University of Maine Division of Student Affairs

Time Management: LESSON 2

Know When and How to TIME your Studying

Time Fact #2:

It is commonly believed each of us wastes 2 to 3 hours each day. How are you doing?

Schedule your most demanding activities into your most productive time period
You know whether you're a morning person or an evening person ( a rarity among college students!); then tackle your most difficult, most demanding course at this time. Too many of us guarantee failure by scheduling our toughest course at our worst time. Often we avoid as long as possible doing anything about a dreaded activity and leave ourselves too little time to be successful.

Understand when you work best with people (committee assignments and shared projects) versus completing solo tasks (working alone with pencil and paper ideas).
In other words, don't call a committee meeting at 4:00 PM if you usually find yourself short-tempered at the end of the day.

Marry a lower priority task to mood
Consider this. You have spent most of the day in the classroom, lab, and library. You return to your room at 3:30 p.m. You know that a science assignment due the next day should be started. But you are truly beat and have no stomach for opening a book right now. What do you do?

First, there is no need to be rigid in completing tasks in priority order. There will be times when you can honestly say the most important thing for me to do right now is take a 20 minute therapeutic nap or a hot bath. Either of these activities may actually enhance your effectiveness by providing you with several more hours of productive time. Just don't overdo the length of the nap!

You might even find yourself gathering together a diet Pepsi, cheese and crackers and heading to the basement to do the laundry, an admittedly "B" activity. The point is you are truly in no frame of mind to begin an "A" activity right now; and with the laundry done, you have at least accomplished something worthwhile.

Home | Previous Lesson | Proceed to Next Lesson