Hello Everyone!
Welcome back to another post! I’m excited to talk about this because having time management skills are so important when it comes to your time in school, clinicals, and when you are working your first or even fifth job! Our lives are very busy with both school, work, and family that we need to stay on top of our game and not let things slide past us or become overwhelmed. So how should we battle the beast of having too many tasks on our to-do list?
There are so many ways to help your busy self. I have some ideas that you can try and I hope some will work for you! I’m sure you’ve seen some of these but hopefully there is something new for you too. If you have any ideas that I didn’t list here, comment in the section below to help out our fellow friends!
Benefits
As we know there are many benefits to having good time management skills. Overall, it can make us feel happier and more energized because our levels of anxiety and stress will diminish. When we are happier, we are able to focus better on the task at hand which in return will improve our quality of work and improve our productivity.
Along with this, we find with better time management that we have a better work-life balance because we now have more free time for ourselves and for the people we care about. This in itself gives us more energy and in the end, we are much happier humans. We shouldn’t be a slave to our schedules. Don’t forget to do things that you enjoy!
Time-Management Ideas
1. Get A Planner/Calendar:
- I know this seems obvious and I’m sure many of you already have one. I am a big advocate of planner usage; in fact I have wayyyy too many. I carry one in my work bag for my monthly overview, I keep my daily schedule on an excel spreadsheet in Google Sheets because I find it easy to keep and change, and I have a whiteboard on my fridge where I keep track of my weekly work schedule. I am incredibly organized and because of it, I never accidentally drive to the wrong clinic on the wrong day, and it is really rare for me to forget any sort of plans that I have made.
- To touch on the topic of my whiteboard, I want to tell you how much I love it! I can easily keep track of my work week, including the other things I have going on and my babe also knows where I’ll be at. It makes life easy in that way. I find that I use my whiteboard and excel spreadsheet every day, where I have used less and less of my actual planner these days. However, when I was in college, my planner was my life! I recommend trying one of these types of “planners” and see what works best for you.
2. Meal Prep:
- I love meal prepping and the reason is because I hate cooking. I know that kinda doesn’t make sense. But what I have done is basically tricked my brain by telling myself that if I can get my week’s meals done in one day, I won’t have to cook for the rest of the week.
- I like easy meals and things that are grab in go from my fridge. I love using my crockpot and making shredded chicken! With it I make white rice and will eat chicken and rice for the entire week. I know, I know, a lot of you will find that boring, but I love chicken and rice. It is one of my favorite meals! I’ll leave my crockpot shredded chicken recipe down below, if you would like to try it as well. I promise it is way better than you think.
- Meal prepping saves me so much time. I am exhausted after work, going to the gym, and working on my own personal business that I find myself too tired and too lazy to cook. By meal prepping, I don’t have to worry about it. It is grab and go. I also did this while in college and it was a life saver because I devoted all my time to class, the gym, and studying. The last thing I want to do is cook!
3. Ask For Help:
- This one I believe a lot of people struggle with, myself included. I don’t like to rely on others or feel like I burden them with my own problems and tasks. I don’t like to ask my friends, family, not even my own honey to help me out even with simple tasks of going to the store. But what I have learned, is that I can’t do it all. I need help sometimes and that is okay.
- My babe has told me many times that I can lean on him when I need help, and I was very appreciative of him when he helped run errands for me when I didn’t have time because of work. I hope what you get from this is to lean on the people who care about you. Even superheroes need help, so don’t be afraid to ask.
4. Be Realistic:
- Don’t put more tasks on your daily to-do list than you can realistically handle. I am 100% at fault for doing this one too many times. I try to pack in as much stuff as I can everyday. Unfortunately, what happens is I feel like a failure when I still have many things left at the end of the day that I didn’t have time to get done.
- Here is where I go wrong with this. Instead of looking at ALL the things that I have accomplished for that day, I instead look at ALL the things that I didn’t. That is a problem with having too many tasks to accomplish in one day. You will always feel like a failure, like you didn’t do enough because the list still has tasks.
