Five tips on good time management for students

Some students seem to have a knack for managing their time effectively. While every student’s day consists of the same 24 hours we all enjoy, effective time management for students comes to how time is organized and a few simple habits. If you’ve wondered how your roommate seems to manage good grades and partying, while you cannot, here are five tips designed specifically for effective time management for students everywhere.

If self discipline is not your strength, you’ve got to apply yourself to gaining this time management asset. For example, you’ve got an assignment due tomorrow. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon and you know it will take at least five hours to complete the work. It’s not your favorite subject either. So when Jane calls and suggests you go out for pizza, what do you do? Lacking self discipline, you go for the pizza. You blow a few hours eating pizza and allow your work to suffer. Learn to try the other route. Work comes first.

Understanding that little bits of time add up to results is another important technique in good time management for students. Let’s say you’ve got a half hour between classes. You can memorize at least a dozen new words for your foreign language class in that half hour. Alternatively, you can hit the soda machine and sit in the cafeteria and gossip. In just one week, you can either get 2 1/2 hours of French vocabulary, or learn every little thing about Joe’s new girlfriend.

If you find history as boring as a plain bowl of oatmeal, but it’s required, you won’t get far without some help. Good time management for students involves knowing how to best use your time. Rather than sit at home falling asleep trying to fathom the chapter, find another student willing to tutor you. Chances are that student enjoys history and can actually inspire you or make the topic more interesting than mud.

Some people work best in library-like silence. Others can’t concentrate without music or the television going at all times. No matter what anyone may tell you about good time management, do what works for you. If you enjoy extraneous noise while working, you’ll get much more done with the TV on than without. If you need silence, insist on it – even if you have to go to the library to get it.

You may have noticed that people have individual work rhythms, times that best suit their minds to engage in serious work. This is typically of the day or night person type. Day people are usually early risers whose minds are freshest in the morning, while night people are going strong at 3 a.m. Whatever your case, schedule your serious work time according to your own clock. You’ll be most productive during that period.

Interestingly, you’ll find out when you enter the post-college work world, these same techniques are still effective time management strategies.