Managing Time Management

By James Kenworthy, 2025-2026 Student Executive Committee Marketing Manager
June 13th, 2026

Introduction

A few days into summer break this year, I decided to sit down and actually think about how my sophomore year went and how I grew throughout the year. As I compared my experiences this last year to my freshman year and tried to find something that I improved on, I noticed that I had completely changed the way I worked. After thinking about what I had done differently, I realized that I had changed because of a new habit that I had slowly begun to develop, time management.

Personal Experience

Whenever the second semester of my sophomore year started, I found myself struggling to keep up with anything at all. I felt burnt out, and I had no plan for how I was supposed to combat more and more difficult work. I started to see some of my grades slowly drop into Cs, even though I felt like I was doing my best. Essentially, I was stuck in limbo between being completely burnt out with no motivation and the rising expectations for my work and life. I started feeling disappointed with the way I was living and felt like my work was no longer fulfilling my expectations. This led to my conclusion that I needed to make changes if I wanted to start seeing progress for myself.

As I thought about what I could do to change, I reminisced on what I really spend my time doing. Usually, my plan for the day was to go to school, come home, and then try my best to get everything done that I was assigned, along with practicing cello or anything else I needed to do. I had no real schedule, and I simply did what I was told, which was completely unsustainable. After I realized this, I opened a Google document and brainstormed what I needed to change. As I brainstormed, I had boiled down my thoughts to these four priorities: my time, physical and mental health, commitments, and personal satisfaction. 

These priorities were the first spark of time management and scheduling for me, and led me to form a plan on how I was going to approach my day. I started off by making a daily schedule, which outlined my priorities in a way that I thought would be the most efficient and sustainable. As I refined my routine, I ended up scrapping a written schedule entirely and began using Google Calendar and Tasks, which I found to be the best solution to help me manage my time. 

Over time, I saw that the addition of a system to my daily routine and the management of my workload streamlined my life and helped relieve my problem of being overworked and feeling unsatisfied with myself. My system (Google Calendar) laid a foundation for future growth and became my way of time management, which helped me to find a better life balance. It allowed me to make the changes I needed, which were realistic expectations and prioritization, which led to real results like my grades significantly rising (helped me study effectively) and more time for me to do things, along with me being noticeably happier, feeling motivated, and having a better approach to challenges and mistakes. 

Research

The results from me using Google Calendar inspired me to continue finding ways to optimize how I manage my time so I can find the best personal balance in changing circumstances. To do this, I decided that it would be best for me to research what time management and balance are and what needs to be done for someone to develop the skill and properly use it. Additionally, I have decided that it would be helpful to create some sort of outline that gives steps on how to best find personal balance in time management. 

Time Management

The definition of time management is the practice of managing one's available time and resources to maximize efficiency and productivity in performing specific tasks. From this definition, the key concepts that are essential to the practice of time management are: understanding how much time you have to do a task, efficiently allocating your resources (resources are what you use to accomplish a task or goal), and identifying what task you are completing. Secondly, the definition emphasizes that all of these three things are done with the purpose of maximizing the efficiency of your time. Essentially, the purpose of time management is to create the best possible circumstances for you to achieve a goal. The conclusion I got from the definition, along with the purpose of time management, is that in order to best manage your time, you need to evaluate your circumstances, find a goal, and then find the easiest way to complete that goal. 

Personal Balance

The definition of the personal is of, relating to, or affecting a particular person, and the definition of the balance in relation to time management is to bring to harmony or proportion. From these two definitions, personal balance is defined as the harmony of oneself. Since harmony is the equilibrium between all aspects of your life, and time is universal among all aspects of your life, it is logical to think that properly managed time will lead to a state of personal balance. 

Affirmation

After evaluating the purpose of time management and how it relates to personal balance, I have decided that personal balance (in general) has a direct relation to the proper management of time. To give this idea credibility, I researched and found a meta-analysis (the combined conclusions of multiple studies) that provides evidence supporting why time management is effective and leads to an easier life. 

In the meta-analysis “Does Time Management Work,” researchers found that time management is closely related to job performance, academic achievement, and wellbeing. An example of how they came to this conclusion is that a study was run where participants who had a proper system for time management were compared against participants who did not in a performance review. After the study, it was clear that individuals who practiced time management with a system performed significantly better on the performance review than those who did not. Interestingly, it was also found that time management seems to enhance wellbeing to a greater extent than it does performance. 

Through comparing my own experience with time management to the findings of researchers, I can confidently say that time management is an invaluable skill for anyone that will allow for tangible and psychological growth in any situation. 

Method

While I was researching time management, I thought it would be interesting to see what I came up with as the best way to manage your time. So, after experiencing the benefits of time management and researching its effectiveness, I have come up with a sort of checklist or outline for what I believe the “steps” are for the best way to manage your time:

#1: System: Do you have a system to help you/keep you accountable? Is your system goal or task oriented, and not a rigid time stamp schedule? Does your system have a way of categorizing tasks into a timetable or calendar? Can you easily write down and track what you need to get done with your system?

#2: Evaluation: Ensure that you take into account what your personal priorities are and know what a realistic way of managing your time would look like for you. 

#3: Goal Setting: To properly and effectively manage your time, you will need to have multiple goals. Your system should account for all of them. To start, you should have at least one major goal that you can realistically achieve and track, along with considering your daily tasks and errands as goals you need to complete and manage. 

#4: Efficiency: As you work towards your goals, you need to find the best way for you to get the best results with the least amount of effort and time. 

*Time management looks different for everyone because everyone has different and changing circumstances, so I decided that a broad checklist to see whether your system of time management is effective would be the best solution for determining whether you are managing your time in the best way possible. 

*This list is meant to be evaluated in chronological order