We’ve all been there—it’s 2 a.m. and your essay is due in seven hours. You have no idea what your thesis is, you can barely hold your eyes open, and at this point, there’s so much coffee in your bloodstream that adding more wouldn’t make any difference. Instead of thinking about that essay with the rapidly approaching deadline, you’re sitting in the library thinking about why you always choose to procrastinate.
It’s no secret that nearly every college student struggles with time management—after all, college is full of opportunities (the good and the bad), and it can be a big challenge to properly balance everything that’s on your plate. No college student is perfect—it’s nearly impossible to go through a fully loaded week without being overwhelmed. However, with a little bit of weekly preparation and a lot of organization, you can (almost) do it all!!! Here are a few tips that help me get through even my most stressful of weeks.
- Get a good planner—and actually use it.
- Color code EVERYTHING
- Realize what you can actually do and learn to say no.
- Use the treat yourself method
- Make manageable, daily to-do lists
Planner: If you don’t use your planner in the way that works best for you, then you won’t actually religiously use the planner to manage all of your time commitments. Write down everything you have to do in one day. If you frequently look at your planner, no deadlines, dates, job shifts, or mandatory events should escape you.
Color-coding: I mean everything. Buy some Flair pens with fun colors and get to coding! You can be as simple or as complex as you want, but I find that color coding your time commitments by category really helps you 1) understand where your time is going and 2) not get lost in the chaos of it all. For example, I have different colors for every class, exercise, my sorority commitments, my job, my boyfriend, and other social things. Exams and due dates get a special color: red! Looking at the week to come and seeing several red words should warn you that maybe you should hit the books more this weekend instead of the bars.
Saying no: This can be so hard, especially since all any college student wants to do is have fun with their friends. But if you get asked to hang out with your friends and in the back of your mind you hear that alarm saying, “But you have an exam tomorrow…”, then you need to accept that you can have fun another night, and tonight is the night to be academically focused.
Treat yo' self: Treating myself is one of my best incentives to get school work done. By treat yourself, I don’t mean go buy something crazy expensive. I mean, don’t go watch the new episode of the Bachelor with your boyfriend until your room is clean, your essay outline is finished, and you read that assigned chapter. Then, treat yourself with enjoyable and stress-free time. Or a manicure. Manicures are always a good choice.
Daily to-do: The quickest way to feel like you’re drowning is to look at a non-color-coded, mile-long to-do list of every task for the next week. Again, go back to rule number three and realize what you can actually do. At the beginning of every week, I look at my calendar of commitments and assignments and I write down anywhere from five to eight different (color-coded) tasks to accomplish each day. This helps me so much—I don’t look at my lists and wonder where to start, I go straight to the current day and know exactly what I need to get done.
