Time Management for Teens
When you are still young, you might feel like you have all the time in the world and don’t need to worry about wasting it. Whether you do or not, learning how to manage your time wisely can be a huge help in your life.
Most of you might think of time management in terms of getting school work done and fitting in all your sports, and this is true, but it can help in all parts of your life. If you manage your time right, you could get a lot more things done including the important things, plus you could have a lot more free time to do the things you enjoy.
Step: What do you do?
In order to fit in all the things you want to do, you need to know what they are first. Take some time and a pen and paper and jot down all the things do in a typical day. Include everything from work, school, and homework, to eating, sleeping, and brushing your teeth.
You could try writing down each hour and writing down what you would do next to it.
Step 2: What do you want to do?
Next, write down all the things you wish you could do, but that you don’t usually have time to do. This could be reading, spending time with friends or family, or starting a project. Write down anything and everything you’ve wanted to do.
Step 3: What do you need to do?
Now, go through both things and decide which things are completely unnecessary wastes of time and things that you don’t want to do.
You might find a lot of what you are already doing to be a waste of time and a lot of things you don’t even like doing. Make sure they don’t need to be done though. You might not like studying and you might even think it’s a waste of time, but it still needs to be done.
Also, please don’t be too harsh with your wish list. Your dream of writing a book might seem crazy to you and impossible, but with some time management and persistence, you can make dreams such as this come true.
Step 4: Organize
Now you need to organize your day. Decide which things can be done best at what time. Are you better about reading and studying in the afternoon right after school? Schedule it for right when you get home.
Set a specific time for everything. Write out a schedule for every day of the week. Even if you don’t do everything exactly as planned, having a guide will make a big different.
Step 5: Implement
Now it’s time you implement your schedule. It may be hard to follow the schedule exactly every single day, but it’s best to get into a habit of really trying to.
If you find the schedule to hard to stick to from day 1, it might be best to change it around until you find the best plan. You need to devise a plan that will allow you to accomplish a lot yet stay happy and stress free.
After a while, maybe a couple of months, you will found that this daily schedule is running on autopilot. Just as you automatically shower everyday, you will find yourself automatically doing things you always wished you could get done on a regular basis.
Success!
Plan, organize, and schedule and hopefully you will find yourself doing better in school, getting more done, having more free time, and enjoying life more.
