Quick tips for youngsters struggling for time management

Managing time not only makes us complete our work but also give us ample time for ourselves. People can work smarter when they learn to manage their time effectively. However, each human is wired uniquely different.

1. It Increases Your Productivity: If you manage your time effectively, it adds to your productivity levels. Assigning a fixed time for all the tasks to be done in a day lets you plan your day in advance and enables you to do more tasks in less time. But you should remember that this will only be effective if you do your work on time, procrastination will definitely have a negative effect on your productivity.
2. It Keeps Your Work Organised: The best way of time management for students is to create and follow a fixed timetable for each day. This is beneficial for students since they will have a clear idea of the different tasks to be done each day, and they could also easily mark the tasks as done after completing them. This will make your daily tasks organised and you can even choose to do the more important ones first by putting them at the top of the things-to-do list.
3. Positive Effect On Health: Good time management efforts also reflect on your health. When you manage your time effectively, you don’t have to stay up late to finish your tasks. Cutting down on your sleep time will lead to tiredness, which will hamper your schedule for the day. Getting a good night’s sleep is essential for your brain and body to recharge itself, and this reflects positively on your health and energy levels.
4. More Time For Extracurricular Activities: When you have a fixed schedule for all your tasks for the day, you get an idea of the extra time you will have left after completing all your tasks. You can schedule your tasks in a way so that you get more time to do what you love. This can include hobbies like drawing, painting, singing, dancing, photography etc, or you can even go cycling or jogging to get some fresh air to refresh yourself.
5. It Helps in Stress Reduction: Not completing your studies, assignments and projects can cause you to be stressed out. Taking care of our mental health is very important for everyone, and since students often get increased stress and anxiety levels due to the pressure of studies, it reflects on their poor performance. Effective time management can help you in lessening this mental pressure, which will also boost your confidence and energy levels.
6. No Last-minute Cramming of Syllabus: One problem that students often face is not completing their syllabus on time. This leads to them cramming up all the chapters just before the exams, which undoubtedly makes them get lower scores than they expected. With proper techniques of time management for students, they can not only complete studying the chapters in their syllabus on time, but also have some extra time left for their revisions.
7. Plan out each day: Although it is likely that plans can change, don’t let it get in the way of your planning. Putting aside a few minutes each night or evening at the end of your workday to plan out tomorrow can help you wake up the next day ready to take it on!

Plan out and prioritize your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks

One of the best ways I create schedules is through planners. Go to the store and buy yourself a planner. Then start filling in the due dates of tasks for the month and list them in order of prioritization. Once this is done, you can then start building out a weekly schedule and plans for each individual day. Don’t forget to leave some areas of free time in case something gets in the way and you’ll have the extra time to complete it! By planning and creating schedules, you can help make your life run more smoothly! You can also check off the tasks you finished, which in turn will make you feel more productive.

Time management is the art of making the optimum utilization of your time on different activities to achieve your desired goals of life. Managing your time is the key to success. The problem is that there is no standard time schedule that can work for all people. Your time management depends on various factors like your nature and the goals to be achieved. You have to develop your own time management formula which can make you productive and successful.

8. Identification of Goal: If you don’t know where to go, you would never reach anywhere in life. If you keep changing your goal post frequently, you would never be able to score success. The key to success lies in identifying your goals of life. You can have one or more goals in your life like getting a good job, maintaining good family relationship, start your own company, keeping good health etc. You must be specific in your goals in order to procced in the right direction. The real challenge in goal setting is to eliminate many less important goals from your life. For example, if you wish to become a top civil service officer, you may have to forget about doing jobs, MBA or research or become a writer or singer. People don’t want to lose anything since the pain of losing something immediately is much greater than the joy of gaining something in future. Unless you are willing to let go less important things of life, you can’t achieve most important things in your life.
9. Prioritizing: Even if we have many goals, but their priorities keep changing with time. For example, when we have examination on our head, we may have to make studies the top priority. However, once exams are over, studies may be given last priority for some time. You must be able change your priorities depending upon the context.
10. Planning and Scheduling: Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. You must spend a good amount of time to plan your work. Planning should be done on annual, monthly and daily basis. You must keep some margin for the unplanned events as well so that you meet the deadlines set by you. Your goals should be ambitious but reasonable which can be achieved with little more effort than you usually do. You must plan for the day every morning and follow up the schedule. If there is some loss of time due to unavoidable reason, make up that time by putting up extra effort so that you keep your schedule intact.
11. Keeping Variety: Our mind gets bored by doing the same thing for a long time. We must vary the activities over the course of the day and the week. For example, we can plan a movie or an event in the weekend. We can also allocate different time for doing different subjects or different type of activities within the same subject. We can also vary our input methods like books, internet, video, discussion with friends etc. for learning.
12. Emphasis on Quality: Many people focus on quantity and believe that more is better. They study as many books as possible for examinations. They work as long hours in the office as they can. Instead of focusing on the outcome, they are focused on inputs. You must rather focus on the outcome and efficiency. The path that gives maximum output with minimum input is the best. Perform one work at a time and take up the next work only when first is over.
13. Delegate: Instead of doing everything yourself, learn to delegate or outsource the work to people. The more you delegate, the more time you have to focus on doing the quality work. However, keep monitoring the work that is delegated and spend time to guide your subordinates to maintain the quality standards.
14. Revision and Feedback: It is said that practice makes one perfect. Only when you practice the same thing over several times, you would be able to master it. Instead of devoting more time for learning in one go, divide it for original reading plus multiple revisions. In your professional life, you can get constant feedback of your decisions so that you can do the necessary modifications to achieve the goals.
15. Avoid Diversions: It is difficult to concentrate on something important but it is easy to break the concentration. Once the concentration is broken, it takes a long time to focus again. You must switch off all the notifications on mobile and keep your phone on silent mode to avoid any diversion. You can allot fixed time every day for watching TV, and using email. Facebook. WhatsApp etc.
16. Avoid Stress: When we are under stress, our efficiency goes down drastically. You can’t run long distance with huge rucksack on your back. Stress can even immobilize you and make you numb. Pain is always more powerful than pain. When we are undergoing any type of physical, mental or emotional pain, we can’t focus on the task in hand. Avoid all forms of stress and avoiding doing things that brings stress. Don’t engage in illegal or immoral activities which gives short time pleasure but long time pain.
17. Be Positive: When you are positive, your mind works at its best. The positive emotional like love, faith, hope improves your efficient and hence you make best use of your time. Avoid doing negative things and avoid being in the company of negative people. Don’t allow the negative thoughts to seep into your mind and fill your mind always with positive thoughts. Prayers, company of positive people and reading inspirational books can help your eliminate negativity from your life.