By Corinne Dorsey
As teens get older, stress increases with COVID-19, online school, school projects, tests to cope with, and social drama increases, not to mention sports and other extracurricular activities.
Life as a student can be stressful, especially in the middle of a pandemic. From unexpected online course schedules, unrelenting deadlines and the endless question of what to expect next, students are under more stress than ever. Throughout these unexpected times, it is important to prioritize your time by balancing between working and studying. As students prepare for the “new normal” of remote learning, Teen Graffiti has compiled a few tips to help prioritize the stress of time management
The first thing to manage the stress of time management is finding a way to focus. Although remote learning seems to grant a lot of free time within your schedule, learning from home or in your dorm has its disadvantages-distractions. To combat this, you have to find a way to stay consistently motivated. The easiest way to establish this motivation is to set a schedule for yourself. Whether that be waking up at a certain or setting up periods to study, schedules hold you accountable to combat additional stress. For daily plans and weekly plans consider using notebooks or planners, this will help keep track of your tasks coming up. For short term projects consider setting an alarm clock or timer to keep a set time for certain tasks.
Another tip to controlling the stress of time management is breaking up larger tasks, which means no more procrastination. If you break your larger projects in sections ahead of time, you are able to have greater control of how much time you are dedicating at one time. So if you have a project that you expect to take around 4 hours to complete, consider splitting up the assignment by four days. This limits the amount of time spent to only 1 hour a day.
Create short term deadlines for yourself to form a habit of meeting deadlines.Once you begin this habit, it will become natural to do things before multiple assignments pile up. With apps like Reminders and Google Calendar you will create more space, once long term deadlines do arrive that require more of your time.
Try to avoid perfectionism. Perfectionism can be your worst enemy when it comes to time management and may be the reason why projects may take more time than necessary. The best thing that you can do is try your best and prioritizing your time will give you an opportunity to put your best foot forward.
Once realizing the best way to prioritize your time management, it is important to implement self care into your schedule. To combat stress, basic self-care like enough sleep, a well balanced diet, and regular exercise are essential. Alongside these basic self-care tasks, activities that bring you peace are important to prioritize in order to supplement stress. Whether it be yoga, dancing, or reading implement things that relax you into your daily schedule to limit stress and practice healthy time management.
