Written by Salina Guo
There’s never enough time in a day to do all the homework, chores, and fun activities that I desire. Now more than ever, I find myself struggling to do all my assignments and priorities while maintaining extracurriculars. As an International Baccalaureate student, time is of the essence so I wanted to share some of my golden tips and tricks that I’ve used so far in high school that have significantly improved my time management skills.
Writing Priorities/Tasks Down
This always sounded redundant when I was young because why write it down if I knew what I wanted to do? But it became quickly disproved for me in high school and this trick is my number one recommendation to those struggling with time management. Personally, I write down all the next days’ work the evening prior in order to prevent myself from making excuses the morning of.
Writing priorities/tasks down concrete them and is somewhat a promise you make to yourself. When they are written, you are more exposed to seeing your goals in real life and will orient your time to complete these goals.
Using an Agenda/Planner
It seems so straightforward but it really is one of the must-haves in my toolkit of tackling better time management skills. I write all my tasks and priorities down here and cross them out as I complete them. I think one of my biggest struggles prior to the daily usage of a planner was that there was no sense of routine in my daily goal setting. I find that when I write my goals down in one place, it normalizes this act and incorporates it into my routine.
A set agenda/planner “normalizes” the writing down of tasks and when looking back upon my written down tasks, I can see everything I have done and everything I may have missed. It serves as a great way for you to validate how you’ve spent your time.
Don’t Multitask
This is one of the most important tricks to having enough time for all my tasks. I used to multitask a lot in my homework but after taking a psychology course in Grade 10, I learned that when your mind switches from one task to another, you are actually expending a lot of energy in the switch and it takes longer. This ultimately elongates the time you will spend on tasks.
Avoid multitasking as this will prevent you from entering what psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls “flow”. Flow essentially means “being in the zone”.
Eliminate Distractions
This is another obvious one but it’s absolutely crucial. Sometimes it’s so tempting to open that Snapchat or continue watching TikTok but in order to accommodate my time to my priorities, I gotta say no to these distractions. This is also one of the harder tricks to master which is a no brainer because we live in such a distraction and media abundant world. What’s the first thing I put away? My phone!
Put away any distractions so you can focus 100% of your attention on the task at hand. You’ll get it done faster and better.
Do Prioritized Tasks First and Early
The ugly p-word that haunts every student’s high school years…..Procrastination. I’ve never really struggled with this but I know many of my friends who have and this has only led to stressful all-nighters and words of regret after. This is one of the obstacles that I think can be broken down by doing some of the tips mentioned above.
It’s never too early to do anything. I always chose to do things earlier rather than later and it saved me so much unnecessary stress down the line.
Be Positive
There’s no point in trying to develop better time management skills if you’re not feeling better, more productive, or more motivated in the process. It’s definitely a long road that needs to constantly be worked on so you should aim to trust the process and embrace the difficulties and failures along the way. I still struggle with this but I found that these golden tips and tricks have helped me substantially lower the amount of stress I experience with so many tasks on hand. I also want to stress that not every day will be your best day and that’s ok but don’t let that one bad incident ruin your entire day. A perfect quote for this: If you’re not going to worry about it in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes thinking about it!
Some Helpful Tools
I find these certain things to significantly help me in the creation of a to-do list and following through with it:
Calendar to jot down all the upcoming dates of tasks/assignments.
Agenda/planner for all your written to-do lists.
Apps that prevent you from accessing certain apps on your phone for a certain time period that you set. The necessary functions such as calling and messaging are still accessible but others such as social media apps are temporarily locked. Some apps are Forest and Terrarium: Garden Idle.
Eat/drink before doing a task as this prevents you from making food stops or water breaks in the middle of completing it.
Taping/putting your goals/to-do list in a visible spot that way you won’t lose focus of them.
These are just some tips and tricks that I’ve found to be extremely helpful to me but it’s important to find a method that is comfortable for you and suits your lifestyle/work habits. It’s never too late to create more time for yourself to do the things you love!
About the Author
Salina Guo is a grade 12 IB student attending Monarch Park Collegiate Institute. She enjoys painting and playing the piano in her spare time. What most people don’t know about her is that she is double jointed,but that doesn't stop her from writing stories, poems and expressing her opinions through art. She is passionate about creating social change and looks forward to using her skills to create further awareness about world issues.
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