Reprint of: 
Introduction to Time Management For University Students
Counseling and Development Center
York University, Toronto, Canada
Copyright (Permission Requested)

In this section:

Have you ever thought of the amount of time you spend waiting in line-ups, commuting, waiting for your next class to start, or on the telephone? If you ever want a wake-up call try to calculate it for yourself. You may already have a sense of this if you've tracked your time. After a while, the few minutes here and there amount to days, months and even years. Since we all find ourselves in these situations at one time or another, we should carefully consider our use of this time. Each time shift listed below contains its unique challenges, and we present you with some really interesting options. These options, if used will transport you from your present state of time management to a whole new level of effectiveness.

Line-ups

Did you know that, over the course of your life, you will spend approximately 8 years waiting in lines? It's true! At the library check-out, waiting for the bus, waiting for the light to turn green at an intersection, buying tickets, and even at amusement parks you find yourself staring mindlessly at the back of someone else's head! Why? Think of what you could be doing. If you carried around a book or some photocopied readings you could be actively engaging your brain in something interesting and exciting.

Listening to taped cassettes of your lecturesis an ideal way to fill times like these, and the review will profoundly aid your recall come exam time. While some people in the line get frustrated and leave, and others wait unproductively, you will be expanding your mind and enriching your education in what is normally considered wasted time.

Commuting

Imagine, most North Americans spend between 1 and 2 hours commuting from home to work or school every day. If you commute, you will probably find 5 to 10 hours of your week taken up in a car, bus or subway. In one year, your commute works out to between 250 and 500 hours. Imagine what it would be like over the course of 4 years. If you study while you commute you could shift up to 2000 hours into your education. That's equivalent to attending all of the required lectures in every course of a 4-year university degree. Impressive! Imagine what your grades would be like.

Now, some readers might say "Well, I'd love to get grades like that, but I just can't study on the bus/subway/walking across campus ..." If you think this, consider the amount of time you spend reading ads, signs, posters and billboards. You are getting good at identifying products that other people want to sell you. All you really need to do is change what you are reading. Even 5 minutes and a couple of pages work out to hours and books. If you happen to be driving, don't read - that's dangerous. But, study anyway. Tape your professor's lecture or yourself reading. You will be amazed at how much you can learn by listening. The key to commuting time is quite simply, use it or lose it.

Between Classes

Quite often you might find that you have a chunk of time, maybe an hour or two, between classes. Without advanced planning you never know exactly what is going to happen during this time. Sometimes, even with a plan, you may find the time to be unproductive. Imagine that you have an hour during which you would like to get some reading done. You find a seat take your book, open it up and begin reading. Depending on where you sat (1, 2 or 3), what happens next can be quite different.

1. In the student centre you experience a deluge of sight and sound distractions. Some few students may be able to read here, but for the majority of us there is so much going on that we won't be able to hear ourselves think. You look around you and see a few others with books open, but only about one in thirty will keep her/his eyes on the book for any duration. Even then, there is no guarantee that they are studying.

2. Inside the library, near the entrance, you choose one of the first open seats in order to save time. It certainly is much quieter than the student centre and you really start to do some reading. However, you may find that you still look up from your book every so often as a particularly attractive passer-by catches your attention. Then you begin daydreaming and your quality reading time goes out the window.

3. In a quiet study area in the library, you find your self seated among others who are also reading quietly. The sight and sound distractions are mostly separated from the reading area. Here is an area where you feel you can really get some work done. The hour passes with few distractions and the reading goes smoothly. By the end of the hour, you may find that you've accomplished much more reading than you thought possible.

Interruptions

Have you ever sat down to study, and not two minutes later something like this happens...

RING, RING

Or maybe you find something like this occurring more often than you would like...

KNOCK, KNOCK

Or perhaps, something like this...

Whatever the case may be, you are interrupted. Your train of thought has been derailed and getting back on track could be difficult. There are a few things that you can do to minimize the impact on your study time.

Answer to Pareto's Priority Puzzler

80? - Hah! You've got to be kidding right? If students spent 80% of their time doing effective and important things do you think we would be sitting here right now talking about time management?

60? - no

40? - Not quite! But give it another try.

10? - no