When going to high school or college, we get tons of extra tasks and responsibilities to handle for further success. If we are parents of high schoolers or first-year college students, we get an additional challenge to help them handle all those responsibilities.

One way or another, it’s all about time management skills again.

We know time management goes far beyond to-do lists and task-scheduling tools. It’s a set of abilities to use time to your advantage and control it between activities. With so many time management strategies available online, most are one-size-fits-all and, thus, not straightforward for high school students to understand.

Together with academic experts from EssayShark (a writing service that assists students with college assignments and helps them prevent academic overload), we’ve crafted this brief article revealing the skills peculiar to high school students willing to master time management.

Keep reading to get all things straight.

Why students need stellar time management skills

• They become more productive and efficient in their academic achievements. Students learn to get more things done in less time. In plain English, it’s about the “work smarter, not harder” concept.
• Students learn to prioritize, set goals, and make decisions, thus beating their fear of failure with more opportunities to succeed in their studies and careers.
• They understand the role of discipline in their overall life success.
• Students become less stressed, preventing academic burnout and avoiding the accusations of laziness from parents.

Time management is not one skill to master. It’s a set of different abilities. For high schoolers and college students, they are as follows:

Self-awareness

It’s a core time management skill for high school students to master. Planning and time organization will only work if a young person knows who they are and what they want from life.

Self-awareness is an integral part of our emotional intelligence. The more we know about ourselves and understand our weaknesses and needs, the easier we’ll decide how to manage time to achieve that.

Decision-making

The more tasks and responsibilities to handle, the more decisions to make. High school students learn to understand what matters and how it affects them and the world around them.

What courses to take this year? Which assignment should go first, and which should be postponed or delegated? Whom to meet? If a person can’t make decisions, they won’t be able to see the time and resources they need for that.

Goal-setting and planning

We know that every decision should be based on goals. What do we want to achieve in life? Why do we spend time writing this essay or reading this book? Does it make us better or help us achieve our goals?

Clear goals make solutions and resources faster to come.

Goal-setting is an essential time management skill for high school students to master. They can start by setting SMART goals, which are easier to understand and move towards.

With SMART goals, students will plan steps and know how to organize their days, weeks, or months accordingly.

Prioritization

Youthful maximalism often makes students deal with all tasks and activities on their calendars or to-do lists here and now.

Wrong.

First, they’ll always have many assignments, tests, exams, and out-of-class activities to handle, while there’ll always be only 24 hours in a day. Second, multitasking doesn’t work (and it never worked).

With that in mind, it’s essential to master a time management skill we all know as prioritization. The ability to prioritize tasks and ideas helps organize time accordingly.

Organization and focus

Time management for high school students is also about doing a suitable activity at the right time. The skill of organizing all the tasks and spare time will help spend working hours effectively.

Another skill to master is focus.

Let’s face it: For most college students, the problem is not the lack of time but concentration and direction. We all have 24 hours a day, but only some address time management strategies for ignoring distractions and focusing on significant tasks in the schedule.

Communication

We bet you’ll agree that communication skills are critical for students, and they relate to time management directly:

Proper communication with teachers and peers helps organize time, delegate some tasks whenever possible, revise due dates, prioritize activities, change plans, etc.

A high school student needs to be flexible to finish things on time and build healthy relationships with others.

Patience

A student’s ability to handle academic tasks without rush also matters for stellar time management. Patience and attention to detail will save time and nerves we’d spend revising the work we did on the fly.

Speaking of nerves, by the way:

Another time management skill for high school students to master is stress management. Their ability to understand when it’s better to say no and prevent a problem than struggle with it after it happens can save them a lot of time.

In a Word

There are many time management skills for high school students, and all you need to do is choose those that fit you and meet your needs most. This article has covered the basic abilities young people need to master to manage their time efficiently. For more practical advice, you can address experts, students who’ve been there, and academic resources that help youngsters balance their studies and life.