How to Manage Your Time Efficiently To Balance School and Work-Life
- Đinh Linh
- Jul 25, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 16, 2020
Many international students that I know have struggled to manage their time so that they can get good marks at school while having a job. Some students even skip their classes to go to work and as a result, fail courses.
During my life in Canada, my time management skills have improved a lot as I can work part-time and do my work placement while still being on the Dean’s Honor List at my school. Therefore, I want to share my tips (and tools) with everyone who needs to balance their school and work-life.
1. Beware of multitasking
When talking about time-management, many people might think about multitasking as a solution. It’s a great way to finish your tasks in a short time; however, you should be cautious of it because this method can backfire on you. Some complex tasks require strong concentration; therefore, you can’t do it while doing other things.
One of my friends occasionally worked on her work placement’s task during her class, and as a result, she had trouble keeping up with that class. Therefore, in my opinion, it’s better that you get good results from all of your tasks rather than sacrificing something to do something else.
2. Make a to-do list
Many people might think they remember all of their tasks that they need to perform; therefore, writing down a to-do list is just a useless thing to do. However, I learned that creating a to-do list helps me to have an overview of what I should do first, or which tasks are related tasks and can be performed together.
Every Monday, I usually write down all of my assignments (with due dates) and my work placement tasks (with deadlines) on my sticky notes and stick them on my laptop. Every time I finish a task, I will cross it off so that I can keep track of which ones I have left. If you are not a paper-type person like me, you can use a time-management tool to track your tasks for free, such as Google Calendar, Trello, etc.
3. Put priorities
Have you heard about Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle? Basically, according to him, people should spend time on important things and not just the urgent ones. So how do you distinguish between important and urgent tasks? Well, important activities are tasks that help you to achieve your goals while urgent ones are activities that need to be done soon. After distinguishing them properly, you should list your tasks as the following order to prioritize tasks:
Important and urgent.
Important but not urgent.
Not important but urgent.
Not important and not urgent.
This principle will help you quickly identify the activities that you should focus on, as well as the ones you should ignore.
4. Avoid distractions
You are doing your assignment and then “TING,” your phone rings to notify you got a new like on Facebook. After checking it, you want to see what is new today, then find out one of your friends shared a funny video, and decide to watch it. Before you know it, you forget about your assignment and later blame yourself for why you took such a long time to finish an assignment.
Does that sound familiar? I believe this has happened to everyone. Therefore, you should consider putting your phone far away from you, or even turning it off to concentrate on doing your tasks. One method that I found very useful is, doing your assignment or a task from your boss while listening to relaxing music. It’s easy to find these playlists on Youtube and it helps me concentrate on working on my tasks for a long time.
5. Delegate when necessary
Even if you have done everything correctly (planning, prioritizing tasks, and concentrating on completing them), there will be some days that you feel like you can’t finish all of your tasks on time. Since we are only human with just 24 hours per day, sometimes we can’t do everything we want to accomplish, and delegating tasks to another person is essential.
I used to be a person who feels more assured when performing a task myself rather than asking someone else to do it since I’m nervous that person can not do it well. However, this results in stress and burnout. Therefore, I learned that delegation does not mean running away from responsibilities, but is instead an important aspect of the proper management of tasks. Moreover, delegating tasks will help my team members feel like an integral piece of the work puzzle.
6. Take a break
Again, don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s ok to take a break when you feel tired or stressed in order to refresh your mind. You might consider taking a walk, eating some snacks, or drinking coffee for 10 to 20 minutes before getting back to business.
Besides that, some of my friends usually watch a movie or a series’ episode during their break. In my opinion, it’s better to watch something when you finish all your tasks as your reward because you might feel too excited and think about what would happen in the next episode, which will affect your productivity when you come back to doing your work.
PS: I hope my article will help you to improve your time-management skills :) Feel free to share your tips on how you manage your time by commenting below because I would love to hear them all.
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