Do you feel that time is not enough for you? It is very likely. Do you feel like you are too lazy to write the best essays of your life? Today’s life is very fast and we all have the feeling of living running from one place to another without rest and we think that the day should have at least thirty hours to reach us. Sometimes we make desperate, silly attempts to gain more time like stealing it from our sleep hours. It’s terrible! Why do we believe that depriving ourselves of sleep is a good idea every time we feel that time is not enough? Are you sure there are no other things, instead of sleeping, that you can stop doing to save time? Basketball star Lebron James told a podcast that he sleeps 10 hours a day. And if one day he does not succeed, he must sleep during the day the remaining hours to recover. One of the greatest athletes in history sleeps 10 hours!

Time management for college students

The point is that we feel that the day is not enough for us. But have you ever thought that we all have the same amount of time? From the beggar to the millionaire, the boy, and the manager of a bank, the gardener and the president of a nation. Everyone has twenty-four hours regardless of their level of responsibilities and amount of work. You cannot save time, you cannot have a vault in the bank with a lot of time to use when you lack, less invest time to have more time. So as a president, a manager or a millionaire they manage to do so much in the same 24 hours while we don’t have time to go to the gym?

So the issue is not like managing time, because we all have twenty-four hours a day. While you’re watching the latest social media gossip, Elon Musk is building the future or Bill Gates is donating millions to fight hunger. Time is the same, what changes are how they use it and in what. So it’s not about managing time, because time is the same for everyone, it’s about managing your priorities to devote your time to the right things. So in this article, we will discuss some time management tips for students. Tips that can help students build a good set of time management skills.

Be thankful for what you have

Many people spend time complaining about what they don’t have instead of enjoying what they already have: their family, their home, their health, their work. You are lucky, many people do not have what you. Thanking you for what you have, in silence, but with a sincere reflection will change your attitude towards life. Do not confuse this with conformity, but with having your feet firmly on the ground to go for your dreams. You have to develop excellent time management skills rather than just complaining about its scarcity.

“I look dumbfounded that a lot of people spend more time talking about their problems than solving them”. – Henry Ford

Define the priorities in your life

The point is that if your priority scale is not correct none of your decisions will be correct and the years will pass and you will not understand why others have resulted in your life while you do not. If you want time to count, define your priorities.

Have medium and long term goals

The routine is like a whirlwind that drags us doing the same thing every day, without escape, like a hamster running on its wheel but when it comes down it realizes that it is in the same place. There are many time management activities for college students which you can learn in a good manner to progress in your college life.

“Who has a way to live for, can withstand anyhow” – Friedrich Nietzsche

You are not eternal

Who has not wanted another moment with a loved one who is no longer there, because he has died, because he has gone on a trip or because the event that joined us ended? What father has not wistfully seen his children grow up remembering when they were little? If you are still young you will not always be young, eventually wrinkles, gray hair will come and you will understand the things your parents were telling you. The point is that you must remember every day that nothing and nobody is eternal and that you should take advantage of the things you value before the opportunity leaves.

“Remember that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose” – Steve Jobs

Time is money

Many people repeat this phrase because it sounds very important, but do you really live as if you think the time is money? Most of us do not. Imagine that all day people came to get money from your pockets. You would not feel very well. If you change your mentality and you really live convinced that time is money, you will value it. Every waste of time, every unnecessary conversation, every minute lost on Facebook is going to hurt. These are some good time management strategies that you can apply to get good results.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs

Tips to start organizing your time today

As you saw you should always start at the beginning, at the root. Giving you advice or tips on time management without having understood the principles is like putting on a little bandage to heal a fracture. People often want the quick recipe and then complain that it doesn’t work. It is never going to work if you don’t start with the roots. Now that you know the roots of time management: mental change, let’s go to the councils and let’s take action. Being a student your time management will lead you to write some of the best essays in your academic life.

“If you were born poor it is not your fault. If you die poor it is.” – Bill Gates

Be organized

The point is that organizing; putting things in their place, having correct habits is the best way to have more time. The time you think you save today, you will pay with interest in the future. For example, if you are a programmer, that hack or that code that you did not comment will make you lose hours or days when you want to scale the project. If you are a designer, that graphic that you named as aasda.psdaccording to you to gain time will cost you minutes or hours looking for it months later when you need it.

“The time you think you save today, you will pay with interest in the future.” – Álvaro Felipe

Organize your day

Just as you organize where you put your keys, your documents, your clothes or your information, you must also organize each of your days. That will help you count every day. Here are some tips:

Finish the day defining tomorrow’s tasks.

What things you were advancing today did not end and you must continue tomorrow what deadlines expire the next day and should you give them priority? Try not to keep listing your tasks but reflect on how you are going to do them. Planning the next day helps you sleep better, gives you peace and takes away your stress (one of the biggest causes of insomnia).

Read more: 7 Must-Know Strategies to Conquer College in 4 Years

Divide your day into blocks of hours.

