Schedule Your Way to Success

In college, time management is essential, but it can be hard to master. Discover how to better schedule yourself for the year through these simple steps.

Do you ever wonder how some people are successful? How do they manage to do a million things and still enjoy their life? How do they do well in their classes and still get to go to every party?

Author Paul J. Meyer said, “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

This idea is critical to time management and overall success during your college experience. Follow these four tips to start the semester with scheduling success.

1. Most important tasks (MIT)

According to Josh Kaufman’s philosophy, a Most Important Task (MIT) is a critical task that will create the most important results you’re looking to achieve. Everything on your plate is not critically important, so don’t treat everything on your task list equally. By taking a few minutes to identify a few tasks as particularly important, you’ll make it easier to focus on achieving them first.

Schedule your MITs at the top of your list. You will have more time and feel fabulous about your success.

2. Plan ahead and set goals

Success doesn’t just happen overnight. It happens because you plan for it to happen. Planning ahead and making goals are critical to your success. Plan ahead and set short-term and long-term goals. Check them off one at a time, and success will happen sooner than you think. Take 30 minutes in the morning to go through your goals for the day, week and beyond. You can also learn more about how to make the most of your Passion Planner here.

3. Set time limits

Are you afraid of upcoming deadlines? Not anymore. After setting your MITs and planning ahead, you will always be ahead. Deadlines are not a threat anymore, but actually your friend. Setting deadlines helps you map out your timeline and recognize the goals you have already achieved along the way. You can do it!

4. Do less

Spend your time on reaching valuable goals, rather than on endless, unimportant tasks. Always ask yourself, is this really important? Does this go to my high priority list? Do the things that help you achieve your big goals, and take out the things that don’t. You need to stay on budget? Don’t get that cup of coffee from Starbucks today. You want to get good grade for your final project? Start working on it today, and apply a little bit of what you learned this week to the project.

After applying these tips, you’ll be on your way to a great semester. Be sure to check out our workshop for more details to learn how to schedule your way to success!

— By Wynona Benson, Communication, MS ‘20