<p>Seeing that so many CCers have stellar stats, exceptional ECs, and still have time for CC, I want to learn how you manage your time.</p>
<p>Do you make to-do lists and prioritize your assignments? Do you block out a daily schedule? And most importantly, where do you find the motivation to follow through with your lists/schedules?</p>
<p>Get stuff done. No, really. That’s it.</p>
<p>Think about it this way: You are going to get all your homework done tonight? Why? Because you have to. Now that you’ve told yourself that it’s going to get done, you just have to follow through on that. How much time are you going to spend on that paper? As much time as you need to in order to complete it. This time is constant. Whether you write it tonight or the night before it’s due, you’ll still spend the same amount of time on it. Upon realizing this, you’ll also realize that, in that case, you might as well get it done earlier and/or over the weekend. Same fifteen hours spent writing a paper, but it gets done earlier.</p>
<p>It’s the same thought process you go through when you pull an all-nighter on a Friday/Saturday instead of on a Sunday. If you have to pull one, you might as well pull one on a day preceding a day when you can just sleep in. Again, same time spent, but it’s just displaced a few days earlier so that you’re not sleeping in class on Monday.</p>
<p>love this ^</p>
<p>neltharion- Amazing! Very good advice. :)</p>
<p>Time displacement theory? I like that way of thinking about it 
Although…knowing that I just have to do something eventually doesn’t always motivate me enough to tackle it. But thanks, neltharion; I’ll take your advice to heart.</p>
<p>Get everybody else and the Earth to move at near-light speeds. Remove yourself from that frame of reference. Take advantage of relative time dilation. </p>
<p>What with lectures, work, running, club and committee stuff, and random socializing, I don’t have much time for studying during the day (I’m usually not done with things until around 9-10pm). That’s the first thing. I have a set time during the day when I know I will sit down and start doing homework. Sync it to your own natural rhythm. Some people prefer to go to sleep early and watch sunrises, others work best past 10pm. If you’re an afternoon kind of person, just start your homework right after you get out of school, no matter what. Get into that habit. </p>
<p>Google calendar runs my life. It’s got all of my meetings, future tasks, even upcoming exams and homework. Color coded and everything. Nothing is ever late and I know well ahead of time what I’ll be doing for the week. Get your own system for organizing things. Some people prefer to write things out. One of my friends has a giant board filled with multicolor sticky-notes on the wall of her dorm, as well as a larger than average whiteboard. </p>
<p>I don’t sleep enough. Before an important exam I’ll make sure to get around 8 hours of sleep, but other than that I’m usually up until 1:30am if I’ve got work at 6:30. If I don’t have work, I sleep in. I also take naps throughout the day, which helps a lot and actually brings up my average sleeping time up to around 6-7 hours. Obviously you don’t want to go to the point where you’re lack of sleep interferes with everything else - that would be counterproductive. No point in pulling an all-nighter if you’re going to fail the test the next day.</p>
<p>As for actual motivation, it’s more of an “I’m going to get this done only because it needs to be addressed” kind of mentality. You don’t think about it, you just do it. It’s easier if you know that you’ll be going out later that week; having something to look forward to is always a good motivator. If it’s really important, you can learn to shut down all other thoughts and desires to focus on this one thing. </p>
<p>Yep. That’s pretty much it. Listen to music if you want. Turn on a news channel. But keep it so that it only acts as background noise, or something you glance up at every now and then to disrupt the monotony of homework. Don’t ooVoo your friends.</p>
<p>I don’t think HSL is a good place to ask for time management advice.</p>
<p>That said, I also use Google Calendar.</p>
<p>Google Calendar.</p>
<p>Learn to manage your time NOW. . .you are going to direly need it for college.</p>
<p>
This.</p>
<p>haha I procrastinate a ton. I still get my s*** done though. I just sometimes… don’t really, you know, sleep…</p>
<p>But a thing I like to do is like twice a semester I will take a “mental health day”–just skip school to sleep/catch up on work and my parents say I’m sick.</p>
<p>I’m playing Call of Duty and posting on this board right now. How’s that for time management?</p>