It’s back-to-school season, so let’s talk about time management! Your mental health can impact your ability to effectively manage your time, and your time management can impact your mental health.
Poor time management can lead to:
- Anxiety
- Low mood
- Low self-esteem
- Poor grades or poor work reviews
- Burnout
- Poor sleep quality
Effective time management:
- Set boundaries with yourself and others (more on this, next week)
- Organize your tasks by priority
- Break down each task into sub-tasks
- Create a routine. This might be difficult, so start with one thing at a time, like going to bed at the same time every night. Once you get that down, build on your routine.
- Reward yourself when you meet your goals
- Forgive yourself when you don’t get everything done
- Be patient with yourself as you learn and build new habits!
Free or low cost tools
- Forest (Phone app or Google Chrome Extension) – stay focused and plant trees along the way
- Marinara: Pomodoro Timer (Google Chrome Extension) – time management assistant
- Red/yellow/green task
- Kanban
- Color code your classes or work projects
