Hello! I promised that I would post about time management and here are a few of my personal tips on managing your time. Most of my life I have been the sort of person who loves to pack as much into a day as possible. Although every now and then I end up staying up way too late to finish an assignment i.e. up to 4:00 in the morning last night finishing a chem pre-lab last night, most of the time things run pretty smoothly. The things that I am going to talk about are easy to implement. So here we go!

1.Write things out! If you are the type of person who likes to procrastinate, I would recommend this. I keep a homework diary and when I get home after a long day I usually look at my upcoming week’s schedule, write out all the things that need to be done that night and paste it right above my desk. This helps me stay focussed on what I need to do immediately (and it is right in front of my eyes while I am doing work)

2. Prioritize: After writing everything that needs to be done out I number things 1, 2, 3 e.t.c. I decide on the tasks priorities mainly by what is necessary to do immediately, but also look and see if there are any things that I could do together i.e. If I have to go and buy some groceries, maybe I can get my bus pass at the same time e.t.c You have to be a bit of a lazy thinker and try to find the best way to spend your time wisely.
Eg.
3.Get milk
3.Buy contact lenses
1.Study for Chem
4.Do physics assignment
5.Look at summer jobs
2.Clean room

3. Break Tasks Down: I find this to be really useful, especially once you get to university and suddenly you find that your Math homework takes 8 hours to do instead of less than one hour. Start things early, and do them in smaller time segments. Generally I find it easier if I break things into chunks that are feasible and cross them off as I go.(Like doing the online part of my physics homework one night and the written part a couple days later).If there is a project that I find especially daunting and that I really do not want to start I force myself to break it into really tiny pieces i.e. For Math homework:
Get paper, get textbook, figure out which questions I need to do, write them out, figure out what needs to be read, read 1 page, read another page e.t.c. Soon enough you get onto a roll and things get easier.

4. Don’t sweat the small stuff: I find this helpful as I tend to be a little bit of a perfectionist. But it is important to realize that sometimes you will not be able to get 100% on that assignment, sometimes you will not be able to study for a quiz for as long as you would like, sometimes you will just have to wing things, but that is ok. You are human, you cannot be perfect all the time.

5. Be realistic: Maybe you want to organize a big birthday party for your friend or you want to join a new club, but realistically it will never happen. Avoid disappointment by keeping your plans realistic. Focusing on certain things will invariably cause other things to fall by the wayside. So figure out how important certain things are to you and don’t promise yourself otherwise.

6.Get help: When you are struggling with the things you need to get done, look at the people around you. Chances are that you have helped them out before and they in return will help you too, if you ask. Asking for help can be kind of scary, but if it is not something that causes them to go too far out of their way, most people are happy to lend a hand. =)

p.s. If you have any good ideas on how to manage your time effectively, please share <3