Time management for students (and everyone else) is about being purposeful with your day. It’s about taking control of what time you do have and optimizing it for productivity, focus, and balance. To help you out, we’ve collected the best advice on how to stay focused, beat procrastination, and manage your time from student RescueTime users in both undergraduate and graduate programs.
Set proper goals to measure your progress
Goals are just the end result. Focus on what needs to get done to hit and surpass that goal.
- What can you do every day that will help you achieve your ultimate goal?
- This means focusing on consistent progress and building better habits.
Step 1: Create “bookends” for each day
Think about your morning and evening routines and then “block” in time for your most important tasks
- Example: Kevin Taylor has a 2-hour writing block each morning
- This will maximize his time and give him more energy for other important tasks.
RescueTime
Thousands of students use RescueTime to help take control of their time
Break large projects into small, actionable tasks
Take that first step to build momentum
- Decide what the smallest, most doable next step is on a big project and then list out all the next steps along with a deadline for each
- Focus on making progress, not just the end result
Follow your body’s natural energy highs and lows
Do your most important work when you have the most energy
- This means scheduling writing or more intense projects during energy highs, and scheduling reading or more passive activities when you’re more naturally low.
- Circadian Rhythm
- A 24-hour internal clock running in the background of your brain that cycles between alertness and sleepiness
- Every person’s rhythm is different, but most follow a similar pattern
Use a daily schedule template to plan your day
It will help you stay organized, focused on what matters most, and even help you overcome procrastination
- Time blocking is when you create a template for how you want to spend every minute of your day (eg. Bill Gates)
Set aside time for your most important projects
RescueTime for Google Calendar can automatically trigger FocusTime sessions.
- Use #focustime in the Google Calendar event name or description and we’ll automatically block all distracting websites (like social media, YouTube, news, and entertainment).
Understand how you’re currently spending your time
Without a clear understanding of where your time goes each day, it’s impossible to build better time management strategies and stay focused.
- Use a free tool like RescueTime to automatically log your time to see where you are losing time to the wrong things.
Take breaks at the right time
Our minds naturally crave breaks after every 90 minutes of intense work
- Disconnect from whatever you were just working on
- Get outdoors if you can
- Give your eyes a break
- Counteract screen or reading time by using a simple exercise called 20-20-20
- Refuel with the right food
Beat procrastination with the 5-minute rule
Tell yourself you’re only going to do 5 minutes of work on a project. In most cases, that will be enough to get you motivated.
- Block external distractions like social media and entertainment at the first start of working.
Beware the Planning Fallacy
You probably need more time than you think
- To counteract this, work a buffer into your schedule based on your familiarity with the task.
- If it’s something you’ve done before, give yourself 1-1.5X the time you think it will take
- Newer tasks require double the time or more.
Optimize Your Study Time for Flow
Only do one thing at a time.
- Remove distractions
- Start small and set a timer
- Take a break in between each session
- Focus on a single task and try to focus on that task for a long period of time.
Build better habits and routines for long-term success
The best time management strategy for students and everyone else is simply to develop habits & routines that promote the kind of actions you want to do more of.
- Mobile apps that will help you stay focused include RescueTime, Brainly, and Slacker.
Step 3: Schedule in breaks, social time, and catch-up tasks
For a schedule to work, it has to be realistic
- RescueTime is a tool that can help you rebuild your focus and regain control of your time. Try it for free for 14 days.
