A collegiate athletes guide on time management.

Though as hard as time management is to achieve as a college athlete, there are three tips I learned that I want to share with you about how I manage my hectic life.

Everyone struggles with managing their time in order to ensure that all the important elements that make up their lives are being maintained. It just a part of life. Though, this struggle will definitely becomes more intense when you go to college. Your day to day structure will be completely different since you have that newfound freedom that comes with being independent of your parents, a new school with a completely new schedule and the opportunity to be constantly surrounded by your friends. The amount of possible distractions available in your life will be at an all time high along with the amount of responsibility’s you will have to handle since your now a college student. You are in for a lot of work.

Now add in the idea of competing in a sport while your attending college classes and your asking for a busy life that can be extremely hard to juggle. It is not an easy task to be a college student and athlete at the same time. The lifestyle of a student athlete is a busy one since the amount of responsibilities you have will make up a long list. Everything about college is the next level. Moving onto this next level means that just like your school work, your training will require majority of your time and effort. Along with already having demanding classes, you have additional things to manage such as practices, competitions, and team required events that you have to constantly work around in order to achieve everything you need to achieve before the day ends.

Your practices can often demand much of your time by some sports having more than one practice a day or you could have practice at odd hours of the day that require you to adjust your schedule in order to insure that you complete your tasks and fulfill you daily desires. My daily schedule is greatly impacted by my practices because I have to walk up at 5:30 am in order to be ready for my 6 am practice meaning I can’t be the stereotypical college student who either stays up late to finish homework. No, that can’t be me because I have to at least be in bed around 10ish on order to feel like a functioning person the next day.

Then there is all classes you have to miss for your competition. Throughout the year, I have missed countless of Fridays for races that are either on Friday or far enough away from my school that we have to start traveling on Friday just to make it to the race on Saturday. This often leads me to be slightly behind in all my Friday classes by it causing me to miss lectures. Yet, all my assignments are posted online meaning there is never an excuse to not turn in homework leading me to have to work ahead to turn in homework assignments early since I distrust our faulty bus WiFi too much to risk turning in my assignments as we travel. Then there are the occasional big races that require you to fly across the country such as our California meet that took up an entire week of school. While racing is one of the best parts of running, it often bites into ones already tight schedule and adds an extra element to your balancing act.

Every team will have team requirements that dictate ones schedule because attendance is not an option, its required. Many college teams have mandatory study halls which are beneficial because they often help keep your school work on track. Though some team requirements can work against your favor since athletes tend to have to go to events that the general student body doesn’t. There have been multiple instances of my team having to attending a speech or discussion we have already been to for a classes, only to have to attend the event again because it has the word “Athlete” added to the event title. For Example: One week I go to the “A Discussion on Drinking and Driving” and the next week I have to attend, “An Athlete Discussion on No Drinking and Driving”. While attending the event for a second time wouldn’t be harmful, it is vexing to have to seat and hear a speech you have already heard when you have a essay you need to finish by the end of the night.

Now you might be thinking, how on earth am I going to do this. Or maybe your thinking, girl you are preaching to the choir since I’m literally living this struggle at this very moment. While the life of a collegiate athlete can be strenuous, it is 100% percent possible to live a balanced life as a student athlete as long as you are wise about how you spend your time. I am by no means a time master, but over my freshman year I learn 3 big lesson in time management that made my life productive and much more balanced. Since I have spent the last few paragraphs stressing you out, I will spend the next few giving you hope.

1. Create a schedule.

Make a defined week schedule that you can use every single week and stick to it as much as possible. Structure your week by dedicating certain hours of every day to different elements and tasks that you need to complete in order to achieve all your school requirements and life requirements. Write this weekly schedule down on paper and have each day outline with time blocks that are dedicated to the different task in your life. Here is my wonderful schedule that work well in managing my life:

Now some of you will look at this schedule and absolutely love the idea because your type A personality adores the idea of structure and might be creating your own schedule at this very moment. The rest might look at this schedule and think, “No way! I do not want every hour of my day planned because that leaves no room for spontaneous fun”. If your thinking this way, I completely understand. If you do not want a detailed schedule that is completely fine, but I suggest you make some rules for yourself to follow to ensure you spend enough time in your day doing some productive activities such as homework. The simple act of creating simple rules to follow such as making yourself do 2 hours of homework after your last class of the day before you begin watching tv or hanging out with your friends will guarantee that your working as much as your having fun. Creating and sticking to these simple rules ensure you have time to be spontaneous while still having some much need structure. How one goes about being productive about their homework doesn’t matter as long as you make your homework a priority.

