To start off, who wouldn’t want there to be 25 hours in a day, 8 days in a week, or even 6 weeks in a month. However, we all know it’s impossible, or else why would I even want to write about it?

We all live a busy life, but we never regret it. Why? Because we love what we do!

Still, sometimes you get frustrated because of too many things all demanding your time and energy at the same time. We are all human and we all get tired at some point and this is where the art of balancing and time managing skills comes in.

Even if I personally haven’t finished my undergrad studies yet, I think one of the things that we learn in college (and actually take away with us after graduation) is how to manage time wisely. We only got so little time and so much we want to do, it becomes imperative that we fully utilize every moment we have.

This became more and more important to me personally as I add more things to my everyday schedule. Take research as an example, I started doing research with Dr. Foltz this past summer when I wasn’t taking any classes. I was able to go in almost every day. When fall quarter first started, everything rushed in at once, including all my classes (especially second year bio major), volunteer work as well as two jobs on top of research. At first I was a bit overwhelmed but I told myself I don’t want to quit or spend less time on any one of them because I love every single of them!

So, I would like to share a trick that I personally have found helpful, which is to create a to-do list. And it is not just a list of everything you need to, but also taking into considering of priority and deadlines. Paper or electronic is fine – there are even apps that can create a nice-looking to-do list if you are the kind of person that only do things when they are listed in a visually pleasant fashion. I personally like using a paper one simply because I enjoy the feeling of crossing off something. Reminders are also really helpful. I have had times where I would tell myself to remember to do something after class (maybe make a phone call) and it wouldn’t be until the next time I have that class where I would ask myself did I have a call that I need to make?

As to the most common symptom of procrastination, I think there is no better way than to just do it. JUST DO IT! Once you made the decision that you will do it later, you become a victim of Procrastimonster automatically.

To be able to manage time wisely is one piece of art that really takes time to master. Procrastimonster still attacks me sometimes but I think as long as we always try our best and learn from the mistakes. Similar to the idea of trials and errors, I would try some time managing tricks and if it doesn’t work, I try something else. Eventually, we know what works best for each of our own individual schedule and can really enjoy what we are doing!