These days I have had a hard time ‘adulting’, because there is more on my plate than there has been for quite a while. Balancing the responsibilities of work while simultaneously trying to learn new skills, do chores, write this blog, spend time with family, regularly exercise, sleep well, write in my idea notebook, and have some semblance of a social life demands that I utilize every time management skill learnt as well as the best possible scheduling aids at my disposal. Visual aid for reference:
I am sure that I am not alone in this predicament–many of us struggle to keep up with our commitments while taking care of ourselves. And when we go online and look for the best time management tips, there is so much content to sift through that looking for tips becomes a tedious task in itself and eventually becomes overwhelming. Therefore, I have provided what I hope are a few starting points that may help you find your own perfect time management strategy. I am not here to lecture anyone about how to live their lives, nor am I an expert life coach. However, here are some things that have worked for me, and hopefully one or two of them work for you too.
- Google Calendar. With reminders. It’s like having a mini personal assistant in your life. Make sure your schedule is realistic though; for example, always block out time for essentials such as sleeping and having three meals a day, and fill it up as much as possible (color-coding work, study, recreation etc differently as necessary). 10% of time management is making the calendar, 90% is actually following through with it–so a realistic and balanced schedule will help with that.
- Trello. Really worked for me as a prioritization aid, to the point where I use it at work and introduced it to my team. Play with it!
- SMART goal setting: helps to prevent being overwhelmed by your objectives.
- Nightly review: I didn’t realize the importance of this for a long time. When you are learning something, review what you learnt nightly, for at least a few minutes. The practice is based on overcoming the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, which states that the decay of recently learned knowledge is exponential.
Hope this small list helps! Do you have any time management/study tips? How do you cope with managing time?
-Shwe