What doesn’t wait for anyone? What is busy always? What is working all the time? What is a big witness to all the activities of we human beings? It is time ! A moment gone is gone forever, what remains is the present and future, so stop brooding over your past and concentrate on your present. All of us, from the great prime minister to a road-side fruit shop owner have twenty four hours only in a day. Then how is it that a select few are able to be successful? What is the secret behind their success? The answer is “Time management”. So what exactly is time management? The process of organizing and planning how to divide your time between specific activities is time management. Good time management enables you to work smarter – not harder – so that you get more done in less time, even when time is tight and pressures are high. You can manage your wealth, you can manage your stress, you can manage your office, you can manage your home, but can you manage your time? If yes, how?
As a student, what are some secret ways to manage your time?
- When the energy is high, finish off high-priority topics
All of us have high energy levels and low energy levels during the time when we are awake. Wise people utilize the high-energy level time for important tasks. If you are preparing for IIT-JEE, and Maths, then you must know that high-priority topics are Differential calculus and Integral calculus. When your energy level is high, finish off these topics so you can be assured of getting a good score in these topics and in total, Maths. Likewise, strategize for Chemistry and Physics.
- Find out the 20% of the portions which when studied gives you 80% of the results
You must know the high weightage topics of all the subjects when doing preparations. Suppose a student is preparing for IIT-JEE, Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry. She should be strong with the following topics – Coordination Chemistry, metallurgy and spdf periodicity. If she is strong with this 20%, she will be successful 80% of the exam. The rest 20% will be easily gettable with mild preparations.
- Fine tune your habits and success is yours
We are what we repeatedly do. If we spend our time with good tasks, our output will be productive. We should have a well-defined day, that is, every hour or two of the twenty four hours should be correctly planned and executed. When you are in the habit of winning, you will win eventually. Everybody have our own strengths. Work on those strengths, cultivate good habits and success is yours.
- Give regular breaks to your body/ mind
Do not continuously work. Give systematic breaks for you body/ mind. Eat food at the right time, rest your body and mind well. Get a good 8 hours of sleep at night. How your body and mind works, to a great extent, determines your success. You can manage your time well if you rest well and eat well. When tired, you will not be able to concentrate on any of your subjects, however easy they maybe. So make sure to energize your body and brain for a productive study.
- Organize – Write your to-do’s for the next day/ week
Peter Turla, an internationally acclaimed author and speaker has said, “A plan is what, a schedule is when. It takes both a plan and a schedule to get things done.” Make it a point to write your to-do’s for the next day/ week. This way, you will not be without any plan on a given day of a week. If possible, have good plans for the next week or at least for the next 2 days.
- When you plan a study of a topic/ chapter, set an end-time wisely
When you are studying a topic for the first time, you should allot an end-time wisely for the study. And when you revise a topic, keep on decreasing the end-time. At one point, you should be able to study or revise the same topic in very less time. If you finish a topic early, there is nothing wrong in reading it again. If you can’t finish a topic within the allotted end-time, seek help. Your trainer should be able to explain the difficult concepts of the topic or chapter and help you finish the topic well ahead of time the next instance you read it.
- Anxious about managing your time? Here is what you should do.
Anxiety brings with it noise, of thought. Our brains cannot tolerate noise (of thoughts) beyond a certain limit. Whenever you get anxious thoughts, you have to think counter-thoughts and kill the anxious thoughts. Say for example, a student’s gets an anxious thought “I will not be able to finish this paper on time” while writing an exam, immediately he has to think a counter-thought – “I am intelligent and this paper will be completed by me before time”. After thinking this counter-thought, the student should concentrate fully on the paper. Mostly anxious thoughts are hereditary. Also, these thoughts trouble students who are idle and who don’t have good knowledge.
- Kill procrastination or it will kill you
Do today what you can do tomorrow and do now what you can do today. If you have the habit of continuously postponing things, you are in danger. You are in danger of accumulating tasks and at one point, you will not get enough time to finish all the study. Students without thorough preparation will obviously not get good marks and will be losers in the long run.
- Do correct multitasking
If you are skilled in multitasking, there is nothing wrong in doing it. In one hour, say you are going to finish Maths as well as Physics, at once, go ahead and do it. At the same time, if you can study two or more subjects, see to it that you do it correctly and you don’t get confused. You can plan your study such that when you finish Trigonometry in Maths, you will do Thermodynamics in Physics and after you do Thermodynamics, you will do metallurgy in Chemistry. Likewise. Multitasking is not mandatory but if you are good at it and if you taste success by doing it, you should multitask.
- Start early
Preparations for national level competitive exams and entrance exams like IIT-JEE and NEET can begin at a very young age, as early as when you are in 5th grade. Rather than a delayed preparation, an early preparation is absolutely harmless. Becoming a doctor or an engineer from a reputed college is a goal, a dream, a desire which if supported with non-erroneous guidance and unconstrained efforts can give positive results.
GURUJEE faculty Lakshmi ma’am says,
Whatever you are thorough, that is 100% confident, attend that first in the exam. This will save a lot of time and also give you good results. Next is practice. Practice makes a man perfect. Practice helps you assess yourself, say I am taking this much time for solving these problems. Like how a train makes up time and reaches the destination on time, the students should increase their speed in attending some questions to make up for their time-loss in the questions so far attended. Say if a student has taken 45 seconds to answer a 30 second question, he has to cover it up by taking only 30 seconds for a 45 second question. So which are all the questions that take how much time can be known only with practice. Next is planning. You must plan what topics are easy for you, what are hard, what you cannot attend. When you know this, 90% of your preparation is over. Do not bother about the topics that you cannot attend. Instead focus on your strengths.
Time management can be an important area which will determine a student’s success. It is not to be taken lightly. A Chinese proverb says, “Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still”. Inaction is dangerous. Slow growth can be speed-up and attain an optimum speed with consistent and goal-oriented efforts. Solving the past years’ question papers to a great extent will increase your confidence. Time management is an art and I am sure with patience, effort in the right direction and timely guidance from mentors like GURUJEE, you will sail through exams. May all the students sail through their exams and may the dreams of all students materialize! In good hope that you all will prosper and grow multifold!
Good Luck and God bless!
C K Chandrasekar, TEAM GURUJEE
Time management is the most important factor that determines the success of an individual. We all have 24 hours in a day. How we use this time can have a great impact on our success. I like the tips that you have provided in this article. They are really very useful and I will surely follow them. I will also share this article as much as possible with my family and firends. Thank you.