The Time Management Tips You need for a Better Performance

By Okeke Somkenechi Gift

It is second semester already: another chance for students to improve their grades for the session. Time management is one of the issues students struggle with. Most times, students find it difficult to balance their social life, work life (for those working while schooling), personal life, school extracurricular activities with their studies. The imbalance in these spheres of a student’s life can lead to poor academic performance and burnout.

Do you regularly lose track of time? Do you miss deadlines often? Do you have difficulty with completing tasks because there was not enough time or because you did not appropriately allocate time to each task? Here are some tips that can help you manage your time more effectively.

Firstly, prioritize your tasks. Prioritizing tasks helps you focus your attention on tasks that are important and urgent, and allocating more time to them. Say you have not read for a test which will hold in two days’ time, and your friends invited you to hangout with them. You might decide to study now then hang out later. Prioritizing your tasks will help you ensure that your important tasks get done before other less important ones. You can prioritize your tasks by using a tool like the Eisenhower Matrix. This matrix prioritizes tasks based on its urgency and importance. It divides tasks into 4 categories:

• Tasks that are urgent and important,

• Tasks that are urgent but not important,

• Tasks that are important but not urgent, and

• Tasks that are not urgent and not important.

  
  

This matrix helps identify tasks that you should focus more and prompt attention on.

In addition, eliminate distractions. It is easy for students to get distracted while studying. These distractions include texting, watching movies or videos on social media, talking to your friends or roommates. Students get distracted easily with their phones, so it is advised to put one’s phone on ‘do not disturb’ or ‘focus mode’ to avoid distracting notifications or messages while studying. This way, it will be easier to stay focused, and study more effectively and efficiently.

Furthermore, avoid over multi-tasking. Although getting involved in activities is beneficial in terms of networking and building a CV, but involving yourself in a lot of activities could become stressful and you might end up not having time for your studies. Have one or two extracurricular activities you are engaged it so that at the end of the day, you still have time to study.

Lastly, avoid procrastination. Procrastination is one of the reasons why students miss deadlines or write tests not fully prepared. A lot of students procrastinate assignments or other tasks to the deadline. Although some students claim they work better when the deadline is near because the tension energizes them, this is not the case for other students. Procrastination and tension bring about mistakes in one’s work. Prioritizing tasks is not enough: you should follow through with your schedule so that your tasks get done when they are supposed to be done, and this helps in balancing your studies and personal life.

In conclusion, in the words of Peter Drucker, ‘time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.’ As students, time management is a very important skill to develop. Time management helps in working smarter by prioritizing tasks, avoiding procrastination and over multi-tasking and eliminating distractions, which would reduce stress and mental fatigue, and improve productivity/performance. The earlier you begin to practise time management, the more ready you will be to face the challenges of your academic life.