Surely you remember that at school they gave us schedules for subjects. At 8 math, at 9 languages, at 10 histories, at 11 recess. Somehow our day was planned. But adult chaos comes, what do you have to do at 9? Already at 10? It is not necessary that you write a super detailed schedule because you will waste a lot of time, but at least do general planning. For example 6 to 7, Gym, 7 to 8, Breakfast. 8 to 10, Project review. This plan is not written in stone, it can be modified, but it is a starting point for your day to make sense and time does not go like water between your fingers.

Use a calendar and check it every day

All your events should be on a calendar, preferably an application on the phone. Many people say: do not write it down anywhere. What strength of the spirit will remind you on Monday that you have that meeting? Then you will be in other tasks and you will receive a call: you must cut off what you were doing and run to that meeting, without getting ready, suddenly. Only your events should be on your calendar, that is, those appointments with a specific time, date and place. Not your homework. So at a glance at your calendar every night you will know what the next day holds.

Laura Vanderkam plans leisure and entertainment in her book What successful people do before breakfast, says we feel that weekends do not reach us because we have not planned them. And that people do not plan because they find it unnatural, they feel that the weekend is to go to underpants watching TV not to plan. However, planning helps us enjoy free time.

The five-minute technique

So for you have now realized why is time management important. This technique consists of dedicating only five minutes to a task (only one). Why does it work? Because you cheat your brain, when you think of a complex task your brain is stressed thinking that you cannot finish it and that becomes procrastination. You won`t be able to write the best essays in five minutes but you can divide your tasks. Five minutes does not sound like a lot so you can start the task that always procrastinates telling yourself to just relax. Most likely at the end of those five minutes you will feel energized to go at six, seven, ten, twenty, and eventually the task will be completed. Maybe not pull but in several days, but it is better than postpone it forever.

The task blocks

It consists of working focused on blocks and taking a break between them to recover energy and focus. For example, if you have to make many phone calls, prepare your environment to make all the calls without interrupting anything. Once you finish you take a break and then move on to the next block of tasks. If the task is very large and you cannot do it in your single block, divide it. Some use a variation of this method called Pomodoro that comes from kitchen clocks. In essence, it is the same; the important thing is that in each block you are as productive as possible. The duration of the block will depend on the task.

Buy time

One of the biggest tricks to have more time available is to buy it. However, if you have a job you are selling your time. For example, you want to write best essays for your literature class but you don’t want to spare time. This is not going to happen until you spare yourself some good time. Buying time does not always mean hiring someone; you can delegate a task to a partner who is better than you in that area. This is why time management in college is so important.

Learn to say NO

There is a phrase that says that the secret of failure is to want to please everyone. And it is a great truth. Many are afraid to say no because others will look at them badly, be angry or resentful. And they only get committed to things they hate or dislike, wasting the most important thing they have in their life: time. This is the only reason why you can have some best time to study.

Time is your life because our time in the world is limited. And you must own your life. You decide nobody else. Unfortunately, most of us unconsciously become slaves to situations and stop owning our lives. We accept commitments that we don’t want to go to. We get excited and promise more things than we can handle and then we feel we have no time for anything. But it is obvious!

One of the best strategies to have more time is to learn to say no. When Donald Trump asked Bill Gates to be a White House scientific advisor, Bill had no qualms about refusing. “It would not be a good use of my time,” he replied. Imagine if it were like most of us, that we are ashamed to refuse the invitation and for pure commitment or for what they will say we accept. If he were committing himself to everyone, he would not be a millionaire.

Identify your time thieves

What things steal your time; social networks, parties, unproductive meetings; remember: they are robbing you. If someone took your money out of your pocket, you wouldn’t be very happy. Why do you allow time thieves in your life then?

We all have that friend/office mate who is always looking for us to talk about unimportant things, he is robbing us! Every moment you waste on worthless things is robbing you! We want you to make a list of the things you waste time on and repeat out loud: These things are robbing me! Once you have your list of time thieves you can start to reduce them and if possible banish them.

Read more: 12 Most Useful Websites / Apps for Students

Identify your most important task of the day

Finally, time management is lived day by day. Every day is a new opportunity to take advantage of it better. The past cannot be changed, you can only learn from it. So every day you must identify your most important task. The one that brings you closer to your goals, the one that will make you feel really productive. If you feel that there are two or three tasks of great importance in the day you should take some time and reflect which is the most important of the three, which is the second and which is the third. And start from highest to lowest priority. Do this every day and you will feel that time yields you for many more things.

Enjoy the trip

Having the theory is not at all if you don’t put it into practice, and these tips will help you as long as you apply them to your day to day with an attitude of constant improvement. Time cannot be controlled or managed, so what we call time management is really a clear definition of priorities along with an organizational system that brings us closer to our goals. Time counts when our goals are met. Welcome to this journey of making every day count.