- Don’t do this to yourself. It’s not worth it. Now what I do is I be realistic with my schedule. How can I really balance my time and get all the things done? For starters, I post on social media Tuesday through Friday (at least currently). I knew I wanted my weekends off and I don’t want to have to think about work. Secondly, I plan my social media posts in advance and I try to create them early as well. This way I don’t spend everyday of my life devoted to social media.
- Secondly, I told myself that, for my sanity, I will only be uploading one blog post per month (at least for now). I need to take my time seriously and not overwhelm my schedule with constant uploading and giving my life away to the digital world. Although, I do love communicating with you! I just set myself realistic boundaries.
- Lastly, I don’t punish myself any longer if I don’t get something done. I just move the unfinished task to the following day. I tell myself that it is okay to take breaks, everyone should! Don’t beat yourself up for not constantly working. That is insane.
5. Take Breaks:
- I know I just covered this, but I really want to talk about this separately. When I was in college going through my sonography program, I was constantly studying. Studying in class, while at home, while walking my dog, while walking to the gym, while at the gym. It was TOO much. I wore myself out between the stress and the exhaustion.
- I literally had to force myself to relax. I decided to not study while at the gym anymore and gave myself time in the evenings to watch a movie or TV show. This helped me out a bit. By giving myself me time, I reset my mood, and was less stressed all the time.
6. Multi-task:
- If you are currently in school, I understand just how exhausting all this studying can be! How do we cram all of this information in, in just a short time? For me, I found my best study times to be in the afternoon, after class, while walking to the gym, etc. In fact, I gave up driving to the gym because the walk would take me about 30 minutes, and it would give me that time to get up and move AND study at the same time.
- I also did this when walking my dog. My dog is one of those dogs that could care less about actually walking and cares more about sniffing every single plant that exists on this planet. Because of this, the walks were pretty long, and it was easy to study while out and about.
- How my classmates would multitask is they would record the lectures and relisten to them in the car on the way to and from school. I highly recommend doing this if you have long drives and a hard class that this would be helpful for you. Another way you could make this useful is to listen to the lectures while cleaning, cooking, working out, hanging out with the kids, grocery shopping, running errands, etc. These are easy ways to get in studying without having to have a book in front of you!
7. Do The Easy Things First:
- This goes hand in hand with the multitasking section. Getting the easy tasks off your checklist first can help make you feel accomplished and give you the drive you need to power through the more challenging tasks. For example, if you have “take dog for a walk, study for liver exam, meal prep, and work on kidney project”, I would meal prep in the morning (since I study better in the afternoon) and maybe listen to a lecture, walk my dog + study at the same time, then work on the kidney project last. The kidney project sounds to be the most time consuming and needs 100% of my attention, while the other tasks I can accomplish at the same time since they are “easier”.
8. Use apps to keep you off your phone:
- Ugh the struggle is real when trying to stay off of social media. Trust me, I get it. It’s a bad habit that consumes way too much of our time. This can become quite time sucking if it’s not under control. I literally had to delete TikTok because of how much of my life I was giving to it. Maybe this is something to think about doing?
- I know, I know, how dare I mention such a thing. If deleting an app is not something that is in the cards for you, I recommend downloading an app that limits your social media time throughout certain portions of the day. Maybe during times that you are studying late at night, or if you have a big exam coming up and you really need to focus. Think about giving it a try if you tend to be on the soc too much.
That's A Wrap!
Hopefully, some of these ideas were helpful for you and you will be able to implement some of them into your daily life. Remember that it is okay to ask for help and it is okay to take breaks. Get organized, get a plan, and carry on. You can do it!
Shredded Chicken Recipe:
Tools:
- Crockpot
- Can opener
- Knife
- Cutting board
Ingredients:
- Chicken breast
- 1 can chicken broth
- Minced garlic
- 2 whole jalapenos (optional)
- 1 fresh or frozen bag of brussels sprouts (optional)
- 1 fresh head or frozen bag of cauliflower (optional)
- 1 bag of baby carrots (optional)
- 1 yellow onion
- Carne Asada seasoning
- Pepper
How To Make:
- Place chicken, chicken broth, garlic, onion, and seasoning in crockpot and turn on high.
- Once cooked about half way, add in vegetables (don’t add them too soon, otherwise they basically disinigrate).
- If you can shred chicken easily and it is not pink, it is done.