why is time management important?

Our time and energy are finite. We need to divide them adequately across several responsibilities and use them to look after ourselves, our families and our friends and attend to work-related tasks.

With better-managed time, we can satisfy all our responsibilities, work demands, and goals. Most importantly, we reduce the risk of feeling overwhelmed by stress, feeling like a failure, and other poor psychological wellbeing issues (Aeon & Aguinis, 2017).

A synthesis of the existing literature (Aeon & Aguinis, 2017) found that time management is:

• Positively correlated with several measurements of wellbeing (including psychological health, job satisfaction , confidence, self-esteem)
• Negatively correlated with stress
• Positively correlated with several work and academic performance measures, including academic success and self-reported job performance

If you’re still unconvinced about the importance of better time management, watch Brad Aeon’s TEDx video here.

Selecting time management strategies

In the earlier definition of time management, we mentioned three core components: structure, protection, and adaptation.

• Structure refers to how our time is perceived, measured, and allocated.
• Protection is how we protect our time from being wasted, misdirected, or deviated from our plans.
• Adaptation refers to how well we can cope with unexpected tasks or surprises.

In this post, we will discuss seven key time management strategies that can be grouped according to these three components. This taxonomy is helpful when deciding on a strategy. All strategies help protect our time and goals, but some also satisfy the other components.

Time-wasting activities deplete time, energy, and effort without contributing to the overall output/end goal (Gordon & Borkan, 2014).

To identify which time wasters the client depends on, use a daily journal , logging their activities and time spent on each (Gordon & Borkan, 2014). Once clients know which time-wasting activities are present, they can tackle them.

Time wasters can take many forms, but various practical solutions exist to counter them (see the table below, adapted from Gordon & Borkan, 2014).

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Being overly concerned with a perfect product/outcome can quickly derail the best-laid plans. Perfectionism is a maladaptive behavior characterized by extreme self-criticism, fear of making mistakes, self-doubt, and impossible standards (Rice et al., 2012).

Perfectionists experience little pleasure in their professional and personal lives because they are overly concerned with their performance and are at higher risk of procrastination, psychological distress, and several psychological syndromes (Rice et al., 2012; Shafran et al., 2016).

They often repeat actions, circumnavigating around an unattainable goal, ultimately wasting time that could have been redirected toward other tasks (Shafran et al., 2016).

Alongside the other strategies in our post, the following are recommended to help overcome perfectionism .

• Perfectionists rely on binary thinking models (right–wrong) and have a low tolerance for mistakes (Shafran et al., 2016). Help your client recognize that a project will never be perfect, adopt a kinder inner voice, and schedule time for feedback.
• Break tasks into smaller, attainable goals with clear expectations when setting goals. For example, the first goal is to produce a draft version containing mistakes but with the correct structure. For the second goal, the client can focus on refining the piece and attending to typos.
• “Perfect” work is unattainable, and “perfect” is typically poorly defined. Instead, identify the core aspects of the project that will have the most impact and achieve the same outcome as a perfect one. Focus on these aspects rather than the less important ones.

Still, the task’s action has a negative experience (van Eerde, 2003).

Procrastination has many forms and is accompanied by negative feelings such as guilt and a fear of failing . The entire experience is stressful, which clients want to avoid or change (van Eerde & Klingsieck, 2018).

Eliminating procrastination starts with awareness and then an intervention (van Eerde, 2003).

According to a meta-analysis of four different interventions, the most effective intervention against procrastination was Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, regardless of whether time management strategies, such as breaking down a task into smaller chunks, prioritizing tasks, goal setting, or managing time effectively, were included (van Eerde & Klingsieck, 2018).

Another effective strategy is strength and assertiveness training (van Eerde & Klingsieck, 2018; Visser, et al., 2017). In this training, learners were taught how to identify and apply their strengths to situations where they would procrastinate. These were very effective when used within a cognitive-behavioral framework.

Being presented with extra work while trying to satisfy an existing work demand is not unusual. The implication of taking on extra work, however, is that:

• We have less time to meet our existing workload, increasing the risk of failure.
• The likelihood of feeling stressed and anxious about meeting our goals increases.

Doing such extra work is often not in an individual’s best interest. Practice declining the opportunity in a neutral way where the implications of the extra work on available time are made explicit (Beagrie & McGee, 2007). Here are some examples of how to do that:

Here is a quick guide on Assertiveness in the Workplace .

Knowing which tasks are the most important and giving these higher priority and more focus is vital. An example of poor prioritization is when a project due in one week is overlooked for a project due in three.

Eisenhower Matrix

One helpful way to determine priority is to use the Eisenhower Matrix (Covey, 1991). Tasks are split across two dimensions: importance and urgency.

