Time Management Strategies for Higher Education Success

This essay delves into the crucial role of time management in higher education, emphasizing its significance for students' success. It begins by defining time management and highlighting its benefits, such as reduced stress, improved decision-making, and increased opportunities. The essay then explores how effective time management aids in planning and achieving academic goals. It also addresses common obstacles like procrastination and perfectionism, offering strategies to overcome them. Furthermore, the essay provides techniques for enhancing reading comprehension and improving knowledge retention, essential skills for academic achievement. The conclusion summarizes the key takeaways, underscoring time management as a cornerstone for a successful and organized academic journey.

STUDY SKILLS FOR
HIGHER EDUCATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Time management is primarily the coordination of various tasks as well as activities in
order to enhance the efficiency of the individual's effort. Time management becomes an
important part of everyone's life as it helps them to prioritize the activities and allocate the time
accordingly. Time management is basically important for planning and achieving the various
goals. The main purpose of this essay is to understand the importance of time management in an
individual's life as well as the barriers which they face while doing so. This essay addresses the
meaning of time management, Evaluation of time management benefits, how it helps in planning
and achieving goals, Obstacles while effectively managing the time and techniques to create
retention as well as reading comprehension.
MAIN BODY
1.1 Time management
Time management is basically the methodology of planning as well as controlling the
amount of time that would be spent on particular activities (Oettingen and et.al., 2015). In short,
it is all about prioritizing the tasks so that right time is being allotted to useful activities.
Time management benefits
An effective management of time helps an individual to organize their work and
complete it without exhaustion within a short time period. Thus, this have numerous benefits
namely:
Less stress
Managing the time effectively directly impacts the mental health of an individual. It
reduces the level of stress whether from work or from personal life. At workplace, allocating the
correct amount of time to every deadline directly decreases the anxiety level of employees along
with stress and eventually increases their productivity (Geldmann and et.al., 2015). Besides this,
when an individual adequately prioritize all the daily tasks then their efficiency increases as they
remain ahead of the time.
Improved decision making
An effective management of time helps an individual to make the decision by considering
all the perspective which enhances their ability of decision making. Through managing the time,
employees generally makes the list of important activities which helps them in making the right
decision in different situations. Apart from this, allocating the right amount of time helps in

eliminating the useless activities as well as the tasks that can be delayed and thus this activates
the mind of an individual and they begin to examine more options which would be best for
making efficient decision.
More opportunities
When an individual begin to realize the importance of time then they try to look for each
and every opportunity that would help them in prospering in future. An good management of
time helps the employees at workplace to waste less time on different trivial activities and hence
leads them to various opportunities. When people work efficiently, they save their much valuable
time which eventually assist them in steeping out and looking for new ways of developing their
future and relevant skills.
Effective management of time in planning and achieving goals
Time management plays a crucial role in planning the activities wherein an individual
plans their routine tasks beforehand which helps them making best utilization of time. Through
managing the time correctly, an individual or employee in the organization are able to make a
task plan wherein they cut down the useless activities and prioritize the tasks along with allotting
the required time that would be needed for completing it. An effective planning directly helps the
employees in predicting their future as well as make them aware of their long as well as short
term objectives. Besides this, crucially managing the time helps people to adopt the planned
approach in order to finish the work before time as well as provide them with the in depth
knowledge of the resources that would be required for efficiently planning the schedule. As
planning is directly related to attaining the long and short term objectives, effective management
of time indirectly contributes in deducing the path for achieving these two. Managing the time
effectively tells an individual as to what path would be taken for attaining the goals that would
be achieved for short term. It assist them in distributing resources for each goal. The good
management of time helps an individual to know what is important and what is not which helps
them in realization of the time frame for completing activities. This would create a sense within
them to recognize that what they precisely want to achieve in future and how much resources and
time would be required for attaining it.

