How to manage your time in order to survive midterms

Or any giant pile of work that (unexpectedly) fell on your poor shoulders

So, here we go again folks! It looks like just yesterday it was only the beginning of semester and suddenly we’re close to midterm season. First half of March is usually when deadlines for assignments from the first weeks start approaching, so if you feel like you’re in hell don’t worry — you’re not alone :)

In this article I’ll be going through self-organization and time management techniques that can help you to submit everything in time even if the last hope is gone…

How to allocate time?

Okay, let’s imagine (some of us don’t even have to imagine..) you have 100 labs to complete, 30 essays, 5 upcoming tests that need preparation and 1 medium article to write and everything is due tomorrow (all coincidences with real people are accidental!). How to distribute time between all these tasks?

1. Write a list of what you have to do

Even if you think you remember everything, believe me, you don’t. And you’ll understand you’ve forgotten something when you get an angry email saying something like “where the hell is your essay??? kind regards, professor X”. So, please please please write everything down. Once you have all the specific tasks and their deadlines written in front of your eyes, it’s much easier to understand how much work you need to do. And sometimes it appears to be even less than you expected! (in 90% of cases if you’re an anxious ADHDer like myself)

2. Set your priorities

What you need to do is to admit that you can complete only some specific number of tasks in a period of time just due to the fact that you are not God (probably) and have some physical constraints.

So, choose the tasks that you cannot not do, or the ones that are not the most urgent. Quick note: if you have one essay that’s due today at 23:59 and another that’s due tomorrow at 12 a.m., the latter is considered to be not the most urgent :) Also, you can set priorities depending on the weight of the task. For example, if you have an upcoming test that’s worth 50% of your final grade and a lab that’s worth 10% it’s probably a better idea to spend time preparing for the test.

If you have really a lot of tasks and can’t decide what to do with them, you can try using a technique called Eisenhower’s matrix

Probably you don’t have as much tasks as American President during the Cold War, but who knows? If you do, it’s a great technique!

3. Make honest estimations

After you’ve determined the prioritized tasks, it’s important to understand how much time they’ll take you. And here the most crucial thing is: be honest with yourself!!! I can say that I’ll do 5 labs in 1 hour and then write 2 essays half an hour each and then have a free evening, but what’s the point of that if I know it’s not possible? In best case, you’ll just sit at the desk a bit longer that evening, in worst you can fail people counting on you, not keep your promises and feel desperate because you can’t accomplish what you demand from yourself.

So, at least try to make adequate estimations relying on your past experience on competing similar tasks!

4. Schedule and timebox

Elon Musk uses it! Satya Nadella uses it! Bill Gates would use it if he was alive! Everyone uses it! Timeboxing!!!

The point of this strategy is not to only make a random to-do list of non-accomplishable things, but to actually schedule a time for things to see how they fit in and determine the exact order.

You can use any tool suitable for this, like Notion, Google Calendar (my personal favourite) or just pen and paper, just put it all in order (using time estimates you made before).

On some really busy days my calendar looks like this — literally every single minute is booked, I even write some basic things like drinking coffee or having a shower, just because it keeps me on track

Give timeboxing a shot and you’ll see how much more you’re able to get done in the same amount of time!

5. Actually start working on tasks (surprise!)

I know it’s unpleasant to hear, but to get stuff done you actually need to do it, not just make pretty google calendar layouts (as if I haven’t spent last half an hour doing exact same thing)

And this leads us to the second part of the article which is…

How to be productive?

These are just a couple of quick tips on how to stop scrolling on reels or read 100th Medium article and actually start working on that task!

1. Find a productive environment

Find out what works out the best for you: a cute cafe, library, park with fresh air (come on Vira, studying in parks in Estonia?), your desk at home? Probably you’ll be more concentrated in the library where the air is soaked with productive suffering, or in a cute cafe where caramel latte will take away your anxiety? Try and find out what works for you. And for God’s sake don’t study in bed!

Just to show off, if you have a library as beautiful as ours in TalTech, it’s a sin not to go there for study (gossip) session with your bestie :)

2. Keep accountability

The best case is if you find a community like study group or study buddy (ideally that have same assignments as you) and go study together or at least keep each other posted on your progress. Make that herd effect benefit you!

Or if you’re a sigma or alpha (or identify as any other letter of Greek alphabet) and want to study alone, keep an eye on that google calendar and track what you’ve done and what you haven’t. Believe me, once you know the feeling of crossing out points on the to-do list, you won’t be able to stop…

3. Take a nap!

I know what you’re thinking: taking a nap when assignment deadlines are literally burning in my hands? And my answer is yes! If you study for too long without proper rest (proper rest doesn’t imply scrolling on TikTok for 3 hours straight, but actually making your brain rest), you won’t be able to concentrate, memorize things and will make a lot of stupid mistakes. So, if you feel tired, go and take a nap. And after waking up things will go much faster, trust me :)

Well, that’s all from me for now. Now go and finish that assignment, I believe in you! And may the Gods of Midterms be with us :)