Time strategies: Living better by managing your time

So much of life (and so much of classes) is time management. Your stress levels, productivity, and success ride, many times, on how well you can make use of the time you have. To better understand how I can more effectively manage my time and to understand the principles behind these strategies, I turned to two articles: 

"Four Questions to Help You Overcome Procrastination"

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Procrastination is a huge time management issue for me. I used to not struggle with it so much, but since coming to college, I've gotten worse. These questions break down procrastination and make it easier to find a way out. Even asking questions as simple as "what can I do to get started" help a simple process become more manageable. I really enjoyed the final tip about looking at what can go wrong if you continue to procrastinate. The worst case scenario trick is motivational to me- if I can see the consequences of procrastination and point them out to myself, I'm less likely to do it.

"The Psychology of Checklists: Why Setting Small Goals Motivates Us to Accomplish Bigger Things"

I am a huge checklist user- they're one of my chief time management and prioritization strategies. I have checklists on my phone, my laptop, the notepad in my backpack, and even my bedside table as I write this. Figuring out why checklists work for me, and how I can better utilize them, is quite helpful for me. This article showed me that checklists work because accomplishing goals and marking them off in a tangible way releases dopamine in your brain. However, your brain must feel like it had to work at the task to get that reward, so items on your checklist shouldn't be frivolous, but measurable and substantial, even if they're not massive tasks. I tend to make vague goals like "work on this project today" when I need to make things easier for myself my being specific about what I want to get done. Understanding how my brain works in this situation helps me learn how to reward it better and be more productive in the future.