12 Days of Time Management: Have It All
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” If you’re not sure what Shakespeare meant by that portentious verse, you’re probably managing your time well. Keep up the good work with our 12 Days of Time Management for Teens: You Can Have It All The modern college-bound high school student shares the plight of the 21st century workforce: much more to do and less time to do it. Seriously, the productivity of your average teenager, at least in terms of information processing and creation, puts most generations of humanity to shame. However, the crush of academic, extracurricular, and social commitments can often feel too much to bear. Some students are adept at juggling competing priorities, whereas others feel their only choice is to cut certain activities out of their lives. All too often, I’ve seen high schoolers abandon the sports or clubs that mean the most to them…
12 Days of Time Management: Create a Routine
Time and money are a lot alike. After all, both can be spent, invested, and even squandered. But while you can always earn more money, you can never earn more time. Spend wisely using our 12 Days of Time Management for Teens: Create a Routine Who knew that circadian rhythms were so powerful? Most people understand how our natural rhythms control our sleep cycles, determining not just when we awaken each day but also when we feel most alert and productive. But circadian rhythms also exert influence on our biological functions, behavior, and even mood. Unfortunately for teens, the change in circadian rhythms triggered by puberty knocks them out of sync with most high schools: school starts really early but teens want to stay up really late. See the problem? If you’re committed to making the most of your time, you must create a routine and stick to it.…
12 Days of Time Management: Single-threading
Oprah Winfrey famously said, “You can have it all. Just not all at once.” You may be able to do it all as well, but again, not all at once. Just use our 12 Days of Time Management for Teens: Single-thread Our brains are wondrous machines, capable of phenomenal feats of cognition, recognition, and synthesis. Yet, our wetware lacks some standard features found in modern hardware. Your computer, tablet, or even phone might be able to run multiple processes in parallel without loss of function, but you probably cannot. Obviously, we unconsciously regulate a slew of autonomic functions while processing and filtering a flood of sensory data. But as far as tasks that require focus are concerned, we run on single-processors. In computer programming parlance, single-threading is the processing of one command at a time. Embrace the concept of single-threading rather than multitasking. Multitasking makes us a little dumber…
12 Days of Time Management: Work Your Flow
Let’s be honest: most of our productivity issues can be linked to mismanagement of time. If you want to do your best in school, sports, tests, art, or anything else, you need to manage your scarce seconds, minutes, hours, and days like a boss. Take some tips from our 12 Days of Time Management for Teens: Work your Flow Our previous recommendation to plan your days as if you’ll need more time to accomplish each task assumes average productivity. In fact, a smart schedule allows for occasional substandard performances, sanity breaks, and general lollygagging. But every once in while, lightning strikes and suddenly our best work emerges effortlessly… and quickly. Imagine work, meaning everything you are responsible for in a given day, as a river. We float downstream at our usual pace, speeding up and slowing down depending on what currents we catch. Sometimes all we can do is…
12 Days of Time Management: Days Fill Up
If you’re Mick Jagger, maybe time is on your side. The rest of us have to plan how best to make the most of what little time we have. This is why we’re sharing our 12 Days of Time Management for Teens: Plan Days Realistically Have you ever planned the perfectly productive day, plotting out every hour in advance to maximize your ability to get stuff done? Did your day work out exactly as planned? More often than not, the answer is no. One reason why learning to prioritize wisely matters so much is that the alternative, which is to fit everything that needs to be done into every day, is nigh impossible. Your jam-packed schedule may look flawless on paper, but what happens when any of the following occur? You run late You fall ill A planned activity runs long A planned activity is rescheduled An unplanned priority…
12 Days of Time Management: Prioritize
As we enter another holiday season, it is important to take stock not just of what we want, but what we already have. Each one of us has as many seconds, minutes, and hours in a day as anyone else. How we allocate that time makes all the difference, which is why we’re sharing our 12 Days of Time Management for Teens: Prioritize Wisely While most modern high school students may not understand exactly what life as an adult holds, many are juggling just as many commitments. Even worse, each teacher seems to think that his or her subject is more important than the rest, while coaches and activity directors also demand unwavering commitment. What is a teen to do? Successful professionals in every field know the simple secret to massive productivity: prioritize wisely. Evaluate everything on your plate and determine which tasks or commitments outrank the rest. This concept…