It may have been a norm for us to spend all-nighters studying for important exams and finishing business cases until the sun goes up. But, this norm is a common sign that our time management practices need a lot of work.  

Not just one skill involved
Time management is the result of the effective cooperation between these three important skills: goal-setting, planning, and reviewing your progress. These skills work together in a consequential manner. The first skill, goal-setting, involves prioritizing urgent and more important tasks in the bunch. The second skill, planning, involves listing down the different ways on how to achieve these goals with the resources and time available. On the other hand, the third skill, reviewing your progress, involves perseverance and a positive attitude towards failure.

 Putting it this way, it seems like time management is an easy art to master. Despite that, time management persistently remains a universal problem for many, if not all, students. Why is this so? Research has shown that students who believe that they should be given more time to accomplish their tasks are less productive than those who believe the contrary. This shows that productivity may be linked to a students’ perception of time, that is, having the perception that they have control over their time. This positive perception of time can only be achieved through efficient time management practices.

Simple habits for improvement 
If your time management practices aren’t as efficient as you thought, that’s alright. It can still be improved! Adopting these simple habits will not only help you improve your time management practices but also erase those overwhelming feelings of restlessness and stress born from bad time management practices.

• Listing down the things you need to do. This is the first step to improve your goal-setting skills, which is one of the skills involved in time management. To begin, list every single task that you need to do by date, and sort it in a way that those at the top are the most urgent while those at the bottom are the lest urgent.  In this way, you can clearly distinguish the tasks you need to do first, and plan your schedule for each day, accordingly.
  
  
• Accomplishing tasks one step at a time. The human brain is not made for multitasking, so quit this habit before it becomes a vice. Focus on accomplishing one task before taking up a new one to avoid the feeling overwhelmed and stressed for taking too much on your plate. Make sure to assign deadlines for the accomplishment of each task to allocate enough time for each task.
  
  
• Reward yourself. While many believe that hard work is “No pain, no gain”, it doesn’t have to be quite so. Whenever you accomplish one of your tasks or goals, it’s best to celebrate it! This helps you get motivated to accomplish each task and it makes time management a practice that is rewarding, and not pressuring.

References:

https://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/time.htm
https://psychcentral.com/lib/6-tips-to-improve-your-time-management-skills/
http://blog.online.colostate.edu/blog/online-education/time-management-for-students-a-psychological-explanation-of-why-we-struggle/

Contributed by: Allison Julianne Macasaet
She is a freelance writer on the side, a student of international relations on the other. Interests include fantasy books, international relations, and lifestyle.