Time Management

As finals are fast approaching, one of the biggest struggles I've had recently is time management. Juggling all of the responsibilities and assignments on my plate has never been my strong suit, but I've started to develop ways to pick up the slack in various ways.

One of the things that's always been difficult is estimating just how much time a project is going to take me. Usually, I underestimate it, which can become quite frustrating when it hinders progress on other tasks that I was counting on getting to that day. So, utilizing the advice of one of my professors, several weeks ago I began keeping a timesheet for all of my classes that shows exactly how long I spend on each assignment. Using this, I've been able to better estimate how long something will take me, as I can now refer back to specific items on the timesheet and use those to inform my estimates.

[ID Copied from Alt Text: A screenshot of a Google Sheets form. The far left column has the date, from Thursday, 12/1/22, to Saturday, 12/3/22, and finally Week 14 Total at the very end. The top row assigns each subsequent column as "Assignment," "Start," "End," "Total," and "Notes." The columns are filled with color-coded assignment names, start, end, and total times, and short notes about what was completed in each assignment. End ID]

Using this timesheet has helped not only with estimating how long a given project will take, but also estimate how much I am likely to work on certain days. For example, if I worked for several hours on schoolwork on Wednesday, I am more likely to work less the following day or two as I am taking a bit more time to rest. This has let me plan out my schedule much more effectively, and since I've been doing this for the last several weeks, I feel much more prepared to successfully tackle the weeks ahead.

In the future, I would also like to work on having a more regimented schedule, so that the times I work fluctuate less than they do now. Some days, I will work four or five hours on mainly one project, while the next day I only work one or two hours on many little things. By having a better handle on my schedule, I could spend less time worrying about whether I will get something done and more time actually doing it, as the time I'll work on it is planned out ahead of time.