At last you are now in college! Only a few more years and the career you have been dreaming to achieve for years is already within your grasp.
However, the path is not easy and wreath with beds of roses. Lack of financial means to pay for your tuition, books and other necessary expenses can be an aspect to make your college student life miserable. Of course, you can get a part time job to and support yourself, but it will be precious time away from your studies.
You need accomplish also other college activities in successfully finishing your course. Notwithstanding old and new friends which will surely invite you to social events.
Well then, you need to hone up your time management skills and draw up a time management calendar. Having a Calendar of your activities will help you get through the difficulty of balancing your time between study and work, extra-curricular and social activities with friends.
More and more State Universities and Community Colleges are aware of the fact that college students have to work in order to survive and finance their college education. Because of this insight, these schools adjust their class schedules to meet every students needs.
However, administrators and advisors in the office find a hard time of scheduling and managing classes for working college students. This is because there are too many people to schedule and manage and few people to draw up the class schedules.
College working students like you who practice effective time management strategies can be a big help. You can assist university and community colleges administrators in drawing up class schedules that are effective for working students. Professionals at college need your definite schedules so that they can draw up a fair enough class schedules.
You can work out by yourself an efficient time management schedule, which takes into consideration your studies, and part time job schedules. In the end, with an effective time student calendar time management plan, you also save money.
Here is a great method of setting up your calendar of time management schedule:
1. First off, you must have a semester calendar. Universities and other colleges provide students with blank semester calendars. You can obtain one through online or create one according to your own liking.
2. In the semester calendars, enter your class schedules, project due dates, registration dates and other important dates. These important dates may come from your class syllabi and the school timetables provided in their brochures and announcements. Enter each date as you find them into your semester calendar.
Set up your own due dates for each phase of a big project, like term papers and projects. You can also add personal commitments to social and personal events
Maintaining a semester calendar as your time management method will give you a view of what commitments you need to fulfill. It will help you plan before a given schedule. This way, you will avoid last minute disasters.
3. You can also set up a weekly planner. There are available weekly planners provided by institutions you can obtain them online or get them at the registration office during enrollment. If you want to, you can also buy or create your own.
In the weekly planner, you need to enter your regular class schedule and other obligations on a weekly basis, like work, club or church meetings and assembly.
Make it a point that you insert ample time for review and reading before and following each class lecture you attend.
Take note of it in your planner. If you are wondering the enough time to put in for a review, have a general rule to plan two hours of study for each hour a lecture transpired.
Plan your regular time off from work and school. Enter bed and wake up times in your planner. Meanwhile, for projects, exams and other personal commitments, leave off blank slots
4. Tally out your weekly planner and semester calendar every Friday night or late afternoon. This will enable you to check out the things you have accomplished for that week and adjust on the activities that you still need to do for the following week.
Incorporating these other commitments can be done by placing them in the blank time schedule you have on your weekly planner. Then add new items you are committed in for the incoming week. Enter new things and schedules as new obligations, commitments and engagements come up.
You can have your weekly planner to check out before saying your affirmation to a commitment or engagement. If you find you have a previous entry on the said date and time, then it is best to turn down the invitation early on.
5. Every night create a daily “action list” for the following day. Use your weekly and semester calendar to do this. You can even put in categories to set your priorities straight.
Having a calendar for effective time management will reveal its importance when you reach your goals. The main purpose of maintaining it is that it will help remind you of the key goals you have set forth to achieve.

Adapted from “Failure is NOT an Option” by Patty Benton, www.virtualvacoach.com/vaguide.html

www.moretime4u.org

© 2005 JERPAT Virtual Assistants

I was very fortunate to be included in the Success Principles Workshop with Cheryl Callighan http://www.theentrepreneurstoolbox.com/.  Though I don’t go into nearly as much detail and all the steps Cheryl does, I have adapted some of the methods to work for me (you can contact her and/or get the Success Principles by Jack Canfield to expand upon his). I started in May, and have reached some goals that I had set for a few years ago.

Before I start with the steps to writing your goals, I want to first strongly encourage you to write your goals down and then keep them posted where you will see them daily. Read through them at least once a day, if not 3 or 4 times during the day. This will keep them fresh in your mind and aware of where you are headed!