To classify tasks, start with the due date and work backward from high urgency to low urgency. Urgency refers to the immediacy of the task deadline. Under a heading of urgency, tasks that are due soon are urgent, and tasks with later deadlines are not urgent.

Then, add an additional classification to each task: importance. Evaluate the importance of each task by looking at its impact and contribution to long-term goals. Tasks that contribute to essential goals have high importance, whereas those that don’t contribute are not important.

Consequently, all tasks will be allocated as urgent or not and also classified as either important or not important.

Your matrix should look like the image, and the tasks should be prioritized from left to right, starting with the top row.

• Do – Priority 1 In the top-left quadrant are tasks high on both dimensions. These are the most pressing tasks that require your immediate attention. They should be completed first.
• Schedule – Priority 2 Tasks that are important but not urgent (top-right quadrant) do not have concrete deadlines yet. These tasks should be broken down into smaller tasks or scheduled for later.
• Delegate – Priority 3 Tasks that are urgent but not important (bottom-left quadrant) do not require your personal attention. Instead, these tasks can be delegated to someone else.
• Delete – Priority 4 Tasks in the opposite bottom-right quadrant are the least important and not urgent. They can be discarded or kept for when there is a lull in workload.

However, all tasks cannot be both high importance and high urgency. If they are, prioritization needs to be deployed, or the person will become overwhelmed and over-committed.

Deep work refers to the ability to work in a quiet, distraction-free environment with intense focus and concentration (Bhargava, 2016; Newport, 2016).

Our cognitive abilities are exercised like a muscle in this environment. Our abilities to concentrate and produce are stretched to capacity and improve over time. The mental experience is similar to a flow state , characterized by intense concentration and focus where the perception of time disappears (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

Deep work is best for challenging work that requires absolute focus, but it is difficult to achieve because of distractions in our daily lives. Therefore, deep work should be considered a skill that can be honed and improved through regular practice, similar to any other skill.

Start with the following when trying to improve deep work skills (Bhargava, 2016; Newport, 2016):

• Allocate a significant portion of time to uninterrupted focus (i.e., no time wasters and no interruptions).
• Allocate this time for the morning when you’re feeling refreshed and motivated. Do not check emails or other communications beforehand to avoid being distracted.
• Like exercise, plan for sufficient rest and sleep. It is only possible to work constantly at the same pace with rest. So assign the more manageable, less cognitively demanding tasks to other work periods and take time to recover.

To illustrate further:

• 20% of the time will yield 80% of the work. Imagine your client has a presentation due. Putting together a rough but comprehensive draft (80%) will take little time (20%).
• However, the remaining 20% of the work will take approximately 80% of the time. Even though the bulk of the work is done, the remaining work needed to refine the presentation (20%) takes considerable time (80%). If your client had planned their project so that they only had 20% of the time left for this work, they would not meet their deadline.
• 20% of the work is essential, whereas 80% is not. Knowing how to prioritize the critical 20% over the less consequential 80% is vital to managing our time and workload.

With this in mind, when planning a schedule, do the following (Vaccaro, 2000):

• Split the available time unequally to account for the 80/20 split. Leave ample time for refinement, corrections, and feedback.
• Go through tasks and classify them as belonging to the 20% or 80% category. The 20% tasks are essential, yield significant results, and directly impact other goals. The 80% tasks are urgent but optional, take longer than expected, and are draining.
• Classify subtasks as 20% or 80% when working on a bigger project. Always prioritize the essential tasks (20%) over the nonessential tasks (80%).

Readers are spoiled for choice when looking for books about time management. Here we list four books that are directly related to some strategies in this post. Let us know in the comments if you have any other recommendations.

1. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport

This book tackles the topic of deep work: what it is, how to achieve it, and why it is crucial.

The author, Cal Newport, is a professor of computer science and understands the importance of dedicated, focused time in achieving goals.

Unlike many other self-help books, the advice in this book is accessible, practical, and reads as though the author has tried and tested it.

Find the book on Amazon .

2. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones – James Clear

If we accept that we can improve our work strategies and break our bad habits, then we recommend Atomic Habits .

This book describes how small, consistent environmental changes can help form habits.

If you liked this book, then we also recommend Tiny Habits by B. J. Fogg . It is similar to Atomic Habits  but slightly more practical.

3. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More With Less – Richard Koch

There is a reason this book is so highly regarded. Koch explores the history of the 80/20 principle and provides numerous historical examples of this principle.

The precise numerical ratio is not essential, but the concept of the imbalance between input and output is vital. To help readers understand how to implement this principle in their daily lives, Koch outlines several key steps to identify the 80/20 split and prioritize the most critical tasks that yield the most important outcomes.

This is a practical book, and once the principle is understood, readers can easily skip to the most critical chapters. It is an excellent book for people who are pressed for time and just need a quick reminder of the principle.

