Reorganizing your life during the busy semester

Do you feel overwhelmed with schoolwork and other responsibilities right now? For many students, balancing midterms, work, volunteering, and personal responsibilities can be incredibly overwhelming at times.  It can be hard to balance everything you have to do during this busy time of year. However, developing a few key strategies to manage your time can significantly reduce this stress, leading to better academic outcomes and personal health and wellness. Here are a few tips to help you manage your time this week:

1. Plan ahead and stay organized. Create a schedule for yourself and stick to it. This can be a rough weekly schedule, or a detailed and specific daily routine written each day. Establishing these patterns in our work can help us be more productive in the long run.
2. Know your strengths. If you know that you do not perform well under pressure, make sure to schedule enough time to work on something before a deadline. Leave yourself enough time to ask for help or work with others. If you know that you do perform well under pressure, you can take advantage of this while still giving yourself enough time to produce your best work. Not everyone has the same strengths, so don’t feel bad if your work habits don’t match up to your peers! Establishing your own checkpoints with hard deadlines within a task can help you play to your own strengths.
3. Take advantage of short periods of free time. You don’t always have to accomplish large tasks every day. Using five minutes of time each day to complete small parts of a large project will still help you reach your goal, and you will appreciate the time you save in the long run when you are finally able to sit down and focus on the large task at hand. 
4. Make to-do lists. It is important to have a visual reminder of the work you need to do. In addition to this, checking off boxes on a to-do list is always satisfying and can provide you the sense of accomplishment you need to keep going.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. No matter how well you manage your time, there will always only be 24 hours in a day. Sometimes you will have to prioritize the most important tasks in your routine and delegate the rest to others. It is important to set boundaries and let people know when they are taking advantage of your time or overburdening you with responsibilities. 
6. Take care of yourself. There is nothing better you can do for yourself than making sure you stay safe and healthy while working on a task. This can mean taking breaks to go on refreshing walks or getting coffee, or even doing your remote work in natural spaces like a park or your backyard. Remember, it doesn’t do you any good to overwork yourself, and you are capable of accomplishing everything you need to do this week!