How Can I Improve My Time Management Skills to Save My College Career?

[Mesmer]

I have a problem that I need to solve in a hurry or my college career will soon be over.

My problem is I work too slow. It takes me a really long time to get even simple assignments done in a reasonable amount of time. Time management is another big issue for me. I literally spend hours and hours in the library doing my homework, anywhere from 6 to 8 hrs at a time. However, at the end of the day I might only be a quarter of the way finished. I usually spend Friday evenings and all day Saturday in my university's library. Tonight it seems that I have as much homework due on Monday as was assigned to me last week. I might get 2 hours of sleep tonight, and still won't have everything done. Any advice on how to manage my workload?

 

[quasar987]

What exactly is the cause of the slowliness?

You don't see how to solve the problems and you think about them for hours on end? Or you try stuff blindly until you land on the right answer? Or it's the reading of the theory that's taking a long time? Or what?

 

[ranger]

I suspect that you do not have an understanding of the concepts if its taking you along time to do simple problems. This is the only logical reason becuase you cannot relate the concept to the problem. Before you spend that many hours doing homework, reread your notes and the text to get a better understanding.

 

[verty]

It could also be that you are worried about the workload or perhaps about your competence and that leads to procrastination. Sometimes you just need to take one thing at a time and not look too far ahead. I think goal setting can be counteractive because in order to set realistic goals, you already need to be a consistent studier and must already be able to judge how long things will take but surely you must know the work to know how long it will take.

So perhaps you are trying too hard and becoming despondent. Breaks are important, getting 2 hours of sleep is no way to study. What I would do is decide how long you will study for, then heuristically judge which of your homework is the most relevant, and the take it one step at a time.

If you get some successes under your belt then perhaps you will be confident to take on a greater workload, but punishing yourself is probably not going to bring about improvements.

The paradox of choice says that too much choice can be debilitating, but I think there is a paradox of study that says that taking on too much work or setting too many goals can be equally debilitating.

One more thing, the fact that you are disgusted with yourself is a good sign that you might be pushing yourself too hard, setting yourself up to fail. That's no way to boost morale. Get back to basics, take things one step at a time.

 

[pivoxa15]

You sound like me. What subjects are you doing. I do maths and physics and it takes me so long because problems gets more complex and cumulative. But my fundalmentals are weak so not making connections in little things here and there can make the problem in general extremely difficult to solve.