Heading Back to School: Time Management
Welcome back to another post from the team at AYS. A lot of stuff as always has been happening behind the scenes (though nothing to tell you yet). I hope you have all had an amazing week, it’s been pretty busy as a lot of people are starting to go back to school.
As we go back to school, we lose a large chunk of the time that we are use to having. Not only do we have regular school now, but there are so many other extra activities like sports and clubs that we will go back to participating in. That is why it is crucial to be able to effectively manage your time. Here are some tips I have myself learnt over the years.
1. Use a Calendar to Schedule Your Day to help alleviate the amount of time you spend on things. Using a calendar allows you at the start of the week or day to effectively plan out your day for maximum efficiency and ensures you get to spend time on all aspects of your life without being burnt out. I use a calendar to manage my time working at AYS and school as well as with friends and family. Don’t forget to include time for self rest.
2. Take Proper Breaks to ensure you are well rested and don’t get overworked. I find myself personally, that I don’t take enough breaks when working as I end up in this deep mindset which is a good thing, but you need to remember that if you keep going for too long your work quality will drop. It’s also a good chance to have a break from the computer.
3. Procrastination is an issue everyone faces. We all could be doing something more relaxing or fun but instead we have some work that needs to be done. Procrastination can push us to play games or binge watch YT but in the end, the work is still there and it isn’t magically going to disappear. The hardest part is just getting started. I procrastinated about writing this but I finally started and am now on a roll.
4. Delegate Tasks to your staff in your community. As the owner, you may feel as though you have to do everything, but you don’t. That’s why you hire staff. If you are feeling overwhelmed with everything you should try to assign some tasks to your staff members, it will keep them engaged and take some of the work off your plate. It also allows you to focus on the more important things.
5. Assign Priorities to your tasks. You won’t have time to complete every single task under the sun that you need to do so it’s important to be realistic. The 80/20 rule shows that 80% of your output is generated by 20% of your input. This is why it is important to pick 3–4 tasks and assign them with a high priority to ensure they get done. If you have too many tasks it can seem overwhelming but if you just assign a few tasks with a high priority then you only need to get those done as the others are not important.
6. Use a to do list to manage your tasks. This goes on from my last point, use a to do list in conjunction with a calendar to manage your tasks. If you’re really busy there is no way you can remember everything you have to do. Personally I use Todoist as it lets me put priorities, categorize between work, personal and school and it lets me add comments and due dates. I can also set tasks to repeat themselves.
I hope these tips help you to effectively manage your time when school goes back as well as into the future. As your community grows, it will require more and more work and to keep up you need to have effective time management.
I wish you all the best with going back to school. Keep rocking on!
