3 Powerful Time Management Skills for Students
Here are three skills you can implement right now to manage time.
We will look at a total of three time management skills for students. These skills will help you get better grades in far less time inshAllah (as you’ll see).
These skills were recently used by a 15 year old to clear her O Level exams here in Lahore. She prepared for a total of less than 3 months.
I have been posting about this on my socials:
I get some really interesting comments on this.
Mostly, people tend to agree that it is possible. But they just don’t know how!
These three time management skills will teach you how.
Bismilla.
What are the 3 Time Management Skill for Students
- Time blocking
- Pomodoro Technique
- Parkinson’s Law
As we go through these three time management skills for students, remember that this applies to anyone trying to finish a project on a deadline.
As a student, these deadlines are usually in the form of mid-term exams, semester finals or what have you. So for a student, the deadline is inherent. It is already there.
So let us now go through each time management skill and see how you can apply them in your life.
What is Time-Blocking?
It is deceptively simple but many do not follow this approach.
You block out time in your calendar to do the tasks, and then you do the tasks.
Mostly, people decide to do something, and then they keep doing it till some interruption takes them away, or they actually finish the task.
Time blocking is a concept that you block out the time first, and then start the tasks.
When you time block, you protect that time block with tactics such as:
- putting your phone on silent (or Airplane mode, which is what I had to do)
- letting everyone else know that you are not be disturbed (students can tell their parents and siblings etc)
- not letting anything else distract you from the time-blocked task
This way, you also get to say “no” to other tasks, because you’ve already blocked that time for sitting down and doing the work.
In my Time Mastery course, we go into greater depth. We create weekly time blocks and fill them up before the week begins.
As you can see in the above image, you block out different areas of your life. This way you are able to “spend time” doing the things that are important to you.
The other way is to “take things as they come” and that hardly ever works. Time blocking allows you to manage your time in the best possible way, inshAllah. Time blocking is not a new concept (most concepts that actually work are not new). This has been covered in detail in many places (this article by Forbes for example gives a good overview)
And once you have blocked out the time, you apply the second skill for time management.
What is the Pomodoro Technique
Pomodoro is Italian for tomato. Yes, tomato.
What has “tamaatar” in common with time management skills for students? It is a weird story, and it applies not only to time management skills for students, but also time management skills for creative entrepreneurs and working professionals as well!
And tomato shaped timers are common for kitchen timers. So the name kind’a stuck.
A simpler name can be “The Timer Technique” because you’re using a timer to manage your time.
The idea is that you set a timer for 45 minutes, and in those 45 minutes, you are not allowed to do anything else except that task at hand.
As I type this, I have a timer on my desk and I can’t check emails or even go to the bathroom, because the timer is on and I have to work on creating this post.
This is the technique students can use very effectively. You can call it the Pomodoro technique or tamatar technique, but do apply it to see how you get some serious work done (inshAllah)
And now the third skill really helps us use the first two skills.
What is Parkinson’s Law
In time management, Parkinson’s law states, “any task will expand in complexity to fill the time allocated for it”.
If you give yourself 2 hours to finish the task, you will take 2 hours to finish it. If you give yourself 1 hour, it will take you one hour.
The simplest example from student life is the most common one. You know it, right? 🙂
Your papers are three months away? You will take three months to prepare for that one paper.
The paper is 48 hours away? You are prepared for the paper with the same information that you got from 3 months of so-called “study time”.
Using this law, we can allocate a short time for supposedly larger tasks. Case in point: doing O level (or Matric exams) in three months instead of 3 years or 2 years. And it works, because it has been done numerous times by students from all backgrounds.
The skill of time management is the most critical skill. This skill is what allows us to unlock our true potential. It is what can lead us to say “aameen” to the prayer, “Khuda Karay Tujhay Teirey Maqaam Sey Aagah”.
If you are interested in living life to the maximum, I have a free training for you as well. You can click here to get access to the Masterclass titled “3 Ways to Unlock your TRUE potential, without the confusion or without wasting YEARS!”
I look forward to your success. Any questions, you can contact me via email (newsletter subscribers know that), or you can use the contact form.
