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Five Tips for Managing Multiple Deadlines
Five student recommended strategies for managing all your college projects and deadlines, including obligations not directly related to the classroom.
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by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
Even if you've developed time-management strategies that work on individual projects and assignments, you probably won't have complete control of your time unless you find a system that works for you in managing all your projects and deadlines -- including obligations not directly related to the classroom. Following are several that students swear by. Experiment to find the system or combination of these five systems that works best for you:
1. Determine priorities: Several techniques are available for determining your priorities.
Consider creating a matrix to determine priorities and list projects in the cells of the matrix. A simple one would look like this:
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High importance Low difficulty |
High importance High difficulty |
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Low difficulty Low importance |
High difficulty Low importance |
Obviously, you'd want to do the highly important, not very difficult activities first. The highly difficult but highly important tasks also need to be done but may need more planning. You might consider eliminating any of the low-importance activities, especially those that are highly difficult.
Another commonly used method is to assign letters to each task, "A" for the most urgent, "B" for important items, and "C" for those not as pressing as the "A" and "B" items. "C" items will likely be those outside your schoolwork, such as extracurricular and social obligations. Then assign numbers for the tasks in each category. The most urgent item in the "A" category would be "A1," and so on.
To a great extent, the urgency of each item will be determined by deadlines, due dates, and test dates listed on your syllabi. Be flexible; you'll sometimes need to shift priorities. If you find that you are never getting to the "C" items, you may need to drop them or reconsider your commitment to the organization with which they are associated. Another strategy is try block out a day periodically to try to take care of all the "C" tasks at once.
A third way to organize priorities is to list what must be done today, followed by what must be done this week, this month, and by the end of the semester.
2. Make a to-do list on steroids: Choose a period of time that's workable for you -- today, this week, this month, this semester -- and list everything you need to do. Then prioritize the items on your list according to the preceding criteria. One great advantage of a to-do list is the satisfaction that comes from crossing items off your list, as Cayla, one of the students consulted for this article, asserts: "Don't just make a list of things that you need to do each day in your agenda; actually do them and then cross it off your list so that you can move onto something else."
You can make a to-do list even more powerful by combining it with other methods:
- Estimate the time it will take you to accomplish each item, and multiply by up to threefold.
- Pull individual entries from your list and make separate to-do lists for each item -- listing component parts of each.
- Assign specific time blocks to each activity.
- Instead of a to-do list of activities, develop a list of academic objectives -- such as earning an "A" on an exam -- and then develop a list of tasks you'll need to accomplish to meet the objective and how long each task will take (multiplying by up to threefold).
3. Use a daily, weekly, monthly, or semesterly planner: More students rely on a planner than on any other kind of time-management tool. "My biggest secret is my PLANNER!!" says Emily. "I would die without it! I write everything in it and cross it off when it's done. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and makes me get things done and remember to do them."
Planners come in many styles and are usually in the form of small books that you carry with you everywhere. Planners come with pages broken down by day, week, or month. You'll need to choose which format works best for you, and you may also need a combination -- say, pages broken down by day to see what you need to do in a given day, but also including a monthly view so you can see looming deadlines. Some students, like Maria, fiond that hourly planning works best: "As crazy as it may sound, make hour-by-hour schedules for the day," she says. "When I get a minute free or right before a class starts, I will open my planner and write down everything I have to do the next day and the times. Then I write down the hours 10 a.m. - 1 a.m. and fill them in. This lets me know what spots I have free so that I can fill them with homework, errands, etc."
Also decide how much you will write down in your planner. To what extent do you need to schedule your time? "One thing that works really well for me is to write everything down," says Laura. "I mean everything. I write down if I am going to email people, write letters, or study." Do you need just a bare-bones outline of what you need to do, or do you need a finely detailed schedule?
At the very least, you'll want to scrutinize all your syllabi as soon as your professors give them to you and enter all assignment due dates and tests in your planner. You'll probably want to enter your work schedule and meeting times for extracurricular activities and practice/game times for sports, as well as other appointments. You may want to update your planner at least weekly, perhaps at the same time each week.
You can find all kinds of calendars that may help you plan your time at CalendarsThatWork.com. Twenty-two types of calendars are available for download (in Microsoft Word) at no cost. A larger variety is available for an annual fee of less than $20.
To succeed with a planner, you have to open it, look at it, and make frequent entries in it. That's why some students prefer a less portable but more visible system, such as a large calendar at their desks. You can't take it with you, but it's right there in your face every time you're working at your desk. This type of planner is especially good for viewing one or more months at a time or a full semester. If you prefer a non-portable calendar/planner, take a small notebook to class with you so you can write down due dates and assignments to transfer to the calendar in your room.
4. Add color coding: Numerous students have discovered that color-coding activities in their planners helps them organize their time-planning better and see at a glance which category each activity falls into. You could also use colors to indicate priority levels for each activity. "I use different color highlighters to show what each event on my calendar is for," Sarah says. "For example, pink is personal, yellow is school, orange is work, blue is for appointments, and green is for my sorority... I can see in bright yellow that I have that project for finance due on Tuesday, and I need to start working on it on Wednesday so I can just get it done. My friends have always been amazed at how early I get things accomplished, but that is really all I do." Color-coding is also a great way to see at a glance where most of your time is going.
5. Use a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) device: More and more students are using electronic gadgets, such as Palm, BlackBerry, Pocket PC, Treo, and Smart Phone, in the same way they once used paper planners. Features available on these devices vary widely, but basics usually include the capability to keep to-do lists, maintain a calendar, and record addresses and phone numbers. These devices are even more portable than paper planners since they're smaller, and they hold more information. Depending on the device, additional accessories and the availability of thousands of software applications can expand the PDA's capabilities in many ways that can help you academically. Some of these capabilities include creating word-processing documents, spreadsheets, databases, and presentations; taking notes; providing reminders through alarms; receiving and/or sending e-mail; displaying e-books that you can read; creating files and folders; playing music; enabling game-playing; taking and/or storing photos; interfacing with computers and other devices; communicating with other PDAs through "beaming;" and accessing the Internet.
To review a comparison table that can help you determine whether a PDA suits your work style, see Time Management Tools - Day-Timer Planner or PDA?.
Final Thoughts on Managing Deadlines in College
In prioritizing your projects and developing any time-management system -- don't spend so much time working on the system itself that you take away time from more urgent demands. Find a system that you can maintain efficiently and easily. Assume that you'll learn from trial and error and don't sweat coming up with a perfect system.
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key academic terms by going to our College Success Glossary.
Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., is an educator, author, and blogger who provides content for
EmpoweringSites.com,
including MyCollegeSuccessStory.com. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior
from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic
Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking
Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press),
as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your
Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Study Skills (Alpha). She curates, crafts, and delivers compelling content online, in print,
on stage, and in the classroom. Visit her personal Website KatharineHansenPhD.com
or reach her by e-mail at kathy(at)astoriedcareer.com.
Check out Dr. Hansen on GooglePlus.
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