One of the most common problems among college students, according to the online Dartmouth Academic Skills Center, is students thinking they will remember to do something, forgetting about it, then remembering at the last minute. Dartmouth's Academic Skills Center includes a "Managing Your Time" area, offering advice on how to set goals and create a manageable schedule. When everything you do becomes an urgent activity, a lot of the fun goes out of life.
Do the big, important things -- the long papers and complicated projects -- when your brain is freshest and more focused. That's one piece of advice offered in "Balancing Your College Schedule" on eCampusTours.com. Not only will you spend less time drafting, but you'll probably save editing time later because your work was solid. Save running errands, doing laundry, organizing your file folders, for times when your brain cells need a rest. Matching socks can be therapeutic before burning the midnight oil.
According to Penn State University's online University Learning Center, procrastination is one of the greatest enemies of well-managed time. The longer you wait to start the paper, the more likely you are to find reasons not to begin. The cycle tends to repeat itself. Pretty soon, you no longer have enough time to do a great job, so you wait even longer. And then you tell yourself you're a hero, because you pulled it out with no time at all. You may have. Or you may have simply walked the classic procrastinator's road to mediocrity. And you'll never know what you could have done.
The Learning Center on the Penn State site drives home how to use 30 minutes to make progress on a project, rather than texting every friend you know on the Atlantic seaboard. It's enough time to rewrite, or at least reread your notes from a lecture, prioritize the day's "to do" list, create a key points outline so you're ready to write that paper on environmental recycling methods, or it may be just enough time to drop by the library and check out that video you have to review by Friday, instead of waiting until 7 p.m. Thursday evening.
Corporations, nonprofits, governments, schools; all break projects into sections. Why? Because it makes it easier to see progress toward a goal. Instead of having 100 percent of a project looming in front of you, you can check off the steps you've taken and say "I'm 40 percent done, and I'm on schedule." The Dartmouth Academic Skills Center includes some solid tools for establishing project goals and completion schedules.
Sounds odious, but try it. Social media, as pleasurable as it can be, is an enormous time-waster. Hours can go by while you connect with friends far and wide, ignoring what is right at hand, including sleep. Campus Calm.com calls ignoring sleep "the true time-waster," making you more susceptible to stress. You're not at college to waste time. Get your work done and go have a latte with friends on campus. Hang out on the green with your laptop and get rolling on assignments due in a few days. You just might find that you get your work done and you meet some flesh-and-blood people. Better yet, swear off social media until you finish what you really have to do for the day.