There are only two things you can do with time...use it or lose it.

Learning to better manage your time can make the chances you get to "while it away" so much sweeter.

Try incorporating these techniques:

1. Decide what you want to accomplish within your determined time frame.
2. Determine activities to reach each goal.
3. Prioritize your goals.
4. Make a "to do list".

1&2. Think about your short, intermediate and long term goals. What do you want to accomplish this week, this semester, during you college career, in the next 10 years?

Short term goals may include a test you need to study for, a paper you need to write, time in the laboratory, or a portion of a semester project to complete. Goals should also include personal and social activities such as time with a friend you've neglected, shopping for necessities, exercising, or watching a favorite TV show.

Longer term goals will be more general and you will incorporate steps towards these into your short term goals. For example, if one of your long range goals is to live abroad, intermediate goals could be to learn a foreign language and to study abroad for a semester while in school. Short term steps to reach that goal would include investigating foreign language  programs and obtaining an application for study abroad.

2. One way to prioritize your goals is to use the table of importance and urgency.

Determine how important each of your goals is, and then how urgent. School work is often important and urgent and would go into quadrant I. Watching TV is more often of low importance and urgency, belonging in quadrant IV. Exercising and meeting with friends can be important but not urgent (II). Something with a time limit like a meeting or bookstore sale could be urgent, but not important (III). Obviously quadrant I things go high on the "to do" list, but often people give too little time and energy to quadrant II (e.g. projects due later) and too much to quadrants III and IV.

3.  Plan ahead with a long range timetable of goals and deadlines. Break the larger projects into smaller steps. Remember to include activities that protect your physical and mental health--sleeping, eating, exercising, socializing. Consider individual weeks and days as subcategories. Label items with their priority level.

4. Create a daily "to do list". This serves as a reminder and an action plan as you go through your day. It can help you decide what to do with unexpected free time and what to cut out if problems come up.

Other tactics that may help you build up your time-savings account:

Utilize your strengths--identify the times of day when you feel the most energetic and do your important work then.   

Create the right work environment--everyone has a way that works best for them. Some people need to limit distractions and others need distractions to focus. Figure out what honestly works best for you. If you need a quiet setting close your door or find a place where friends are unlikely to find you. Turn off your phone. 

Learn to say no--evaluate activities and requests for your time for importance and urgency and make the best choice for fulfillment of your short and long term goals.

Avoid being a perfectionist--some things need to be more perfect than others. You may not need to expend so much time and energy on something of low importance.

Practice procrastination prevention:

Why do we avoid, put off, postpone, delay, defer, interrupt, or suspend certain tasks? Some reasons people give are lack of interest, perfectionism, anxiety, uncertainty and inability. When you face something you dislike, find boring or are unsure of your abilities to handle it is easier to substitute a less stressful task, but it is apt to be of lower urgency or importance. Time to start that semester project....but wait, I'd better pick up my room, and look at all that laundry...

If you are procrastinating, what form does it take? Do you:

• ignore tasks
• underestimate the work it will take
• accept a lower standard of performance
• bargain with yourself and substitute one task for another
• restart the same work over and over
• interrupt yourself
• find yourself frozen by indecision

And if you are like ~70% of people who do procrastinate what can you do about it?

• Recognize when it is occuring
• Try to determine the reason for it
• Work on strategies depending on the cause

~Spanish Proverb

"How beautiful it is do nothing and then rest after."