1.2 Obstacles in time management
While effective management of time leads to attaining all the goals whether short or long
term, but the individual generally encounters various obstacles that comes in their path in their
path while prioritizing the tasks. These generally includes
Procrastination
Procrastination is generally the habit of delaying the work intentionally or unintentionally
(Grissom, Loeb and Mitani, 2015). Some individuals tend to avoid the tasks which seems
difficult to them and remain uninterested in steeping out of their comfort zone. Same happens at
the workplace where employees are likely to delay their work which they think is out of their
control and believes in taking the simple path of completing it. When they comes across the
project which is not tempting enough, they generally find excuses for postponing it and does not
pay attention to it.
Seeking perfection
Achieving too much perfection in each and every task will cause the individual to spend
excessive time on useless aspects (Kirillov and et.al., 2015). In a nutshell, people tend to focus
extremely on small details which nobody can notice and hence waste their time in reviewing
their work thousand time which eventually leads unnecessary delays. Finding perfection in every
project usually increase their pressure, decreases their productivity and also misuse their valuable
time which can be spent on much useful tasks.
Ineffective planning
Some people lacks the skills of planning their schedule effectively in the sense that they
remain confused about the important tasks and the amount of time that would be required for
achieving it which ultimately leads to wasting their valuable time on trivial activities (Ikawa and
Kawamoto, Hitachi Ltd, 2016). They remain reluctant to organize their work and tend to spend
much time in either avoiding that task or delegating it to others. This habit of not planning
adequately becomes the biggest obstacle in managing the time effectively.
Strategies for creating retention as well as comprehension
Comprehension
Comprehension is basically the ability within an individual to understand as well as
derive the meaning from the written as well as spoken language. The basic strategy or technique
for increasing the reading comprehension within individual includes:

Reading out loud
Reading any subject or topic aloud helps the individual to process the information more
concisely as well as improve their reading skills. While reading, the individual would be able to
understand the in-depth meaning of every word.
Rereading to create fluency
In order to gain the better knowledge from text and improve the reading comprehension,
an individual would need to read smoothly which is fluency (Asher, 2017). This would
ultimately increase their practice of decoding the words more quickly as well as would enable
them to become more fluent in what they are reading.
Thinking much before reading
Much before reading the text, an individual needs to think about the questions as what
they are about and what they focus on. In short, thinking about the topic before reading will
assist them to be more selective rather than comprehending every sentence.
Retention
Retaining the acquired knowledge becomes important for the students to ensure that that
the content remain in mind for long term. Here are some of the techniques for improving the
learning retention
Start with a story
A significant way of bumping up the statistics of knowledge retention is to know the least
known fact that the students remember the things better when they have some emotional
connection with the things learned. This comprise storytelling where narrating the situation will
help the reader to relate the topic and would immensely engage them in absorbing the matter.
Active learning
Active learning enhances the engagement of reader and results in better retention of
knowledge (Emke, Butler and Larsen, 2016). Using the interactive activities, simulations as well
as scenarios will help to bring the students as well trainees at workplace within learning
environment and would help them in understanding the problem form every perspective.
Test and quiz
The most simplest technique for retaining the acquired knowledge is to inculcate the quiz
in learning content. It assists the learners to have the track of their progress ans will allow them
to know what have they learned as well as where they needs improvement. Besides this, it would

also enable them to know the important topics which needs more focus as well as will provide
the means for achieving the objectives of learning.
CONCLUSION
It has been summarized that time management is the key for successful life where it helps
the people to achieve their goals and overcome their inefficiencies. The numerous time
management benefits like improved decision making, less stress helps the individual to
effectively meet the uncertainties. On the other hand, the obstacles like procrastination, less
planning prevents the individual in effectively managing their work. Apart from this, an effective
management of time helps them to achieve their long as well as short term objectives. For
managing the time adequately, there are some strategies for improving reading and retention
which eventually makes them more organized.

REFERENCES
Oettingen, G and et.al., 2015. Self‐regulation of time management: Mental contrasting with
implementation intentions. European Journal of Social Psychology.45(2), pp.218-229.
Grissom, J. A., Loeb, S. and Mitani, H., 2015. Principal time management skills: Explaining
patterns in principals’ time use, job stress, and perceived effectiveness. Journal of Educational
Administration.53(6).pp.773-793.
Kirillov, A. V and et.al., 2015. Theory and practice of time-management in education. Asian
Social Science.11(19). p.193.
Geldmann, J and et.al., 2015. Changes in protected area management effectiveness over time: A
global analysis.Biological Conservation.191.pp.692-699.
Ikawa, N. and Kawamoto, S., Hitachi Ltd, 2016. Time-series data management device, system,
method, and program. U.S. Patent 9,298,854.
Asher, S. R., 2017. Topic interest and children’s reading comprehension. In Theoretical issues in
reading comprehension.(pp. 525-534). Routledge.
Emke, A. R., Butler, A. C. and Larsen, D. P., 2016. Effects of team-based learning on short-term
and long-term retention of factual knowledge. Medical teacher.38(3). pp.306-311.