Balancing out schoolwork and personal life
This week I decided to try putting my own time management skills to the test and see if it is possible to manage my time well. I planned out a whole routine for the week that includes, finishing up certain homework’s on each day of the week and when to start studying for an exam, all the while leaving enough time to go to the gym and hang out with my friends.
On most Sundays I try to start my homework early and study for upcoming exams if I have enough time. However, I get distracted easily either by my phone or my roommates because somehow there is just always something to talk about. This Sunday, I scheduled myself to start studying for a test I have this week by getting out of my room and finding a quiet secluded place to study.
After finding a room in my building that was quiet I turned off my phone and downloaded an app on my computer called “FocusMe.” This app allows you to focus on what is more important by blocking specific websites that distract you from doing your work. I knew I wanted to study for a couple of hours non-stop today so I restricted my top three website distractions such as facebook, youtube and netflix for four hours. Throughout this time I did get distracted and looked out the window a couple of times, but as soon as I caught myself I would go right back to studying. I finished studying about 60% of the material and even had enough time to go to the gym for an hour and hang out with my friends for the remainder of the day.
From Monday through Saturday I repeated this process and changed up a couple of things such as studying for two hours instead of four and using another two to three hours to do homework’s that needed to be completed on that day of the week. I utilized my quiet workspace as well as the app “FocusMe” efficiently and finished my work twice as fast as I would before. Each day I was left with enough time to go to the gym for an hour and hang out with my friends for the remainder of the day. I felt much more productive with my life and my stress level was reduced ten folds because I wasn’t waiting till last minute to finish up my work. I would describe this week to be quite successful and hope I continue finding more methods to improve my time management skills.
