TIME MANAGEMENT
PART 1: THE CALENDAR

READING: SCHEDULES

Time management is a fancy phrase that means planning out the way you're going to spend your time and then sticking to it. It sounds like the kind of thing we should all have figured out as little kids ("First, I'm going to build with my blocks. Then I'm going to eat four cookies before Mom sees me. Mission accomplished."), but the older you get, the more responsibilities you have to juggle and the more complicated time management can get. Do they seriously expect you to write about The Great Gatsby, polish your marching band shoes, and take selfies covered in shoe polish all at the same time?

First, let's try to evaluate how each of us our doing with time management. Go take this handy-dandy online quiz. It's not one of the fun ones that tells you which Divergent faction you'd be in, but it will help you figure out your time management strengths and weaknesses.

Take the quiz and then see your results—know thyself, young traveler!

For Love of Calendars

Now, explorer, you might think that you can finish an entire book report, write a presentation, study for a midterm, memorize your violin solo, and write a research paper on nuclear fusion all in one night, as long as you don't sleep or leave your room. And it's just barely conceivable that you could. In fact, there might be a certain teacher who may have attempted such a feat before. But it's a pretty bad idea. Trust me.

Waiting until the last possible second and doing everything in a wild panicked rush is called procrastination. Here's why it's a sub-awesome school strategy, and why making a schedule will help:

• Procrastination creates stress. You know that weight that constantly follows you around, burdening your free time and haunting your dreams? It might look a little like this? That's the stressful pressure of assignments and projects you haven't started yet. We'll talk more about managing stress more later, but making a schedule is a great way to relieve some of it, and avoid ulcers or even potential stress-induced facial palsy. (Yes, real.)

• Procrastination means nothing is as good as it could be. This one is really sad, if you think about it. If you do every single thing in a crazy rush at the last second, then none of your work is your best work. That's true even if you're an A student. Taking the time to do stuff right is all about giving things your actual best. Now, I don't want to sound like a motivational poster with overly happy people fist pumping excessively here, but it's generally a good idea, and makes you a more attractive person, to rock the casbah instead of mediocre the casbah.

• Sometimes, you'll miss the deadline. If you're always aiming for the last possible second, sometimes you'll miss it. It's just the way it works. You'll get food poisoning the night before, or start a new series on Netflix and forget about it, or your cat will be super cute and distracting. One way or another, you'll miss some deadlines.

• It interferes with sleep. Sleep is awesome. Sleep is my favorite thing, after kittens, puppies, rainbows, and even ridiculous baby hedgehogs. Better scheduling = more sleep.

Making a Schedule

Did I convince you? Are you a calendar-making convert now? Here's an outline of the process you'd use to make a calendar. Save that enthusiasm for the activity though and hold off for right now. Just read, if you please.

• Put your classes on the calendar. For each class you're taking, add the major tests, assignment due dates, and projects.

• Add your extracurricular activities. If you're one of those kids who takes violin lessons, does gymnastics, and plays baseball on the side, this might take a while. 

• Think about the rest of your non-school life. Will you be going out of town for Aunt Mildred's birthday? Or helping run a fundraiser at the local humane society? Write those down on the calendar, too. Puppies deserve your calendar love.

By the end, you should have a pretty complete image of your semester. You should be able to see the trouble spots (two tests and a swim meet in the same week in October? Jeepers). At least now you can see it coming and plan ahead.

Getting Your Priorities in Order

Next, you want to prioritize your schedule. This is the real secret to scheduling success. It's the magical step between looking at a weekly schedule with confidence and getting smacked in the face with 80 tasks all due in three hours and not knowing exactly what you should be working on or what day it is.

There are a ton of different fancy tools for this express purpose, like prioritization matrices and interrelationship digraphs (I didn't make up that term, sadly). If you ask me, however, the best technique is a simple list ranked by number. Or color-coding. I like color coding.

Write down all the tasks you have to complete that week or day, assign them a number from 1-5 based on how urgent they are, and block out time starting at Red Alert #1s. Work your way down to the #5s, and accept the possibility that Aunt Mildred's card might not happen. She'll forgive you, eventually.

Calendars Go High-Tech

Originally in the before-times, people kept their calendars with Post-It notes, but the adhesive allergy was getting out of control. They switched up to a '90s style paper planner after that, but the constant erasing made them twitch, so the populus eventually went digital with Google Calendar. They've never looked back.

I happen to think Google Calendar is pretty nifty—especially since it can be synced (sanked?) with just about anything electronic. If you're the type who likes to carry the calendar with you in electronic form, Google Calendar is the way to go. Even if you're not, but you sit at a computer frequently (like, to take this course) it's still awesome. Use it. I promise you won't regret this. Check out this article on it here and check out the video below.