Time Management Tips from a High School Senior

Whether you are starting your senior year and your day to day is filled with applications and essays or you started a new course/class this year which takes up quite a lot of your time, the first thing you must do to create an efficient time management schedule, is understand how your mind works.

Before starting this post, I want to put a small disclaimer: This is my complete subjective opinion on how to make your studying sessions more productive, which means this does not have to apply to you word by word. More like the total opposite, you can use it as a model to create your perfect schedule. With that said, let’s now introduce a concrete example for us to understand the topic of today’s post.

Image courtesy of Maria Gonzalez

Understanding Your Routine

Imagine yourself in your day-to-day routine, let’s say that today you have physics homework, a history project due next week, an essay on the literature of the 20th century, and on top of it all you also want to dedicate an hour to programming and doing some AI research on the field you are interested in.

Now our first step before starting the afternoon routine, is to develop our time management skills that will help our mind produce the bests results. For example, you might need to start off with something low which doesn’t challenge you way too much for your brain to get going, or you might love a challenge and hence write that at the top of your list. In conclusion, we must learn what is it that makes our minds deliver their best performance.

Creating A Schedule

Once we have this crucial part figured out, we shall move on to writing down our schedule, for it is no use to just have the idea in our mind. We must write down when and where the action will be taking place. It could look something like this:

4pm: After finishing my meal, I will brush my teeth, then I will take out my physics books and take notes from x and x pages, afterwards I will redact the formulas, examples and exceptions and finally, I will do the exercises and check that I have understood the lesson. If any doubts remain, they will be written aside. This will all take occur in my study room.

Whilst this may seem like a waste of time, you must know two facts. First, every single person you admire, all the ones at the top, they all share this habit.

Time Management is crucial.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. What this means is that if you don’t have an organized agenda, it’s highly improbable that you will achieve your fullest potential or your daily goals. Even if you want to believe that you can memorize everything, and that whatever doesn’t stick, isn’t important, you are already forgetting the most essential fact: failing to plan, is planning to fail. Our minds aren’t perfect, and many times, stuff gets forgotten. But we can change that. Starting now, we can all begin to write down the schedule we want to follow in order to succeed.

Improving the Quality of your Work

The last point of today’s blog is related to the quality of the work we do. Many studies have proven that after a determined amount of time our minds stop performing at their best. Why, you may ask. Why can’t I just force my mind to work and study for as long as I want it to? Well, I may not have a perfect answer for you yet, but I do propose a solution which has helped overcome the anxiety and stress I used to suffer by this condition. Of course, it’s not a perfect solution, you most certainly will be able to come up with a better one, but it is the one that has helped me.

SAMPLE ROUTINE

As I explained at the beginning of the post, the first step is understanding your mind. In my case, I always start with that which I find both more challenging and enjoyable. You might think this is impossible, but it is more common than you think.

After writing down my plan, I get to work, usually around 4pm every day. I do my homework and study for two hours, then around 6pm, I can feel my mind full of information. I could continue working two and three more hours, but the quality and quantity of the work that I would produce would be far lower than if at that second, I took a small break.

Now, what should I do during this break? Well, the answer is completely up to you. In my case, some days I just check my social media and let my mind flow as I laugh with a few posts, and other days I just stare plainly at the paradise in front of me with relaxing music in the back. It doesn’t matter what your form of reward is, what matters is that you leave your studying space and get out of the room and let your mind relax. This way, it will give your brain time to internalize all the concepts recently studied, and by the end of the break, you will be feeling as energized as when the afternoon started.

Let’s put this in a nutshell. 1. For the next few days dedicate a few minutes to yourself and to understanding how your mind works best. 2. Write down when and where your actions will take place. 3. Work your ass off. 4. Remember to take breaks using techniques such as the Pomodoro (25 min concentrated studying, 5 min break) or just by applying a technique which helps you personally. 5. Always praise yourself for every little and big accomplishment you achieve.