Taking Care of Your Mental Health 🧘
🕒 Create a Weekly Schedule 🕒
Welcome to Week 1 of our mini-series on Balancing Work and College Life!
Today, let's dive into the art of time management. In your studies, from your well-meaning family members and mentors, you’ve likely heard these words many times. Time management is TRULY an art, but that doesn’t mean it has to be impossible to learn and implement.
College life can be hectic, but with the right schedule, you can conquer it all. Let’s talk about a few tips that if utilized, can really make a big impact in your day-to-day life.
📌 Tip 1: Organize Your Time Wisely 📌
Start by creating a weekly schedule that includes your classes, study sessions, and work shifts. Make use of digital planners or traditional calendars to keep everything in order.
Want a few ideas of where to start? We’re happy to provide a list of a few tried-and-true methods we’ve used!
At the time of writing this article, we are not being compensated for the following promotion of planner tools – we just believe they have been helpful and have personally used them! 😊
- Rocketbook
Rocketbook is a great tool for productivity and organization, and is a green, sustainable option. Rocketbook offers smart notebooks where you can take notes, detail your planner, and scan to your phone for automatic upload through their app to your EverNote, OneNote, Google Drive, E-Mail and other locations.
- Trello
Trello is a user-friendly project management tool that will help you with organization and productivity. It’s basically like having a digital corkboard (Remember those? 😉) with sticky notes that can be customized based on your activities. You can create boards based on your school, internship, and work priorities to keep you on top of everything, and they offer a mobile app too so you can access it on the go.
- Microsoft Planner
Planner is part of the Office 365 Suite, and many schools offer heavily discounted or free access to Office 365. This tool is great for visualizing tasks and due dates to keep you on top of your progress, and you can even integrate it with outlook to help you set up reminders to get things done on target.
- PandaPlanner
PandaPlanner is for our paper-lovers. This is a great productivity tool that integrates more than just the typical rat race. It offers a focus on well-being with daily, weekly, and monthly goal setting and reflection, prompts for mindfulness, and gratitude notes.
📌 Tip 2: Prioritize Like a Pro 📌
Learn to prioritize tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix. It'll help you distinguish between what's urgent and what's important, allowing you to focus on what truly matters.
Never heard of the Eisenhower Matrix, or maybe it rings a bell vaguely in the back of your mind from one of your professors, but you just can’t quite place it? Don’t worry – we’ve got your back.
The Eisenhower Matrix actually comes from our 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Credited for the phrase,
“What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important,”
the Matrix offers a visual 4-quad system categorizing tasks based on urgency and importance. Here’s how it breaks down:
1. Quad 1 – Urgent and Important – DO THESE THINGS FIRST!
2. Quad 2 – Not Urgent but Important – Let’s get these on the to-do list
3. Quad 3 – Urgent but Not Important – The Art of Delegation is Critical! Who can help you?
4. Quad 4 – Not Urgent and Not Important – Time to alley-oop these sticky notes into the trash
Learning time management now will pay off substantially throughout your career and your life. Never be afraid to ask for help or advice on how to improve your time management skills.
📌 Tip 3: Set SMART Goals 📌
To make the most of your time, set Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals for both your academic and work-related endeavors.
SMART goals may not be on your top favorite list of things to do, but it can really help you to not only achieve better results, but make you FEEL better about what you’re successfully accomplishing.
Ever create a to-do list that’s a mile long and when you cross off that last item you feel like you’re on top of the world?
Yeah, it’s kind of like that. 😊
📌 Tip 4: Avoid Overcommitting 📌
Lastly, remember to balance your commitments. It's okay to say 'no' when necessary to prevent burnout and stay productive. While you might think this is easy to do, it’s actually quite common to become over-burdened with things to complete for many reasons.
Are you that individual that hates to let others down?
Maybe you got really excited about a learning experience that you’d gain from taking on that project?
Didn’t realize how quickly all these deliverables would pile on?
We’ve all been there.
Become content with saying,
“I really appreciate you trusting me with this, but I’m a bit maxed out right now. Does this require immediate attention? I’d be happy to let you know when I wrap up a few projects so I can help!”
“I’m sorry, I’m not able to commit to that right now with my current workload.”
Think of it this way – others will be thrilled you were upfront and honest that you couldn’t handle that particular request at this time, than to be let down when you don’t deliver on time, or you don’t deliver what they know you’re capable of.
Enjoy what you've read? Leave us a comment on some of your best tips, questions, or any thoughts!
Come back next week for the next part of our mini-series, Taking Care of Your Mental Health (Stress-Relief) 💪
