Use these time management tips to stay productive and manage stress throughout the term. Book an appointment with a Peer Success Coach for personalized help figuring out how to improve your time management.
Strengthening your time management can help you make effective decisions about how and where you spend your time. If you don't currently practice time management in any form, you may have more success by picking one or two new habits from the list below to incorporate into your routine.
Plot all of the important dates in your term on a monthly calendar. This includes assignment due dates, midterms, exams and appointments.
Be specific about what time you're going to start studying, where you're going to study and what you're going to study.
You may surprise yourself with how much you can get done by using the time you spend on the bus, between classes, waiting for a ride or waiting for your laundry to dry.
Create a prioritized to-do list (PDF) at the beginning of your day, or before you go to bed for the next day, to know what needs to be done first.
What do you usually do instead of your work when you’re procrastinating?
Whatever your answer is, use that activity as your reward for completing a set time of academic work. For example if you finish your assignment before 7 p.m., you can reward yourself by visiting your friends.
Plan to complete your assignments, essays, projects or exam reviews a few days early. This type of planning will allow for time to edit an assignment and provide extra time in case something unexpected comes up.
Students usually procrastinate working on more difficult or time-consuming homework. Getting these tasks done first will help alleviate feelings of guilt and anxiety that procrastination tends to cause.
When are you most alert in the day? Are you a morning person or a night owl? If you don’t have a time of day when you’re most alert, consider getting more sleep and choose to study in the morning. Research has shown that the morning is the time of day when most people are most effective.
Success may require you to dedicate several additional hours outside of class for every course in your schedule. Cramming, or studying the night before a test, is stressful and often ineffective in university. The most successful approach to learning is to spread it out throughout the term.
Do you sabotage your own efforts to manage your time wisely? Positive time management habits can be difficult to incorporate into your daily routine. When possible, try and avoid these common mistakes:
Follow these steps and use our time management templates to get organized for the term ahead.
The first thing that you should do when you're enrolled in a new class is look at the course schedule to find out what your responsibilities and the important dates are (e.g. assignment deadlines, quiz dates, etc.). Use this information at the beginning of the term to identify busy weeks across all the courses in your term. It’s important to write these dates down in one or more of the following templates:
To organize your time effectively, create a regular schedule that includes your course deadlines, as well as all of your other commitments (e.g. classes, labs, extracurricular activities). It will be important to set a block of time aside for each course and to treat these time blocks as regular weekly commitments to allow you to stay on top of your coursework.
You should also set aside time to study and/or complete assignments. Reference this schedule regularly and keep it up to date. There are many ways to structure your time, from an hourly schedule to a daily to-do list. Check out the following templates to see what type of weekly/daily schedules would work for you:
There are also many apps and platforms that can help you manage your time. Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar are great resources for keeping track of your schedule.
It’s important to remember that studying across multiple, spread out sessions results in better learning than studying in longer, less distributed sessions. In other words, whether your class is face-to-face or online, you should avoid cramming when studying.
Some of these approaches to studying might seem time consuming or difficult, but they're worth the effort. The more effort you put into studying, the greater improvement you'll see in your long-term learning.
Consider using checklists, as well as your calendar, to keep track of course tasks (e.g. readings, assignments, etc.). This will make it easier to determine what you've already completed, what you need to complete and where you might be falling behind. There are free checklist applications that you can use, like Microsoft To Do, Evernote , Todoist, and Trello.
Remember that developing time management is a process that involves trial and error. There isn't one correct way to do things.
Once you've created your schedules for the term, move onto backwards planning for deadlines below. Planning your time for tests, exams and assignments is essential to building a schedule that won’t overwhelm you in busy weeks.
Backwards planning is a method of planning your time for large assignments or studying for exams. It allows you to break down course content or assignment components and then create a plan to study/complete tasks ahead of the due date. Creating a backwards plan for all of your larger tests and assignments can help you to manage multiple due dates and help you maintain balance in your day-to-day schedule.
Follow the steps below to create your backwards plan. You can use our backwards planning worksheet (PDF) or write it out in your own notebook. Use the Library’s Assignment Planner tool to break down research and writing projects into smaller steps based on the due date.
Starting with your due date or test date, plan out what you need to do, estimate how long each task will take AND then plan out when you're going to do it.
Consider whether there's anything you need to do to get organized before putting your plan into action. Examples might include:
Use a to-do list to identify the major steps you'll need to take to study or complete the assignment. Create another list outlining the content you'll need to study or review to feel prepared.
What are the main sections or steps you need to consider to complete the assignment? Examples could include:
Review the course syllabus to identify what chapters, topics or modules will be on the test. Make note of the main topics of the course including:
Estimate and record how much time you think it will take you to do each item in your backwards plan. Be sure to always:
Starting from the due date or deadline, work from the bottom up and estimate the date when you'll complete each task.
Once your backwards plan is complete, add the tasks to your daily, weekly or monthly calendar. Then check if the amount of work fits along with other daily/weekly tasks you have to do. How many hours do you have available each day for school work?
Want to improve for next time? As you work through your plan, track the time that each task actually takes you to complete. Review how accurate your estimates were (or weren't) to improve how you plan your time and tasks in future backwards plans.
