When there is any assignment due or our exams are near, most of us often complain, “Why is there so little time?”

Do you want to know why we always seem to be out of time? I will tell you why. The simplest and most concise answer is that we do not utilise our time properly.

Days before our exams or any such important task, we are busy playing games or probably watching movies, but the river of time continues to flow. Time does not stop, we stop utilising it effectively.

I will share some tips that I used to utilise my time properly. You can also follow them and brainstorm some other ways that work best for you.

Make a to-do-list

The first thing we can do is to make a list of the important tasks of the day. This will not only help us organise our time properly, but, at the end of the day, we will know what we were able to accomplish and what we missed. Noting things in black and white on a paper is taking your first step towards self-improvement and getting organised.

Many people often delay their tasks and justify their laziness by saying, “We will do it tomorrow, since we have so much time.”

My dear readers, I would advise you not to act upon this. The disadvantage of this is that you will have less time in the end when any deadline will loom right ahead, like a test or the exams. Because of this, your result would suffer. There will be no improvement in you.

Just imagine, if you utilise your time well and have already accomplished the tasks of the day, at the end, you would even get the time to play without getting scolded by parents for not studying. Then you would also be able to proudly say, “Let’s call it a day!”

Do not complain

You might wonder “Why should I not complain when I am given more homework or when my parents give me extra work to do, like washing dishes, when they could have given this task to my siblings?”

My dear readers, focusing on such complains will take away your attention away from the important tasks that require your attention, like studying or a useful hobby such as reading books or painting. Not only this, it would become a cause for you to be scolded by your parents.

There should be a solution for this problem. Of course the key is always created before the lock.

You can manage your time properly by doing the work which demands to be done on priority basis, then you will have a lot of time for other stuff. For the remaining time that you have after completing your priority task, you can spend it as you wish — in painting, playing or anything that you have interest in. Yes, even watch movies.

But this time, your parents are not going to scold you since you have already completed your important schoolwork. Good news, right?

Observe others and your surroundings

You might not consider it important but, believe me, it is really important. You might be thinking about how it is connected to managing time.

Well, my dear readers, think carefully. Look around you. There are so many people with more experience than you. I am not telling you to approach them to help you out with your task, but just observe them to note how they manage their time in doing their assigned tasks.

If you are completing any work which would consume at least two hours of your time, you may find someone doing similar work more efficiently. If you follow their style of doing things, you are likely to complete your work in less time too.

Let us take the example of an assignment you have to write about “Global warming”. If you research about it, it will take you at least 20 to 30 minutes to Google information about it. Then you will take some time to understand that information and write it, which will not take less than another 30 minutes.

However, if you have already read about it somewhere, like seen a poster or a book, or watched a news report or documentary on the subject, you would already have some knowledge about it.

Congratulations! This will reduce your research time and you can get to writing about it straight away. Since little drops make an ocean, by saving a little amount of time on every task, you would be able to save a lot of your time.

Plan ahead

Planning ahead is one of the most useful habits of successful people. So how do we plan ahead? What do we plan ahead for? How will it benefit us?

These questions or others must be exploding in your mind. Now let’s break the train of your thoughts to look at it more carefully.

When we plan ahead for things like a test a week away, we should be fully prepared for it in a couple of day so that we will only have to do some revision the night before. It will leave us free to do other things. And the most important advantage of planning ahead is that we don’t know what the future holds — maybe the teacher might assign a lot of homework just before the test. This could leave us with little time to practice for the test and we may end up saying to ourselves, “I should have prepared for it before.”

You must be thinking, “These words look so persuasive, but these look best on paper! It is too difficult to be working and planning all the time. I can’t change my habit.”

No, my friends, this is not the case. You are unique and distinct from everyone else, you should use every opportunity to turn yourself into someone you love to admire. These are just some words in the newspaper and can get thrown around carelessly, but the message they convey can change you. You are the one who can today take a step to improve your personality and your life. Start working towards a brighter future today.

You are still reading? Then get up! Go! Get some work done and consider my advice, who knows, maybe you can become the most successful person around you in the future.

Good Luck! Love yourself, but do not forget to improve the aspects that can take you further on the road of success.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 30th, 2021