How to manage your time

Managing your time

Time management is perhaps the single most important and challenging skill to develop as a student.

In an environment where nobody will tell you precisely what you should be doing and when, skills in planning, managing and meeting personal deadlines – both social and academic – are a huge benefit.

Some people like to plan things early in fine detail so that everything is ready in plenty of time. Others positively thrive on the pressure of meeting a last-minute deadline.

Whichever kind of person you are, you will need to keep on top of a range of different tasks at the same time, so you will need to consciously manage your time one way or another.

Managing your time and avoiding distractions Workshop: Book here

The importance of downtime

Time management is not just about fitting as much as you possibly can into your day. It is also about building good habits that are sustainable in the long term.

For a short period, we might be able to work ten to twelve hours a day, but this is not a sustainable way of working and runs the risk of burning out.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that working more than eight hours a day will decrease your efficiency and focus.

Building a steady and sustainable schedule will get you making progress every day without overworking yourself and it will help you stay happier and more focused. Try to identify when you work most efficiently and plan heavy tasks for those times.

Try to build in one to two hours of free time, socialising, or exercise every day into your schedule and take at least one day off every week.

Some key principles:

• Top and tail - Identify a start time and end time for your working day. When you reach your end time, try to switch off until the next day.
• Make space - Find a study space that works for you and allows you to have an appropriate work-life balance. Perhaps a desk that you only sit at to work or finding a space that works for you on campus.
• Reward yourself - Make plans for evenings and weekends that you can use as an incentive.
• Be realistic - Recognise that you won't finish everything that you set out to do every time. Use a prioritised to-do list to make sure the essentials are completed first.

Remember getting through your course is a marathon, not a sprint.

Using a calendar or diary

The first step towards building good habits is understanding your workload. Map out all your deadlines and other important milestones to get an overview using a year planner or diary. 

Compiling these key dates in one place will help you to get an overview of where there may be particularly busy periods during the year. 

Visit Calendarpedia for a range of different calendar formats (external link)

You might want to plan out a standard week based on your contact hours (lectures, seminars, labs, etc) and the amount of independent study you are expected to do.

This might include prep time for your lectures, seminars and lab work, reading, exercises and reports, as well as all of your end-of-term assignments and exam revision.

A full-time university course roughly equates to a working week of 35 hours. Planning out your weekly tasks in one place will give you a realistic idea of the amount of work needed and where you might have spare time available.

Try out the 301 Weekly planner template (PDF, 399KB) 

You can manage your time on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis using your Google Calendar (available via MUSE - My Services).

Your Google Calendar is useful tool to help you to plan ahead and schedule time for key tasks. You can also add your student timetable to your Google Calendar. 

Add your student timetable to your Google Calendar

Planning and prioritising

To-do lists can be a helpful way to keep track of all your tasks. You could start the week by creating a to-do list for the week ahead, or you could keep an active to-do list for each module.

However it is also important to prioritise key tasks within your list. You can use an urgent/important matrix to help you decide on the relative importance of tasks:

• Urgent and important tasks: these are the highest priority of all, try to put them at the top of your list!
• Urgent but not important tasks: can you delegate these tasks to someone else, or make apologies to free up some time?
• Important but not urgent tasks: plan ahead and block out some time in your calendar to do these tasks later on.
• Neither important nor urgent tasks: try to avoid these tasks unless you have some spare time. 

Access the urgent/ important matrix template (Google Doc)

Try this MindTools template to create your own prioritised to-do list:

Access the MindTools To-Do List template (google doc)

You could also use Generative AI to help you to prioritise tasks. Try entering your to-do list into Google Gemini. Be sure to add specific details and parameters within your prompts to ensure a more helpful output, and ask it to prioritise which tasks to do and list them in that order. 

You could also ask it to suggest efficient ways to approach each task. Whenever you use an AI tool, always take care not to add any personal or sensitive information as it may not be clear how the tool might use this as part of its training data.

Remember: always review the output received critically and evaluate how specific and relevant it is for you. 

Breaking down tasks

Large tasks can appear daunting and it can be difficult to get started. A useful strategy is to identify the different stages involved in achieving the larger task and to set a series of milestones and deadlines. 

It is important to work backwards from the deadline when you are setting your milestones to make sure you have plenty of time for the final stages of the process. 

For example, you might break down an essay in the following way:

• Submit essay: 27 May
• Formatting complete: 26 May
• Final draft ready for proofreading and checking: 20 May
• Draft essay plan complete: 7 May
• Key reading complete: 30 April
• Literature search complete: 24 April

If you are having trouble breaking down a task, GenAI may be able to help you. 

Remember: always review the output received critically and evaluate how specific and relevant it is for you. 

Beating procrastination

Procrastination, or putting off tasks which need to be done, can have a major impact on our levels of stress and anxiety.

Rather than simple time-wasting or laziness, procrastination is a genuine psychological response to workload demands.  Defined as a form of voluntary, irrational delay that has negative consequences for the person, procrastination is a habitual form of postponing action to a later date.

If you sometimes procrastinate, don't panic. Studies suggest that at least 70% of students procrastinate regularly during their time at university. Procrastinating is a habit and, like all habits, it can be broken.

Some things to try:

• Spend some time reflecting on when and how you procrastinate. Be honest with yourself and see if you can pinpoint triggers for procrastination.
• Break large tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks. Try and ease yourself in with easier chunks, rather than starting with something more difficult or ambitious.
• Structure your time backwards from deadlines and update your plan as new tasks are added to your to-do list. Prioritise urgent and important tasks and tick tasks off to track your progress.
• Build positive habits by embedding behaviours over time, for example starting work at a particular time or identifying a daily study target.

Try taking the 301 21-day habit-forming challenge (Google Doc) to put this into practice. 

Next steps 

• How to study independently
• How to study online
• How to manage your emails