Man, isn't that a GREAT GOAL for your life? How much further can you go in your life if you were a HIGHLY EFFECTIVE TIME MANAGER? In 62 pages of this EBOOK you can find out! Go for it - Manage your life by managing your TIME! Time Is On Your Side It will help you manage your time well if you know where your time actually gets spent. One very helpful way of determining your actual usage of time is to track your time. The process here is like making a schedule, but it works in reverse. Instead of writing things in that you are planning to do, time logging is a process of writing down the things that you have already done. Doing this is sort of a get-to-know-yourself exercise because this procedure will highlight many of your habits that you might selectively ignore currently. For instance, some people find that every time they plan to do math homework they end up watching television. Instead of studying for that Psych test, they play Internet poker. Other people just can't seem to follow their schedule until the week before finals. Whatever your time habits, time tracking will help you adjust and fine-tune your time management practices. Having accurate information about your time usage patterns can serve as another important point of reference for self-monitoring. Following are a few ways to track your time. Take a moment to do this - it will truly help you open your eyes and take control of your time. Time tracking is fairly straightforward. At the end of every hour jot yourself a quick note about how you actually spent your time for that hour. The note needn't be long - one sentence or less should suffice. If how you spent your time doesn't match an already planned activity, simply enter a comment as to what you really did during that time. This way you will be able to review patterns that emerge in your use of time and make adjustments to improve your productivity. Some people find it helpful to modify the planning page to facilitate tracking time. The modifications are easy enough: make two columns on your paper for each day of the week. In one column, write down the plan you are trying to follow; in the second column, make notes on what you actually did with your time. The side-by-side comparison is very telling and an excellent way to figure our where you're not using time in the way you intend. Another effective way to make changes and get results from your time management strategies is to summarize your time use by time category such as: sleep, study, work, travel and so on. Your Planner Is Your Friend When you are organized, that will help you achieve your goals in a timely manner. You need to organize your tasks so you will know what needs to be accomplished and when they need to be accomplished. No student should be without a daily planner. You have probably used various kinds of planning tools before, including a daily or weekly planner, a month-at-a-glance planner, and so on. It is important to keep in mind that the purpose of scheduling is not to enslave you to your planner, but rather to record your decisions about when certain things should happen. Your planner should include your schedule for classes, study time, social events, club meetings, exercise time, and any other time necessary to achieve your goals. Keep the planner with you during class and note all assignments along with the due dates of those assignments. Check them off as you complete them so you know where you are at all times with your projects. Refer to your planner often - multiple times a day. Make this a regular part of your routine. When you get up in the morning, look at your planner to see what needs to be done for that day. If you have an appointment, be sure to include a phone number next to the notation in case you have to cancel or change times. Use a highlighter. Color-coding can help differentiate between appointments and assignments. For example, highlight in blue your classes, yellow for assignments, and green for everything else. The key here is easy recognition. When you open your planner, you can easily see what needs to be done. Time Management 101 The time you spend on task has some relationship to the quality of work you end up producing. A good gauge to follow is to perform 2-3 hours of schoolwork outside class for every hour of class time. Yes, this means for a full-time student with 15-hours of class per week load the recommendation is to do between 30 and 45 hours of homework each week. Sure, that's a big jump, especially if you breezed through high school or previous years of college on less. This estimate simply reflects the time it actually takes to learn effectively. It's not steadfast and set in stone. If you find yourself really grasping the concepts of a chapter after a half-hour, feel free to stop. The key here is to set aside this time exclusively for studying. If you get done earlier than expected - that's a bonus! Now this number shouldn't mean that you completely forgo time for yourself. It is important to have some personal time. Even though you may work a part-time job, and doing so isn't necessarily counter-productive to success at school, you'll need to take some time for yourself and for recreation each week. A starting guideline might be something like 10% of your week, or 17 hours. What is more important than these specific targets is that you spend enough time on school work to ensure that you're successful and that you spend enough time outside of school to ensure that you have a healthy balance. Allow for unanticipated interruptions in your schedule. This means leaving some empty spaces during the day or in some way being flexible enough to handle interruptions. If the unexpected does not happen, time is available to do something we were saving until the next day. Schedule homework early in the day so it is less likely to be crowded out by unexpected events like meeting an old friend or having a roommate ask for help with one of his classes. Homework should be a part of each day's schedule. Students who participated in a major study on stress, reported doing homework as the most frequently used method for reducing stress in their lives. I’ll Stop Procrastinating Tomorrow Procrastination is a schedule buster. It's easy to put things off until later, especially when you dread the task such as writing a term paper. But in college, this is a real problem. If you put off your assignments or studying for tests, you are only hurting yourself. Procrastinating leads to stress and anxiety not to mention poor performance. You CAN stop procrastination fromaffecting your schoolwork. It can be difficult to start working. Most of the time, however, not starting seems to be related to fear of poor results or negative evaluations than it is to the actual difficulty of the work. Aim to subdivide tasks into small steps and convince yourself that to get started all you need is 10 full minutes working on a task. Often, the 10 minutes will elapse and you'll be right into the swing of things, prepared to continue on productively. Sometimes you just don't feel motivated to do your schoolwork. It might help to realize that for many people motivation isn't a prerequisite to action…it is a result of it! Try working for a short time and see if you can "get into it." If your motivation problem seems more substantial, it might help to realize that when you aren't motivated to do school work, you aren't actually out of motivation…you're just motivated to do something else. Make a schedule. Allocate specific times to complete tasks using daily planners. We have a whole chapter on that in this book. Your planner should always be handy and you should refer to it often. Once you make your schedule, follow it. Work with a roommate or friend to motivate each other. Remember always that once the work is done, you will have more time for yourself, so stick with that schedule. Make two activity lists: “Things I Like To Do” and “Things I Have To Do”. Mix up activities from both lists and work on each activity for a short period of time. Alternating between fun and work helps to maintain motivation and interest. All work and no fun is another schedule buster. You don't have to be working ALL the time, but you do have to complete what needs to be done. Stop The Cramming Many college students don't dedicate the right amount of time toward maximizing their studying. As we mentioned before, cramming and pulling “all-nighters” is still a fact of life on most college campuses. These types of sessions increase stress levels and don't always lead to the best performances. Learning how to study can be the best way to manage your time and l

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