In order to ensure that you have enough time to get all your homework done in time, dedicate certain hours of your day purely to doing homework and be dedicated enough to your schedule to follow through with your study hours. When your not in school or training, it is important to ensure that working on homework plays a large role in your every day schedule since the whole reason you go to college is to learn. There is a reason why people remind you that your a student athlete more in college than they ever did in high school and it is because you go to college to learn the career you will be in for majority of your life. The homework you work on in college is important and should be taken seriously meaning all collegiate athletes need to guarantee that they schedule enough time in their busy life to produce quality homework that teaches them their future craft and gets them good grades. The need to get good grades in school never goes away especially in college since the work force will uses your grades as a measurement of your work ethic. In this being true, it is essential that you as a collegiate athlete creates a schedule that ensures that you have enough time to compete every assignment on time since a late assignment is the easiest way to destroy ones GPA.

2. Learn when in the day you are the most productive and least productive.

In most occasions, people tend to work best at certain times of the days than others. I personally know that I am most productive in the morning after my practice because my day has just begun and the adrenaline of running makes me motivated. In this being true, I tend to do most of my homework in the morning before lunch because this is when I get the most work done. In addition, I tend to do my hard assignments in the morning because this is when I am the most focus and the most motivated to tackle a challenge. Though after lunch, this amount of focus tends to go down because I had so much fun with my friends at lunch. I know I am one of those people who has to work hard than have fun because once I am having fun, I don’t want the fun to stop. This doesn’t mean I can’t do homework after lunch, but it is better if I do the more trivial homework assignments after lunch since they do not require as much concentration.

Learn when in the day when you like being productive and when you don’t in order to create a schedule that will be productive and actually help you get work done. Observer how your motivation fluctuates throughout the day and week. Are you someone who likes to work hard than party or are you someone who needs to have a little fun first before they get serious. Learn how your motivation operate to create a lifestyle that works towards your strengths. It is also beneficial to know what times of the day do you like to be in a classroom setting and when you don’t, so you can schedule majority of your classes at times in which your more likely to listen to lectures than daydream through them. You need to figure out how to capitalize on how you operate as an individual in order to make a schedule that will actually be efficient.

3. Make time to have some fun and relaxation too.

Life is about balance, so while I have been taking to you about how important it is to schedule time to be productive and do homework, its time to talk about how important it is to make time in your schedule to have fun and be lazy. You only get to be in college for a few years so make sure you make time to have fun and relax. I failed epically at this when it came to my freshman year since my scheduling did not include any time for relaxation. If I wasn’t at practice, class, or a fun school event, than I was doing homework. I had gotten into this mentality that if I wasn’t busy, than I should be doing something productive such as getting ahead in homework. I was constantly hustling in order to ensure that I was always productive and not “wasting” the few times of the day that I had no requirements. Though, after living this life style for months, I realized that I wasn’t really enjoying my days, I was simply just going through the motions. I would jump from one task to another making my mind and body completely exhausted by 5pm only to keep on doing homework for the next remaining hours of my night. I would pray for the weekend to come mainly so I wouldn’t have to do any homework and could finally catch up on the tv shows I was behind on. I didn’t realize how badly I need to add more relaxation in my weekdays until I begin looking forward to trivial tasks that allowed me to step away from my desk for a few seconds just so my brain could just relax. That is when I made a change.

You need time to have fun and relax. I get that your busy, but college is all about experiences. Make sure your having fun as much as much as your hustling. Go to school event. Hang out with your friends. Start watching that award winning tv show. Make sure you make the most out of your time in college because everyone says it goes by fast. Just because you’re a collegiate athlete does not mean you will not have a social life, you definitely can as long as you manage your time correctly. This means try and get your homework done early so you have more free time and try and schedule some mandatory relaxing time throughout your day to ensure your not burning yourself out. On the flip side, do not go crazy with the amount of free time you allow yourself. Don’t completely blow off your schedule and go to every single school event or spend majority of your day watching tv only to cram homework late into the night. Find a way to balance having fun and getting your work done such as studying with friends or going out to eat after doing well on a test. One can and should have fun as a college athlete since you only get to be in this position for a couple of years so enjoy the moments you create.

No one is perfect in time management, but that is ok. The goal of any college student isn’t to perfect time management, but rather create a system that works best for your life so you can ensure that you have time for every element that makes up your life. While this balancing act can be more challenging for a collegiate athlete it is 100% possible to achieve as long as one dedicates themselves to a plan that includes completing responsibilities and creating fun moments that last forever.

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