How to Organize Your Time and Meet Your Academic Deadlines
Students have to face and deal with academic pressure and anxiety throughout their academic life. There are circumstances when students have so many deadlines and commitments to fulfill that they wish for a twenty-fifth hour. In such a situation, you are required to complete tasks in a timely fashion to meet the deadlines. But unfortunately, most of the students keep working on assignments till the last minute.
However, a fraction of students complete their work well ahead of time and have everything sorted out at the time of submission. It is because they understand the time management strategies. This article will discuss how you can organize your time to meet the deadline.
1. Set goals:
First of all, it is imperative to understand what your tasks really are. Without knowing what you have to work on, it is impossible to work on them effectively. Number the tasks and set goals to achieve in a specific time. Without setting specific goals, you will be unable to move on a proper path in a certain direction. By setting goals, you examine the available time against the number of tasks. You try to use the time for maximum benefit and to complete the assignments. Setting proper goals not only enables you to obtain a road map for task completion but drives you to achieve milestones. Make sure you set SMART goals to organize your time and meet your academic deadlines. While smart refers to the literal meaning of smart but also depict the acronyms of the following words:
· Specific:
It is important to set specific, attainable goals. Setting vague and generalized goals is meaningless and a futile strategy to meeting deadlines. Specific goals provide you clarity about which task you will do and why. Also, the specific goal helps you understand the goal itself, and its importance. It addresses questions such as, what do you want to achieve? Why is the goal important, and What are the resources available to complete the tasks.
· Measurable:
The second most important rule of making goals is to ensure they are measurable. By being measurable, it means that they are determinable and can be estimated. Giving a specific range of time for specific assignments makes them measurable. For example, your goals must be like, I will complete XYZ assignment today, and complete essay writing assignment tomorrow, etc. And it should not be like; I will do some work today and some tomorrow. The word ‘some’ is a very vague term and strategy to determine a task that you will achieve. So a measurable goal should address how much, how many questions.
· Achievable:
The third element is the most important element of setting goals. Most of the time, students get motivation all of a sudden and set goals which are unfortunately unachievable. Setting a goal of completing ten assignments in one day starting from scratch is by no means possible. Therefore, it is important to set realistic goals that are attainable.
· Relevant:
The fourth element is setting relevant goals. You must make sure that the goals are important to you and are directly relevant to helping you achieve academic deadlines.
· Time-bound:
Setting a target time is the most imperative part of a goal. The matter of fact is that goals are meaningless without time being set. As we know that time is money and goals without setting time to achieve them are of no worth. For example, one of the main reasons students get essay help from professional essay writers, is because essay writing is a very boring and time taking task (especially when you’re not good at it), and hiring professional academic writers can save a lot of time, so it is a very intelligent move to work smarter not harder.
2. Prioritise your work:
The second more important rule is to know the art of prioritizing your work. There can be a lot of work pending, out of which you must recognize the importance of each task and align them in your schedule accordingly. You must remember the golden rule: Put first thing first. Make sure you work on the task whose deadline is approaching and impede the tasks for which you may have a long time.
3. Leverage a time planner:
In order to organize your time and tasks and to ensure implementation of the strategies, you must use software or a program that keeps your tasks aligned and notify you of your progress. Using Google sheets or Evernote can help you maintain and organize your tasks in the best possible manner.
4. Unlearn procrastination:
Procrastination is one of the leading reasons behind missing academic deadlines. Therefore, when you have assigned tasks and projects, you must omit the concept of procrastination from your life for the time being.
5. Take breaks, but controlled ones:
Working continuously for a long time can tire and drain you, making you lethargic and demotivated to complete your tasks. Therefore, you must take breaks but make sure that the breaks do not last forever. Take controlled breaks in between work.
6. Set rewards:
You can only motivate yourself to work on assignments by setting rewards for each accomplishment. It is human nature that we strive and put effort into something we know is rewarding and will give us benefit in any way. So, use this strategy and keep a reward for each milestone so that you helm to get the reward quickly.
7. Ask for help:
Last but definitely not least, get help if you need it. Most of the time, students squander their time and energy in understanding an assignment. If the deadline is around the corner, you must get assignment writing help from a professional and expert academic writer.
Bottom Line:
In sum, if you want to organize your time and meet your academic deadlines, you must have a determined attitude towards completing your tasks. Moreover, you must follow some of the useful tips such as setting goals, prioritizing your tasks, using a time planner, setting rewards, getting help, and much more.
