Managing Your Time
Managing your time can be difficult at University when you have to juggle multiple modules, lectures, readings and assignments. On top of this, many of you will have other responsibilities such as part-time jobs, extracurricular activities or family commitments, as well as setting time aside to relax and enjoy yourself!
To try and help you with ways to manage your time effectively, we spoke to members of our Library Student Team and have tried to put all of their thoughts and tips together into this blog post.
‘The most important point we want to get across is that looking after yourself should always come first and setting aside time for yourself should be a priority and not an afterthought. It is easy to get overwhelmed by a looming to-do list, but please try to be kind and not be too hard on yourself when you are trying your best’.
‘Making sure you have time to relax and enjoy things away from your degree and other commitments is crucial for your wellbeing and mental health, as well as allowing you to come back to your work refreshed and avoid burnout. Although it might not seem like it, you will work much more productively if you take regular breaks and time away from your work!’
Hopefully, this blog will provide some strategies that will help you feel in control of your time. These strategies will assist you in avoiding last-minute stress and the feeling of having too much to do and too little time to do it. Sometimes deadlines are tight or unexpected circumstances happen. However, having effective time-management strategies in place should help you remain calm when tackling these challenges and breeze through them with ease!
PLANNING
One of the main points that our Student Team discussed was the importance of planning. Having a plan helps you remain in control of your workload and make sure that you have everything covered. On the most basic level, planning helps you visualise all of the tasks that you must do and their deadlines. It’s helpful to start by listing all of the tasks (this could be deadlines for assignments or even shifts in your part-time job), as well as mapping out when you have to do them by. Visualisation helps you understand when you can block out time and focus on the tasks at hand, and also how much time you have left for other commitments or leisure.
This idea of planning ahead was discussed by several members of our Student Team, particularly in relation to fitting other commitments into your schedule alongside studying. It can be helpful to map out all of your commitments in one place, rather than keeping them separately, so that you can see how they might impact each other.
For example, if you had a deadline on Friday, but know that you are working a shift on Thursday night, then you will see that you need to get that work done before you start work, maybe on Wednesday.
Planning ahead can also be incredibly useful on a larger scale, such as looking ahead across the semester to see when all of your deadlines and exams fall. One member of our student team shared that they like to take a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the semester, and then work backwards from their deadlines to give themselves targets for when they want to start working on them. Taking this view also allows you to prioritise the order that you work on tasks to make sure that you are working efficiently and getting each piece of work done on time.
It is also helpful to think about when you are most productive or prefer to do particular tasks. Some of our student team members are more productive first thing in the morning, while others prefer working late at night. There is no best time to work since everybody is different, but planning around when you work best will help you become more productive. One member of our Student Team prefers to work in the evening, so they do their focused work (e.g., writing assignments) after 5pm. However, other people shared that they are most productive in the mornings, so they get their reading and writing done first thing and save less energy-intensive tasks for later in the day.
Another helpful tip to think about is to break your day down into hourly slots and plan what you are going to do in each slot. Otherwise, you could do bigger slots such as morning, afternoon and evening. Planning when you will dedicate your time to a particular task doesn’t only help you work in a more focused way, but also helps you make sure you’re not spending too much time on one task, or even forgetting about one of the tasks altogether!
As well as splitting your day into manageable chunks, it can also be useful to break down bigger projects and assignments into smaller tasks. Having a deadline can often be overwhelming and making a start on an assignment can be difficult. Several of our Student Team members shared how they make starting assignments seem less intimidating, by breaking projects down into smaller tasks. This makes getting started much easier and shows you that you are making progress as you move through your to-do list and get closer to completing your assignment.
METHODS AND TOOLS FOR PLANNING
Our Student Team have also shared some really helpful methods and tools that they use for planning. One thing that helps many of our students is to have a way to visualise how they planned their time. Some people used a physical diary, such as a day-to-a-page diary where they could break down each day, whilst others used virtual calendars such as Google Calendar to show the different time blocks that they had planned out for each task.
