You MUST learn time management as a student.

86,400. That's the same amount of time in seconds that everyone gets in a day. That's the one fair thing. Everyone gets the same day length, the same clock, the same deadlines. Yet somehow, some students feel constantly behind, while others stay calm on top of work and still have time. And it's not because they're smarter, it's not even because they're more motivated, it's because they simply know how to manage their time. As a student, your time is the most limited, most valuable resource. You can't add more of it, you can only decide where it goes. And so if you don't learn how to control your time early, something else will control you. Deadlines, stress, cramming, and constant last minute panic. And that's why time management isn't just a nice skill to have, it's the deciding factor between feeling in control and always feeling behind. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to actually manage your time as a student in a way that works in real life, not just on paper. Starting with the biggest mistake that students make about time management. Most students think the problem is I don't have enough time, but that's just not a factually correct statement. Everyone gets the same 24 hours, so the difference is what you choose to spend that time on. And once you shift that mindset, instead of I can't do anything about it, to okay, I can actually make some changes to lock in as a student. Once you accept that, time management finally makes sense. So let's get on to the main points. Greg McCollum talks about this idea in essentialism. If everything is treated as important, you end up busy, stressed, and still behind. That's exactly how most students live. They wake up with 10 things that they should do, and no idea what actually moves the needle. So you bounce between tasks, feeling productive, but they get nothing meaningful done. And this is the fake productivity trap. This is a normal student day. You reply to messages, you check your emails, you read some notes, you half start an assignment in the homework, and by the end of the day you think, I was busy all day, why am I still behind? It's because busyness is not progress. Kyle Newport puts this idea really simply in deep work. Being busy is often just a substitute of actually doing the hard, important work. Top students understand this early. They don't try to do everything, they try to do the right thing. So here's the rule that I want you to steal. Every day has one main academic priority, not five, not a massive to-do list, one. And it has to be something specific. Bad priorities sound like this. Revise biology, study maths, work on my essay. Those are too vague. Your brain doesn't know where to start, so it resists. Good priorities sound like finish a mark 20 exam questions, write 300 words on my essay, memorise and test 25 flashcards. Now your brain has a target. When you're trying to manage your time by doing 10 different tasks or just being really busy, that's difficult. But when you have a few clear things, when you increase efficiency, it's far easier to manage your time because you suddenly have only one task to actually put into your day. Your brain also hates ambiguity. This is the science behind it. When a task is vague, your brain treats it as infinite, overwhelming, never-ending, so it delays. But when the task is clear and finite, your brain gets a sense of progress, which creates momentum. James Clear explains this concept in Atomic Habits. You don't succeed because of motivation, you succeed because your system tells you what to actually do next. Clarity beats motivation every time. And so right now, you might be thinking though, but what about all the other important stuff I need to do? I can't condense everything I need to do into one small task. Here's the answer, and it's important. Choosing a priority means you're accepting some things won't get done today. And that's not failure, that's timetabling maturity. Top students are comfortable saying that this matters more than that today. Everyone else tries doing everything and ends up doing nothing properly. Start using those concepts. And you know how we talked about 86,400 at the very start of the video, right? Actually, there's a slight asterisk on that. And you might be thinking like, oh yes, of course you sleep for a third of your day, like yeah, of course that. Third of your day sleep, third of your day cooking, like I don't know, another bent on cleaning, eating, bathroom, etc. But actually, for most students, where is that time going? It's not school, it's not homework, it's your attention. Because time management isn't really about hours, it's about how fragmented your focus is during those hours. Your phone is the real villain. Not only does it take away literally time, that's four hours less that you have time to. So obviously, time management feels hard because you have less hours to fit more stuff in. So it's taking away hours, firstly. It's also villainous in the sense that during the amount of hours you have, because your attention span is so cooked, it's fragmenting your focus. You're not focused when you're studying with distractions. You're just constantly resisting every notification, every vibration, every quick check. Even if you don't touch it, a part of your brain is still paying attention to it. There's actually a study that shows that if you keep your on your desk, your brain is still focused on it, so you perform worse. And that drains energy fast. This is why students say, I studied for three hours but got nothing done. You weren't studying for three hours, you were half studying. And so that's two ways in which your phone actually is really bad for time management. But just before we get onto how you can use your phone for good, if you're the kind of person who actually cares about what you're studying, not just the grades, this is worth listening to. One of the best things that I did was joining Leafs online programs. I took their mathematics of morality course last year, as you can see, and it completely changed how I talk about my subject. Not just for my personal statement and uni applications, but how I think about impact in general. Leafs courses are for 15 to 19 year olds, run by proper academic mentors, and they help you explore how your subject can be used to help others, which is exactly what top universities look for. There's a sliding tuition scale with free access if you need it, so there's genuinely no downside to applying. Check out the link in description. But let's get back to those tips. But let's talk about a way that you can use your phone for good in time management, and that's using a to-do list or calendar. Managing your time simply just means being more clear about things. When you don't have a clear goal of what it is you want to get done in the day, how long tasks actually take within your day, then it's impossible to manage your time. So starting with by blocking in non-negotiables, when you wake up, when you go to school, that's going to be blocked off. You're going to start to see like what pockets of time you have left. And within that, start splitting those up into like hours or 30 minutes, and be like very specifically, I'm going to try get this done here using Google Calendar, etc. to block out your time, say when you're going to do what. But there's a slight caveat to this, right? Like sure, it looks all cool on paper, but then once you start not following it, it's just a downward spiral from there, right? Because like if a task takes slightly more time, it goes into the next block. So what I found is really good to managing my time is actually just having a to-do list of all the things I want to get done during that day. And then within the time that's remaining, what I find is I can kind of allocate nicely what it is that I need to do within each time block. So whether you find managing time easier by using the Google Calendar method, or the slightly more flexible method of using the to-do list, both work. But let's get on to the third and final really important piece, which is the wind condition. No, I'm not talking about Clash Royale. Managing your time, although a lot of students visualize that as like timetabling and like aestheticness, a lot of the time, it's making sure that you can actually get stuff done quicker, because then that frees up literally more time, right? You can't create time. So this is like the next best step, you're essentially creating time. And so one of the worst reasons that study sessions take so long is simply because they don't have a wind condition. Students sit down with no wind con. They just sit and think, I'll study for a bit. That's why studying feels endless, heavy, and it just takes up so much time. Top students do the opposite. They decide how long it should take. This is also called Parkinson's law. Your task fills up the time you give it. When you don't give it a time, your task can literally take so much longer than it needs to, as if you just said, okay, I'm going to give myself 30 minutes to do this, right? So a wind con is a clear, measurable outcome for a session. Not revised chem, not study bio, but finish and mark 20 exam questions. Test and memorize 25 flashcards, write 300 words. When you know what done looks like, your brain relaxes, and that's a target and an end. Once you have this wind condition, you contain it. You don't say, I'll work on this all evening. You say, I have one block, 45 to 90 minutes, no multitasking. That block and clock, since you've timed it, it works for you, not against you. And if you finish early, you stop, you take the wind, you enjoy your time. You don't punish yourself for adding more work. This trains your brain to associate studying with completion, not suffering. And so that was a kind of unorthodox, but really useful way to manage your time as a student. Time management is really about priority management. Set your priorities, make studying more efficient, and get rid of the stuff that literally take up time in your day. That's useless. And if you found this video useful, you'll find that students are ten times more useful than this. As you can see, students have went from not knowing how to manage their time to getting top grades, knowing exactly what they need to do. And they've seen such drastic increases. If you want to get the grades that you deserve, and you're an ambitious student, you will need accountability and the resources. StudentExcel is perfect for you. It'll be first link in the description. As always, I'll see you in the next one.