Directing Your Future with Time Management for Students

Wherever you are is as good as any time to start. This may sound too simplistic but it is true. Think. If you would want to start at a better date when all things start falling into place, it will never happen. Besides that is the best way to loose time. That is procrastination.

When you have already heard about it, read about it or been trained to do it, do it already. It does not matter if you do not know all the rules, somehow you will learn because people are like that. We are trained to be smart. You and I

It is different though when you are hearing it for the first time or while you are already on this page, you want ideas to be reinforced. The fun thing is, your idea may just be as good as mine. We all have that at the back of our heads, unwritten, unspoken and often unheeded.

But for all that it is worth, my friend, here goes:

- What is your priority? What do you want to accomplish out of this school year? What marks will you want to see that will be your gift to yourself?

- Once you have decided on that, compute the time that you have for the week. Let the week be our benchmark. Out of that take away all the time that you will need for sleep and rests, meals, personal things, errands and all those things that you can not do without. And with that I do not mean the TV, the telephone and the chitchat - yet.

- If you are like most students, there is a good chance that you are left with about 85 hours.

- Take away your lecture time for the week. Let us say here (just for illustration) that lecture time is 25 hours. What remains is about 60 hours.

- Here's the sweet part. Once you take away the time to review and do the assignments in each lesson, becomes your free time. If you use your time well during class, you would not be reviewing as much and those are hours added to your personal time.

- What you control then out of the 168 hours is 60. Use it well.

Many students will want to use that to improve their standing in class. And so they will devote time to studying more. They will set their priorities and make the best out of it. But do not forget the TV, the phone and the socializing only have it scheduled.

Even in your young life you must have noticed that it is so easy to squander time. And yet time is the only thing that is mostly in your control. Control it because it is a good start at controlling what you will become.