Time management – Approach to writing an A+ grade assignment

Managing time for your assignment is an indispensable skill that every successful students need to learn, especially in college. Unlike high school where teachers, mostly structured your assignments and classes filled your day, in college, you will have comparatively less in-class time, more outside of class work, and a great deal of freedom and flexibility. Generally, students get overwhelmed by this freedom, and don’t realize the importance of time management to get the most of this flexibility. And this negligence very clearly gets reflected in their grades.

Plan your time

Typically, in graduate or even undergraduate level a student should spend 2 hours outside class, per hour of class time. This means that if you are taking a 12 credit course, then every week you should try to spend at least 24 hours outside class for reading, writing for class as well as an assignment. On an average, 10 to 15 hours outside class-time should be reserved for completing a 1000 to 2000 word assignment. The most effective way to use this time is to spread it over a few weeks, depending on the deadlines of various assignments. Nowadays, almost everyone has access to smart phones, you can use free planning application like Google Calendar, with a reminder feature. Use this type of application to spread out the stipulated time for the assignment over a week or multiple weeks.

Time management comprises of four main components:

• Organization: Realizing the basic routines and systems that benefit you most can be extremely useful and remove a lot of worry from your life. Some examples are: where to store notes, how much sleep you need, what sort of sleep schedule fits you best, when to work, etc. Making these beneficial routines for yourself will maximize your productivity and leave your mind free to contemplate other matters. I am not suggesting any one size fits-all method of routines, instead figure out what works best for you and your unique circumstances. Staying organized is also a must for just about any serious multi-tasking.
• Prioritization: You should not only prioritize between your personal, social and academic life, but also create detailed priority plans for various courses and assignments depending on deadlines and the importance of those assignments and credit of courses link to those assignments.
• Pareto principle: The third components might be the least well-known one. The basic idea of this principle is that for most areas in life you can get 80% of the results or end product, with a well-placed 20% of the effort or input. Understand that in terms of assignments as well as courses to extract maximum benefit out of your entire effort.
• Focus: Once all the above components are taken care off then you need to focus and carry out your plans diligently.

Managing Assignments:

Following points will highlight how you can efficiently manage your assignments.

• Always, put aside some time in each week to work on assignments for each subject.
• Allocate yourself a small part of the assignment writing process each week.
• Try to use a semester planner
  • Write in the weeks of the semester and the courses that you are doing.
  • Assign some portions of the writing task to each subject every week.

The following diagram shows an example of semester planner.

(Source: http://www.uq.edu.au/student-services/learning/effective-time-management-for-assignments)

For effective time management, please see how to plan your assignment and how to structure your assignment. Along with these, always keep sufficient time for editing and proofreading the assignment. Also check out other steps of finishing an assignment.