How to Make the Most of Your Time as a Student?

By Maryam Khalifa Al Marzooqi

School is a time of change for many students, it is a period through which their interests and ambitions are developed. In many cases, students are driven to expand their social circles, create plans, and spend most of their time committed to their studies. As time goes on, students realize that their plate is filled with a variety of responsibilities and deadlines. This development process explains why around 70% of students are constantly suffering from procrastination and falling behind their schedules. Therefore, between the pressure of academics, extracurricular activities, and social life, the skill of time management becomes an essential survival tool for success. However, under pressure, organizing time and staying on top of things is a challenging task that every student faces during their life.

First, we have to look at what time management means and why it is essential. Time management can be defined as organizing and planning efficiently and how to divide your time between specific activities. It is easy for us as students to find ourselves busy and stressed about never having enough time. We have 24 hours a day, so how come we can never find enough time? The answer is because we are not productively planning our time. One important thing to note is that being busy does not mean that we are productive. It is easy to fill our time with activities and things to do. However, we have to be aware of the bigger picture and reflect on how we spend our day and what we achieve.

As a student who enjoys engaging in various activities and opportunities while maintaining an excellent social and academic life, I have suffered from time management and procrastination on multiple occasions. In this article, I will share some of my experience with time management and some of the steps that I follow to establish a balanced schedule. It is still important to note that time management is a skill that needs to be worked on constantly and that there will be periods where you will need to sacrifice the balance for the sake of achieving your priorities. You have to understand what things are the most important for you and what fits with your goals.

1. Set up plans and goals: One of the significant contributors to time waste is a lack of plan. As students, we do not realize how much time it takes to plan our day and organize events in it. Therefore, two of the main strategies I have been applying are using google calendar and sticky notes. First of all, I build up several calendars within my google calendar, depending on the subject. For example, I have scheduled academic classes, papers, projects, quizzes, exams, internships, and part-time related commitments, extracurricular activity, and social events or a me-time. I set each of these calendars in a different calendar to make it visually easier to read. The main aim of google calendar is to have a long-term visual overview of what I need to achieve in the upcoming months. Using the google calendar, at the beginning of each day and week, I write sticky notes to help me organize my short-term schedule and have them with my studying materials. This strategy helps me focus during studying time without being distracted by any technologies, such as my phone or laptop.
2. Having time checks: As we have mentioned before, setting priorities is essential for time management because you will distribute and assign time for each task depending on the importance of tasks. For example, suppose you have bonus homework and an exam on the next day. In that case, you will be assigning the homework a lower time than the exam, or otherwise, you will be sacrificing your academic performance. Being aware of the time you spent on activities helps you develop your skill of working under time constraints and pressure. To practice this skill, I have been setting the alarm as it is easy to get engrossed in an activity and lose track of time. Among those time checks, you also have to make sure that you allow yourself short breaks during the day to relax and recharge your energy. Whenever I study, I apply the one-hour-ten-minute strategy, where I focus entirely for an hour on studying and then have a 10-minutes break to take a short walk and move around. This strategy helps me stay focused and study efficiently even during long periods of studying, such as exam season.
3. Build a routine: building a routine is one of the most effective methods in saving time for several reasons. First of all, you get used to the order of things you do, and it becomes a natural habit without needing any detailed plans or effort. Secondly, having a routine means that you can pace yourself and progress during the day and determine whether you need to work faster to get your goals done at any point in time. Thirdly, it manages your health by maintaining a balanced sleeping, eating, and exercising over time. Health is a strong foundation for time management. It improves your concentration and focus, providing you with a boost of energy and stabilizing your mental health and stress levels throughout the day. For the past few years, I have been including sleep, meals, exercise, and relaxing time as part of my calendar to ensure that I set enough time for them. While this schedule might shift on some days, it is always good to have a reference to go back to.

Time management is one of the fastest ways to succeed as it allows you to achieve what is vital within a short time without exhausting all of your energy and effort. Every person functions differently and reacts to things differently. Therefore, your way of managing time might be different from how I do things. Consequently, it is essential to try different strategies to manage your time and apply what works best. It will take practice and effort in the beginning to organize that balance, but the results, in the long run, are always worth it, and you would need it more as your responsibilities grow more demanding over time.