The first thing that any graduate student or even the college students learn is the fact that there is never enough time in the day for you. How can you make your life easy and keep yourself sane when you are overloaded with assignments, researches, courses, teachings, and a life of your own having several issues. In that case, there is always an easy way out. Begin with maintaining an academic calendar that would keep a track of your days. Time management however, entails more than keeping a calendar. It requires the identification of your obligations, carefully considering the importance of it, and making choices about how to divide your time for different activities or different commitments that are lined up in a row.

Use Multiple To-do Lists
At this stage of life, however, only one to-do list would not be enough to manage the load of work. Use multiple lists to organize the tasks topic wise or according to the context. For example, you may maintain lists for each area of your life, such as home expenses (separate list for grocery, bills, and any other household tasks), social (lists of emails, contacts on face book, lists of friends and family members that are likely to be called for a task), and school (obviously to maintain the school related tasks, like meetings with professors or any assignments that are given by specific teachers).

Break each large task into Actionable Easy Tasks
The trick to make consisting progress on all your tasks, especially the tasks related to your academics, is to separate each of your task into smaller component tasks. For example, many students have an item recorded on their academic list called: Write a paper for XI Class. Now that’s one big task to be done. Each time you look at the task it may seem overwhelming to you, so you give it a glance on move on to the task that is easier as compared to this one. What is the definition of an “easy” task? It’s actually an actionable task – one that might have a specific beginning as well as an end and consists of steps that are small and easy to be tackled. Easy tasks are always less overwhelming because they are clear cut. To make sure that you are able to tackle big tasks, such as writing a paper, it’s important to break it into small “easy” and actionable tasks, such as:

– Review the textbook that is in your course for ideas on writing papers
– Run a search on Internet on each of the idea to weed out any inappropriate topics
– Choose any of the two topics
– Meet with the professor to discuss the topics from which you have to make a choice – to pick on a better topic
– Make a decision that pleases you.
– Brainstorm the search phrases and the topics for your library and the Internet searches – And so on so forth

Prioritize your Tasks
One you are done preparing your lists, you may however find that you have much more to do then you actually ever realized – and feel the pressure on you for the time being. Take a long breathe and try to relax first. You don’t have to do all of it right now. Some of it can wait and be done later while, some of the work can wait even a little longer according to the dates of submission, and some may just never get done. That is okay only if you prioritize your tasks.

What’s truly important to you right now? School work is however, important, but some tasks may be more important than others. For example, supposedly, your professor always assigns weekly short papers. You may feel that completing the short papers before starting to work on the large term papers that are for the same class would be a better idea. Prioritize! How much would the weekly papers affect your grades as much the term paper would? Many students spend most of their time working on tasks that seem to be easy, like short weekly papers that however accounts for a small percentage of their grade. For example, the weekly short papers may be just 15% of your grade while large assignments just like a term paper; it may take 50% of your grade away just because you gave your 15% more priority than this one. Always prioritize to ensure that you are directing your efforts to what matters. This might be true in school but also in your personal life when you give priority to little things and let go off the major things in your life. How important is the kitchen floor being marbled properly?

Set deadlines for yourself!
Academic work however, entails many steps to be followed. Always set a realistic deadline for each step. How do you actually determine as to what is realistic? Sit down with a calendar in your hands and think as to how much time you would take on a project each day and how much you will be able to complete in that much time. Use the estimate that you had calculated in the beginning as your deadline and then try to complete it by then. Recognize, that you may however, have to adjust your deadlines. We often tend to overestimate the amount of work that we actually accomplish. Overestimating is something that is common with everyone as its human psyche. Take this tendency to overestimate in account by beginning your assignments earlier than you have planned to.

Be Flexible
However, to-do lists are wonderful to help you organize and prioritize your life in a way that makes things easy for you, always remember that there will be interruptions as well as distractions in your work. Try to allow time for all that from before to avoid any confusions in the end where you sit and think as to where did you waste a particular part of your time when you were suppose to work on something?

Go with your Flow
Always consider your own biological peaks and lows. Are you a morning or an afternoon person? Or you work the best at night? Plan your day accordingly. Save the most difficult work for a time when you are at your best and nothing can stop you from working with concentration.

Say “NO”
Sometimes we take on too much on ourselves. Whether it is an extra course, some other job responsibility, or any extracurricular activity, consider the importance of each one of it before you agree to do it. Also keep in mind your schedule and availability of time before you decide on taking something new.

Make the best use of Wasted Time
Have you ever noticed that you have wasted so much of your precious time in commuting, standing in lines, and waiting for so long (for doctors, advisors, managers, etc)? Always carry pocket work to make use of your time that would otherwise be wasted in all those useless forms of entertainment that do no good for you. Carry a short reading assignment or a set of flash cards to study. Or use that time to write in your planner and organize yourself in a better way. For example, ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there, when all of it adds up you will realize that you can actually get more out of your time.

More on Time Management
– Make use of the Time Management Tips
– Use an academic calendar for that purpose
– Plan out a week-by-week academic planner

Planning and To-Do Lists
– The Timer Trick – that would time your activities
– Get it done using a To-Do List
– Use a projector Planner that would ease it more for you

Suggested Reading
– Get Yourself Motivated to Work
– Do you work too much?
– Stop Procrastinating

Author Bio: Courtesy: Flash Term papers Follow us on twitter P.S(Do not add this in article): Publishing of this article without the proper hyperlinks/author details will be reported to authorities which may cause removal of the content, site or blog completely.

Category: Education
Keywords: term papers, term paper writing, term paper help