Study Skills Tip For July: Top Tips For Over-committed Students
Maybe you are an elite athlete? Or a dedicated performer? Or someone who has many talents across lots of different areas and doesn’t want to give up any of your activities? No matter the reason, the bottom line is you are time poor. You struggle to fit in everything you need to do for school, because of all of the other commitments in your life. The bad news is there is no magic solution that will easily fix this issue for you. You cannot create more time. The good news is that there are things you can do to make more efficient use of the time you have.
Balancing other commitments - Things to Print.
These tips are an abbreviated version of the handout available in the Study Skills Handbook, within the Things To Print page to see the full version.
1. Don’t waste time in any of your classes at school. Make the most of every moment so you have less to do at home and set up a buddy system in case you miss any lessons.
2. Prune your activities and see if there is anything you can cut to reduce the pressure.
3. Make a timetable so you can schedule in everything that you need to do and want to do.
4. Use all little pockets of time. If you are waiting before training then use that time to complete some homework.
5. Always prioritise before you start work to ensure that the most important and urgent work is completed first.
6. If you are too tired when you get home from training it may be better to get to bed early and get up a bit earlier in the morning when you are fresh and do your work then.
7. You may need to sacrifice an occasional lunchtime when you know you will be too busy that night.
8. Let go of perfectionism. It may not be possible to do everything as fully as you would like. Take smart shortcuts when you can.
9. Use any big blocks of time to tackle the time-consuming tasks that you haven’t had time for.
10. Some work like study notes, assessments or major works may be able to be left to the holidays.
Remember to be kind to yourself. It is difficult to have enough time to excel in every aspect of your life! All you can do is make good choices with the time you have and make the most of that time and still try and get the best results you can given the time constraints you are working under.