Monday morning arrives. You breathe in and accept the challenge of the new week. You lose track of time, and suddenly it’s Thursday afternoon, and the overwhelming pressure of Friday’s due dates set in. Your mind is running wild and you have a hundred things you need to do. How did this happen? What could’ve prevented this?

With all the stress of a high school schedule, aligning your priorities is crucial for a healthy lifestyle. Being cautious about managing your time efficiently can impact daily life and set yourself up success. 

Evaluation

Take a minute to yourself and ask “How am I spending my time?” Journaling, talking with others or even just mentally evaluating how much time you are spending on different activities is a great way to understand more about what needs to be changed. Some things you can do to evaluate what you’re spending your time on are making lists, journaling your feelings or writing down your weekly screen time. 

Find your priorities

Understanding what is important to you or what you need to accomplish will make creating a schedule that much easier. Some questions you can ask yourself to find your priorities are “What is important to me? What do I need to spend time on everyday? How much time will these things take?” Writing these things down will help put it into perspective when it comes to making a schedule. 

Keep a calendar or agenda 

Once your priorities are written down or acknowledged, grab a hold of a calendar or agenda. List all of the things you need to do everyday or every week according to the priorities you have in mind. Using sticky notes, highlighters or colored pens can make the process of creating a calendar that much more fun. This will ultimately lead into assigning time limits for each of your daily activities. 

Assign time limits 

With every task or activity listed in your calendar, evaluate how much time will go into each of those things. Thinking about the importance of each activity or task will affect how much time you assign each task. It is also important to make time for sleep, meals or mental health breaks. 

Eliminate distractions

Gaining a new perspective about how much time each task will take can also reveal what is wasting your time. Distractions can come in many different forms like entertainment or social media, and can lead to procrastination. After identifying the distractions some ways to eliminate these problems are sticking to time limits, using visual reminders or finding people to hold you accountable to your limitations. 

Apply it

After spending this time evaluating, prioritizing, limiting and more, the most important thing is application. Making this a routine part of your day and incorporating it into your lifestyle is the only way to truly create change. Reminding yourself to keep this routine is as simple as writing on a sticky note and putting it on your computer so it is the first thing you do once you have the chance.