Time savers are any ideas, routines, and systems that you can create that will limit repeating the same tasks and errands unnecessarily, reduce the steps for accomplishing a task, or reducing the time that you are losing over doing something inefficiently.

Typical time savers you can use:


The trick to keeping to your schedule and plan is to realize that there are unforeseen disruptions and predictable disruptions.

  1. Unforeseen disruptions are unavoidable. The key to dealing with these is to attend to them, resolve them as soon as you can, and then reassert your self-discipline and your concentration to resume your schedule and plans as soon as possible.
  2. Predictable disruptions are those which you can anticipate and resolve if you know yourself, if you look ahead, if you try to understand the disruptions, and if you are imaginative in resolving them.
  3. PROCRASTINATION - Does this really come from laziness or does it come from facing a task that is very large or distasteful and needs to be broken down into more manageable steps?
  4. EXHAUSTION - Can anyone do their best work when they are tired? Maybe the solution to this is to get the rest that you need, making a deal with yourself that you will go back to your task later.
  5. NOISE - A chief distracter to concentration and effort; either you need to find a better place to study or you need a way of drowning out disruptive noise with steady sound or white noise.
  6. FRIENDS AND FAMILY - Your friends and family may not have your same academic responsibilities, they don't understand your world as a student, and they want to involve you in their activities and lives, barging in on you when you are studying or making invitations that conflict with your schedule. Get them to help you to keep to your schedule by giving your schedule to them. They might take the hint and schedule events around your needs.


Scheduling is how you make time for carrying out your plans and steps to accomplish your academic goals and fit in your other priorities.

  1. Scheduling is the best safeguard for avoiding overload of responsibilities and the stress and frustrations that come from that.
  2. Scheduling is how you organize yourself and your time so that you can complete assignment and meet your academic responsibilities on time.
  3. Scheduling can reveal to you whether you have too many priorities or conflicting priorities.

When you are scheduling such activities as classes, work, family time, and travel to and from these responsibilities, learn to become realistic about how long things really take to accomplish and work this into your planning


  1. Prioritizing is a necessary life skill to learn to master because no person can do everything that they need or want to do at the same time or all of the time. Trying to do that leads to overload and stress.
  2. Prioritizing is knowing how to put the most necessary things that you have to take care of first, putting the other things second, and then knowing how to change these as your life situation changes.
  3. In terms of your college education, your priorities may well change from semester to semester so that what you may have to prioritize one semester does not have to last your lifetime.
  4. Prioritizing involves making choices and being willing to live with what each choice is going to gain for you and cost you.
  5. In a given semester, you can probably handle no more than 3-4 major priorities at a time.