Another simple but effective method is to have a to-do list. This could either be a hand-written list or an online checklist software, such as using the iPhone notes app. One student shared how they spend the first five minutes of their day making a to-do list of everything they wanted to get done that day, which really helped them keep everything on track. Another student shared how they have a master to-do list of everything they need to do for each project, which they then use to make a smaller to-do list that is less overwhelming. An extension of this that some like to do is to use the reminders function on their phones/laptops to remind themselves of the different tasks they want to complete, or to remind them when it is time to move on to the next task.
Online programmes that help with note-taking and storing all of your sources are also a good shout. This includes reference management softwares such as Endnote which help to keep all references in one place and speeds up the referencing process in your assignments. Note-taking programmes such as Notion are also recommended by many students: this app not only stores all of the notes, but allows users to link them together, add comments, etc., which is helpful when it comes to planning assignments. Planning software such as Trello or Asana are also popular, as help users to plan out projects and organise all of the different tasks.
HAVING A PRODUCTIVE WORKSPACE
The importance of having a workspace where you can work productively was discussed by many of our Student Team members. Knowing where you work best, and the kind of environment that suits how you study can help you work efficiently and avoid procrastination. Everyone works in different ways and what suits you might not suit other people.
For example, some of our Student Team prefer working in the library as they like the silence and the motivation of other people working around them, yet others preferred to have background noise and choose to study in places like cafes, which tend to be busier.
Having your study space prepared and ready to go is so important. Spending five minutes at the start of your day making sure you have everything you need can make a big difference to your productivity, as it helps you stay focused without having to leave your workspace. Our Student Team members shared that they have all of the books they need, as well as a glass of water and snacks so they know they can get working for a solid block of time. In addition, they preferred to set camp in places free of distractions, such as a room with no TV, or a study room where they could lock away their phones in places they couldn’t see.
However, the Student Team raised the fact that sometimes it’s not possible to have the perfect study environment, and that one might need to adapt their plan to suit this situation. It is more productive to work somewhere that is not ideal, than to not work at all, even if you don’t get as much done as you’d originally hoped. This can involve changing the study plan slightly and working on something that is easier to complete in a less productive environment. While this can be frustrating, those little tasks and shorter study sessions that you manage to fit in, will add up to something more substantial and is still worthwhile. Achieving something in these sessions, even if it is something small, can be motivating for when you get to sit down again for more focused study.
STAYING FOCUSED
Although it might seem counter-productive, the main advice that our Student Team gave is to make sure to take regular breaks to stay focused. It is unrealistic to expect oneself to concentrate for long periods of time, and instead, having shorter + focused blocks of work are much more effective. It’s so important to schedule short breaks into your plan for the day alongside all of the tasks that you’d like to complete. Taking regular breaks also helps avoid procrastination as you are only asking yourself to focus on a particular task for a short span of time.
One way that some students stay focused is by using the Pomodoro technique. This technique involves working for a short period of time, such as 25 or 30 minutes, with short breaks of 5 minutes in between. And yet, this is the perfect amount of time to concentrate before the brain gets tired! It’s particularly helpful to use a timer to monitor your study session, as this not only keeps you aware of the amount of time you have left, but also helps to keep you away from distractions.
Another method for motivating yourself to stick to your plan for the day is to schedule little rewards for yourself. This could be a treat during your breaks, or something at the end of the day once you have all of your work done. For some people, even ticking off tasks in their to-do list has a motivating effect!
The final method our Student Team found helpful was to work with somebody else to stay accountable. This could be via a study partner where both of you work alongside each other and then catch up in the breaks. Or, for some people, simply being in an environment with other people who are focused on their own work, such as in the Library, is enough: this is because it motivates them to keep working.
We hope that this blog has been helpful in giving you ways to think about managing your time. Not all of the tips will work for everyone, but hopefully we have given you a few options to try and see what works best for you!
Please find a list of useful links down below:
