by Megan Wang
Introduction
As a future medical professional, it is crucial that you master the art of time management in order to succeed in your future career. As teenagers, it is understandable that procrastination is inevitable since it is tough to juggle academics, extracurriculars, and a social life. However, us teens can definitely find ways to minimize our tendency to procrastinate and utilize that time towards more productive activities. As a fellow high school student, I have compiled a list of recommendations below to help you maximize your productivity and minimize procrastination.
Keep a planner
One of the best ways to stay on top of your assignments is to use a planner to write out any tasks for that day. Recording assignments in your planner will ensure that you do not accidentally forget any tasks that you have to do. Checking off tasks you have done will also motivate you to finish everything you need to do within that day. Any type of planner will do; for example, I use a bullet journal which allows me to have the freedom to design the layouts in my planner and structure it in a way that works for me. Bullet journaling is more time consuming than using a regular “premade” planner, but I believe that spending that time by making it just right for me (including adding cute illustrations in my journal) motivates me to finish my tasks even more.
Time blocking
Besides writing down a list of tasks for each day, another very useful way to maximize your productivity is to also allocate a specific amount of time for each task that you have. This compels you to finish your tasks within that given time frame, so you don’t feel tempted to push off tasks to a later time, wasting even more time. When I time block, I usually give myself no more than one hour per task. However, if there are things I need to do that will occupy two to three hours of my day, I split them up into smaller blocks to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Giving buffer time
While it may be appealing to power through your day by working non-stop, it is important to take care of yourself. In your time blocking, be sure to also schedule breaks into your blocks, also called “flex blocks”. A flex block is a chunk of time that you can use to work on any assignment(s) that you wish or take a break. This way, if you are unable to complete a task during your original time block, you still have a chance to make up for that. In short, having flexibility is greatly encouraged to balance out the rigidness of your schedule.
Recommendations
Below are a few of my favorite apps to use in order to increase productivity on a regular basis. I hope you enjoy these recommendations and can implement a couple of them into your life as well!
Google Calendar: I use Google Calendar to time block and schedule all of my assignments and appointments. You can color-code your time blocks to fit different subjects and you can set alarms to remind you of every task. In addition, you can even set up multiple calendars that can run simultaneously and serve different purposes.
Notion: Notion is my go-to app for planning out study schedules. I always set up a mini-calendar in Notion for each of my subjects where I label important test dates and deadlines. One of the best parts of Notion is that it has a toggle list feature, which you can use to quiz yourself. In the toggle list feature, a question will be displayed on your screen and the answer will only pop out when you click on it. Notion can also be synced to all of your devices, making it easily accessible.
Pomodoro Timer: The Pomodoro technique involves splitting a one-hour time block into two smaller blocks of 25 minutes along with a 5-minute break in between. This timer motivates me to keep working until the scheduled break, where I can briefly relax before continuing with my assignment.
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