17 Science-Based Productivity & Efficiency Exercises

Arm yourself with these 17 Productivity & Work Efficiency Exercises [PDF] and use positive psychology to increase flow, engagement, and goal achievement in the workplace.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

PositivePsychology.com has an extensive collection of worksheets and tools for our readers that can help with time management or help eliminate time wasters.

Goal setting activities

Productivity and goal setting are popular topics on our blog. If you do not know where to start, we recommend this post: Goal Setting Activities, Exercises & Games . It references various tools that help clients identify and set their goals, including apps, worksheets, and one-on-one and group exercises, just to name a few.

17 Productivity and Work Efficiency Exercises

Our premiere tool that can help you and your clients with their time management is this excellent collection of 17 Productivity and Work Efficiency Exercises .

The exercises cover all seven strategies discussed in this post and much more. The kit includes a short introduction booklet about productivity, supported by 17 exercises, each relying on science-proven strategy.

One exercise focuses on developing deep work, and another uses the 80/20 principle. All of this is available as an all-in-one kit perfect for practitioners who want to expand their toolkit for dealing with clients’ work-related concerns, time management problems, or productivity.

Motivation and Goal Setting Masterclass

A lack of motivation and unclear goals can also affect time management. To aid your client struggling with motivation and goal setting, consider signing up for our Motivation and Goal Setting Masterclass© .

This excellent masterclass covers the topic of motivation and goal setting in much more detail and is a training tool for practitioners.

It accompanies the 17 Productivity and Work Efficiency Exercises by exploring another facet of workplace concerns and challenges. The American Psychological Association recognizes this masterclass, and practitioners will receive nine continuing education points upon completion.

The finite nature of time and its effective management have been recognized for several decades, dating back to the 1950s (Claessens et al., 2007). We understand that effective time management is essential for successful goal setting, meeting deadlines, and managing stress .

“But how?” you asked, and we listened.

In this post, we explored seven different strategies, each focusing on at least one component of time management discussing how to structure tasks better, prioritize deadlines, protect time and concentration from distractions, and work smarter not harder.

Remember that some strategies might not work for your client, and they might need to try a few to find the one that fits. But most crucial is recognizing that time management is a skill. We can learn how to do it, and all of us can improve it.

The list of strategies and books presented in this post is incomplete; many other strategies exist. If you have used a particular technique successfully or have a novel approach you have developed, share it with us in the comments. Book recommendations are also welcome!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Productivity Exercises for free .

Procrastination reduces our ability to manage time effectively and complete tasks on time because we take a long time to start doing the actual work. When we do finally begin, there is less time left to complete the job, increasing the likelihood of feeling stressed out, anxious, and failing.

Time management is a skill. It is a collection of behaviors that can be learned and improved.

Time management is “a form of decision-making used by individuals to structure, protect, and adapt their time to changing conditions” (Aeon & Aguinis, 2017, p. 311).

• Aeon, B., & Aguinis, H. (2017). It’s about time: New perspectives and insights on time management. Academy of Management Perspectives , 31 (4), 309–330.
• Beagrie, S., & McGee, L. (2007). How to… say no. Occupational Health & Wellbeing , 59 (8), 24.
• Bhargava, P. (2016). Deep work: A productivity superpower. Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology , 46 (1), 1–2.
• Claessens, B. J., Van Eerde, W., Rutte, C. G., & Roe, R. A. (2007). A review of the time management literature. Personnel Review , 36 (2), 255–276.
• Covey, S. R. (1991). The seven habits of highly effective people . Covey Leadership Center.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: the psychology of optimal experience . Harper and Row.
• Gordon, C. E., & Borkan, S. C. (2014). Recapturing time: A practical approach to time management for physicians. Postgraduate Medical Journal , 90 (1063), 267–272.
• Koch, R. (2011). The 80/20 principle: The secret of achieving more with less (updated 20th anniversary ed.). Hachette.
• Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world . Hachette.
• Rice, K. G., Richardson, C. M., & Clark, D. (2012). Perfectionism, procrastination, and psychological distress. Journal of Counseling Psychology , 59 (2), 288.
• Shafran, R., Coughtrey, A., & Kothari, R. (2016). New frontiers in the treatment of perfectionism. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy , 9 (2), 156–170.
• Vaccaro, P. J. (2000). The 80/20 rule of time management. Family Practice Management , 7 (8), 76.
• Van Eerde, W. (2003). Procrastination at work and time management training. The Journal of Psychology , 137 (5), 421–434.
• Van Eerde, W., & Klingsieck, K. B. (2018). Overcoming procrastination? A meta-analysis of intervention studies. Educational Research Review , 25 , 73–85.
• Visser, L., Schoonenboom, J., & Korthagen, F. A. (2017). A field experimental design of a strengths-based training to overcome academic procrastination: Short-and long-term effect. Frontiers in Psychology , 8 .

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