1.   First set 2-4 goals for each of the following areas. If you would like to do more, that is fine. Be realistic, though, in what you want to achieve. Note that in the example goals, I am very specific. I set monetary values, numbers or anything else pertinent to know exactly what I want to achieve with the specific goal.

a.    Financial- What would you like to achieve financially with your business? Some people just want extra spending money, while others need a set amount to quit their job.

Here is an example goal I set for myself: $125.00 for Anjonae’s preschool.

b.   Career- Where would you like to go with your career? Do you want to quit your job? Do you want to eventually not be working at all and retire?

Here is an example goal I set: Start coaching 4 students/week (at this time I was just establishing my coaching program).

c.    Personal Goals- What would you like to achieve for yourself? This has nothing to do with your business, but everything to do with keeping yourself healthy and happy (please note: These are not just health goals, but any goals you want to accomplish in your personal life).

Here is an example goal I set: Lose 50 lbs.

2.   Now that you have your goals set, determine when you will achieve them by. Be realistic. Don’t say that by next week you will be making $500 unless you are already working on a perspective client. Below are the same goals I listed above with their specific achievement dates. Just for your knowledge in seeing the time frame, these goals were set approximately May 2, 2005.

a.    Financial- $125.00 for Anjonae’s preschool by 8-31-05

b.   Career-  Start coaching 4 students per week by 8-31-05 (I achieved this 6-13-05, so I added to this goal that by 8-31-05 I would have 8 coaching students. By 8-31-05, I had 13 coaching students.)

c.    Personal Goals- Lose 50 lbs by 12-31-05.

d.   Community Service or Contribution- Donate services to church for business book by 11-15-05 (I set this so far out because at that point, I knew I had a lot going on during the summer and would not have time to get this project moving.)

3.   Now that you have established your goals and when you want to achieve them by, you need a plan of action. Take each goal and decide the steps you need to take to achieve them. Include any monetary expenses that will be involved, as you need to ensure that you have the money to achieve that goal. If you do not, then go back and change your achievement date to one that will allow you the time to earn the necessary money. Here are example plans of action. I did not include all of them, as I know you want to finish this book in a relatively reasonable time frame.

a.    Financial- $125.00 for Anjonae’s preschool by 8-31-05

·      Send out 100 postcards/month $40 on http://www.expresscopy.com (This total includes printing, addressing with a list you provide, stamps, and mailed.)

·      Make 20 follow-up calls (or 1 hour’s worth) per week, starting one week after postcards are mailed.

b.   Personal Goals- Lose 50 lbs by 12-31-05 (as of 6-31-05 I had lost 5 lbs-looking at that weight loss amount I will be adjusting my goal to 3-31-06)

·      Eat smaller portions and eat slower.

·      Eat breakfast (I never did this before).

·      Eat 1-2 small snacks during the day-no more than that!

·      Do not eat 2 ½ hours to 3 hours before bed.

·      Drink healthy drinks. No-sugar-added Kool-Aid and Diet A & W Root beer are my drinks of choice.

Congratulations! You now have your goals established. You will keep adding and adjusting your goals as you go. If you need to adjust your goals that are already set, go right ahead. It is very possible that you will come across hitches that will limit you from reaching your goal so you will need to make adjustments. Do not consider this failure, consider this life! You won’t fail unless you don’t try! Sometimes it takes us longer than we plan or want to reach a goal, and that is okay. As long as you continue to work toward that goal, and adjust them as needed.

One other thing I did was to put a picture of a house with mountains in the background and horses in the front on my goals. My ultimate goal (which was not listed above as I have many goals I need to reach to achieve my ultimate goal) is to be able to custom build a house with at least five acres of land. Since I live in Colorado near the mountains and absolutely love my mountains, I want to be sure no matter where I build my house, it is near the mountains and I can have horses! The date I have set for this to be done is 12-12-12. Make sure to have the big goals listed to! It is important to know where you will end up, and what all the other goals are working towards. Everyone has dreams of things they want to accomplish, so set your goals to help you achieve your dreams! 

© 2005 JERPAT

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