You NEED this ONE Time Management Skill⌚

Busy Student? Read ASAP. I promise you, this will double your productivity and reduce stress : )

Are you a busy student? Do you struggle with time management sometimes? Do you wish you could squeeze more hours out of your day? I got you :  )

Welcome!!

Hi friends,

Welcome back to my newsletter! It’s so great to have you here. Thanks to everyone who read last week’s issue (just a fancy word for “post” :d). 

Let’s get to this week’s topic. It’s super practical and extremely useful for my fellow students. 

I hope you enjoy the short post and implement this trick to elevate your time management.

THIS ONE SKILL…

One of the most powerful time management skills you can learn as a student is understanding how long it takes you to complete recurring tasks. I know I know, it doesn’t seem all that flashy, but hold on…

This skill will make time management much easier in the long run by helping you:

1. Get better at timing your tasks: Generally, our brains are really bad at estimating how long it takes us to do something. Think about it, did you think something would take you 2 hours, but it took nearly half the day? Or the inverse, Does it take an hour to clean your room? To fold laundry? Or can you get it done much faster if you timed yourself? 

2. Use all bits of time throughout your day: This skill is fundamental to any management or planning system because you need to be able to allocate the right amount of time for your tasks. As a student, this skill comes in super useful when we have short amounts of time throughout the day. How?

   Well, If we know how long it takes us to do tasks that we do often, we can assign work during those bits of time throughout the day and get a lot of work done. If you have an hour between classes, you can probably knock out the homework from the previous class. This is another topic, but getting good at using all small bits of time throughout the day is a crucial skill as well. 

3. Reduce the time it takes for tasks: If you know how long something takes you, you won’t waste more time on it than you need to. Instead, if you time yourself when doing some of your recurring tasks, you can reduce the time it takes for you to do a task, hence, freezing up time. This is due to Parkinsons' Law (you can read about that in my first post :d ) 

Source: FounderJar

My Experience

I first learned about this trick from this video. Since then, I noticed the value this skill can provide and I started tracking how long my recurring tasks take. 

For example, I have readings I need to do for two of my classes every week. Before using this skill, I gave myself a generous amount of time when doing the readings, which naturally made me take longer time than I needed to do the work.

However, after learning this skill, I started timing myself to see how long it would take me. I found out it takes me an hour for one reading and half an hour for the other. Now, when I am planning for the day or the week, I know I can easily just plug in one of the readings where I have a 30-minute or 1-hour break.

For example. My commute is roughly 1 hour, which is a perfect time to do one of the readings. In the past, I’ve done two of the 30-minute readings during my commute. (Which is amazing!)

When I get home I have a limited amount of time before I go to sleep, so knowing how long my assignments and readings take me makes it much easier to plan for the time I have. I admit, I often still go over the time, which is FINE. I am always practicing and improving this skill. 

I found that when I give myself a certain time for the tasks, I don’t go over it and usually finish a few minutes early.

In fact, over time the time it takes me to finish the tasks is reduced, which is a fantastic result. 

I am honestly still working on skills and I am sure it's going to continue to make a huge difference in my time management and success as a busy college student. 

Source: guidance.cdnis.edu.hk

How Can YOU implement it?

Simple. Start now. From now on, try to time each of your recurring tasks. You can do that by using a timer, or just writing down the time you start and end a task. 

For example, readings, or similar types of homework/assignments you do for each of your classes. The next time you do that task, set aside the time it took you to do it when you timed it.

So, if history reading takes you an hour, give yourself an hour the next time you do it. You’ll be amazed by how much work you can get done in a short time. Sometimes, the duration might fluctuate, which is completely. Once you time it a few times, you can gauge an average time.

Also, you can try to beat your previous time. Even if you don’t, at least now you know it doesn't take you 4 hours to do math homework every day. You can finish readings during commute, lunch, or the 30-minute breaks between classes. 

Source: iMore

Please try this trick. I promise you, it will double your productivity, free up time, and destress you. I hope it does. Thank you so much for reading. Also, please comment on my posts if you want to share your thoughts or compliments ; )

Don’t be Shy. I love to read them.

If you have questions about implementing this tip, also feel free to ask. I only care about making it useful for you all. Thanks again, for reading and supporting. Have a beautiful week < 3

See you next week : )