Time Management Essay

Successful time-management, particularly during academic career, yields favorable short-term results and lays the foundation for further proper application of time-management skills in order to secure correct prioritization of plans, timely completion of assigned tasks, and rewarding achievement of set goals.
There can be many obstacles which hinder one’s academic progress. Health issues, personal affairs which do not tolerate delay, and emergencies of various nature can significantly slow down the progress of completion of the planned activities and drift the performer’s attention and motivation away from the priorities. Fail to regain conscious control over planned activities may result in academic failure or tarnish student’s reputation. Although developing a realistic plan for reading, researching, and studying during the last 7 weeks of the semester will not specifically imply a threat of emergency, potential force-majeure has to be considered in order for it not to put planned activities on hold for undefined time.
Naturally, college curriculum requires full engagement into the academic process and quite the amount of homework. The most threatening part is not even the fact that one needs to be a successful time-manager to balance school and personal life. It is the fact that, should one tend to procrastinate and mistakenly think that the amount of homework can be caught up on in compressed period of time, postponed homework and the volume of prescribed learning material keep mounting up until the overwhelming point. As this is a direct route to nervous break-down, academic burnout and anxiety, proper time management needs to be applied in order not to allow academic affairs get to the “point of no return”. Before the planning even starts, it is important for one to define their daily plan (Rippen, 2014) in order to be successful time-managers, since random and unpredicted daily schedule can serve as a serious obstacle to completion the needed tasks and assignments. Rippen states: “To account for all of the agendas and requirements throughout the day it is important to have a schedule to accommodate for those minutes and hours in between. The first thing you need to do is take a look at your sleeping patterns” (2014).
Considering the fact that there are seven weeks until the end of the semester, the first mistake a student can make is think that there is still plenty of time, and prioritizing and planning tasks is not yet a pressing question. As Emily Shwartz states, “Time management in college does not need to be difficult. Students just need to stop making excuses and have a plan for getting their work done” (2012, p. 5). Additionally, the further towards the end of the semester, the higher the stress levels and anxiety, therefore, all the planned activities need to be started early in order not to leave everything for the last minute. Indeed, collecting the information about the readings and academic materials required for successful completion of the course by the end of the semester apart from in-class activities can be the first point for time management. Knowing the goals to be achieved and tasks to be accomplished, it is easier to set deadlines and prioritize the tasks. Developing a fixed macro schedule for tasks, especially with the set deadlines, holds one accountable and responsible for their completion. While time management requires one to have a particular set of skills, for example, self-discipline, self-confidence, responsibility, and being goal-oriented; working on own time management skills, in its turn, trains and advances the required skills. During macro scheduling, it is important to schedule tasks and set deadlines, also taking into consideration time for rest in order not to overstress about homework. Schwartz (2012) compares time-management with going on a diet – while on diet, people choose to make healthy choices about their nutritional plan and physical exercises and still plan occasional cheat meals and days free from work-outs. Similarly, while time-managing, students need to make smart choices while still sparing some time for personal activities and enriching their college experience with fun deeds (Schwartz, 2012). Therefore, resting is just as important as productive work, and macro scheduling is just as important as micro. While macro scheduling can be planned in advance with reference to the assigned tasks and known deadlines, micro scheduling “should be done on a daily basis to plan for events that can only be foreseen the day of” (Rippen, 2014). This, for example, can be class homework, field trips or academic workshops which are announced to students day or a few days before the actual event.
What is important about micro scheduling is that those events cannot be planned in advance, and are usually announced unexpectedly. Therefore, the announced events can overlap with long-planned tasks and postpone their completion. That is why, this potential “emergency” should be overseen, and some extra free time between the tasks needs to be included into initial macro scheduling. Also, this is why multitasking is not advisable. Moreover, multitasking, especially in limited time due to prior procrastination, can stress student out and deprive students of motivation and dedication. Finally, if some task does not have a specified deadline, however, can be dealt with quite quickly, it is always advisable to complete it right away and get it off the list. Dealing with long, complicated tasks first may be the way some people choose to deal with the academic assignments; however, getting rid of easy and fast assignments and focusing attention, energy and research skills on more lengthy tasks proves to be more productive in a long run.
Therefore, in order to successfully develop a realistic plan for reading, researching and studying for the last seven weeks of the semester, one needs to access the information about the assigned tasks for macro scheduling and setting deadlines, prioritize urgent tasks, not leave everything for the last minute, include some free time in order not to develop a habit to procrastinate and/or get overwhelmed with mounting amount of planned tasks, and perform micro scheduling successfully.

References:

Rippen, E. (2014). A College Students Guide To Time Management - A Book By And For College Students. Kindle.
Schwartz, E. (2012). The Time Diet. Charleston, S.C.: [s.n.].