Scholars Corner: Learning How to Manage My Time by Arjay Nambatac

Adjusting to the online learning environment two years ago was challenging for me. It affected the way I worked on my responsibilities both in my personal and student life. One of the advantages of online classes is having the freedom or flexibility to learn the study materials at any time of the day. However, it made me more aware that I am the one responsible for everything that I do during the day. The difficult part comes with the distractions from social media and other online platforms as these consume so much time and moves my focus away from studying. I ended up becoming less productive because I had a hard time balancing my personal and student life. As a result, I realized that I need to overcome such challenges by implementing a time management plan.

Having time management allows us to systematize, structure, and control tasks at our own pace. I learned from reading online articles that implementing a time management plan comes with self-discipline, persistence, and motivation. When I established a plan, it helped me accomplish tasks ahead of time while worrying less about making enough room for online classes and extra-curricular activities. 

I learned to allocate time for relaxation and time to deal with other personal matters. This helped me survive the previous semesters. I saw that it is also important to take a break from exhaustive activities. We can always give time solely to ourselves, then continue dealing with the tasks after saving up enough energy to accomplish them productively.

There may be a lot of strategies for implementing effective time management but the one that worked well for me is through utilizing mobile applications designed for digital time management. About that, I have discovered a mobile application called “streaks.” It allows one to add tasks and sort them according to their categories (e.g., school tasks and personal tasks). You can then adjust the platform to view if they will be accomplished daily, weekly, or monthly. 

The mobile application will remind the user through phone notifications about the tasks that are needed to be performed. It then records the list of tasks that are successfully accomplished within the specified time. The feature that I liked the most about this application is its ability to provide the user with a summary report of the tasks being completed. With all the statistics and figures that the application provides in the summary report, users like me gain a feeling of satisfaction from implementing an effective and efficient time management plan.