Time management is something we all know about, having been preached to about its importance. I am not sure how much of that has stuck with students though. Procrastination is something many of us are familiar with — in fact, most people admit to having struggled with it or even still frequently indulge in it.
While procrastination can be practiced in almost any type of environment, it is mostly related to academia. When faced with lots of assignments and even possibly a job, it is super easy for students to actively choose to not do assignments until the last possible moment. As a student myself, I admit that I still struggle with time management, and participate in procrastination more than I should.
Even with that said, success in school is linked to proper time management skills.
We know that the act of procrastinating is created from not wanting to do tasks we do not enjoy or those that seem too complex. Psychologists suggest that factors such as low self-confidence and a lack of structure can be the things that drive people to procrastinate. They also connect procrastination with self-deception and propose that it is more present in perfectionists.
To them, it is easier to not do a task than to not perform perfectly.
Most other students I have talked with about procrastination have said they do it because they work better under deadline pressure. Researching what psychologists have to say about the validity of that explanation led me to find out this is not a true phenomenon. The quality of work is generally not affected if you are under pressure, but instead you will get a rush for completing the task against the created odds.
It is important to consider just how many college students are procrastinators. Business Professor Piers Steel from the University of Calgary estimated that 80 to 95% of college students procrastinate. This correlates with psychologist William Knaus’s estimate that 90% of college students procrastinate.
He also predicts that 25% of these students become chronic procrastinators which puts them at risk of dropping out of college. From 2019 to 2020, the dropout rate for first-time students in the U.S. was 58% for part-timers and 24% for full-timers. It seems as if a decent percentage of that could be because of the workload, or not being able to properly handle it, but that makes it more important to get students to act and fight against procrastination.
Time management is something we need to strive for because it will help us continue along our educational paths. One of the best ways to get things done in a timely manner is to plan out your daily schedule. The most productive students I know always have specific times in their week that they reserve to complete schoolwork and this makes doing the work more of a habit, which will make it easier and more natural for them to consistently do the work.
Another important time management tip is to sort your tasks by importance and complete the most important first and then go down the list. Even if you do not get done with everything, you will at least have finished the most urgent stuff. While doing the tasks, you shouldn’t worry or even focus on more than one at a time.
Most people cannot multitask effectively because the quality of the work will not be as good as if you just did them separately.
Overall, the most effective approach to time management skills is to experiment with these tips to find what personally works for you. Just remember the potential problems that come with poor time management, and always investigate anything that will help you get closer to achieving your academic success.
