Time management is one of the most crucial, and neglected, aspects of essay writing. I cannot emphasize enough just how important it is to make the best use of your time. You could be the greatest writer of all time, and still produce subpar work if you do not have the right management skills in place.
Keep a few things in mind:
- Writing an essay is not an automatic, mechanical process. You cannot simply sit down and expect yourself to come up with all the ideas that you need in order to complete the assignment. That's not how the human mind works. Ideas come to you in fits and starts; you can be suffering from a writer's block for three days straight, and all of a sudden, on the next day and in less than an hour, you have figured things out. Give yourself enough time to be uncertain, lazy, and languorous. During that period, your mind is in fact working hard to solve the problems plaguing you. But it won't come up with a proper solution if the assignment is due in three hours. Inevitably, you end up submitting something that is unoriginal and vague.
- Writing an essay is a very stressful process, and bad time management always-and I mean always-makes things worse. You might feel that you work best under stressful circumstances, but even if you are motivated by the rush of having to complete an essay is a short timeframe, your body is suffering as a result, and you will feel the consequences in the future. Trust me, I speak from experience. Consequently, you should avoid putting more pressure on yourself than is necessary. The feeling that you get from knowing that you have enough time to finish your assignment is invaluable. Your work will always benefit from that improved state of mind, and so will your body.
- There are many elements to writing an essay, and the process is often complicated and long. Bad time management will lead you to ignore several of those elements, or skip them over because of a lack of time. Editing, the last and in many ways the most important part of the process, is often completely ignored and abandoned. Don't allow yourself to end up in such a situation. There is no worse feeling than submitting an assignment you have not looked over carefully.
With that in mind, what can you do to improve your time management? Here are a few tips:
- Keep track of your progress. Make note of everything that you are doing, whether it is brainstorming, reading, writing, or editing. This will provide you with a record that you can look at in order to determine when and whether you have been productive or not. You will always be your best critic, and this is a way of actively motivating yourself to be self-critical.
- Have a friend or classmate quiz you about your progress. Writing is often a very lonely activity, but it pays to make it interactive sometimes. Having someone you can discuss your progress with is beneficial because it makes you accountable to somebody else for your work. You will feel a greater pressure to get down to work if you know that you have to tell someone else what you have done over, say, the last two or three days.
- Do not use the essay due date as your only deadline. This is very important. If you know that an essay is due a month or two from now, you will waste most of that time. We human beings tend to live in the moment anyway, and how can something that is so far away be of any concern? The reason why the assignment is so far away, however, is because that is how much time your professor thinks you will need to get everything done. Keep that in mind: the time span between when you receive the assignment and when it is due is your timetable, which you must use to the best of your ability. Accordingly, set up several mini-deadlines that you have to consistently meet so that you have the time to cover all aspect of the writing and research process. Some suggestions for potential mini-deadlines:
When to complete reading the assigned books
When to complete the necessary research
When to complete certain paragraphs or section
When to complete the first, second, third, etc. drafts
- Move the deadline up by a few days or a week. This will require a mental trick on your part, but basically, pretend that the essay is due at an earlier time than it actually is. The idea here is to give yourself the necessary room to edit your essay. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to edit your draft. It is as important as writing the draft, and it will work wonders. I have personally witnessed people's marks going up by a grade or two because of the editing alone.
- Take breaks. Give yourself room enough to relax and momentarily forget about the essay. Devoting yourself fully to an assignment is often very draining, physically and emotionally. You might think that being on the job 24/7 is the way to go, but consider for a moment how the quality of the work that you are doing decreases over time. As I said above, you cannot force ideas to come to your mind; things happen, in some ways, without your control. So take the time to relax without feeling guilty that you are wasting time. If you manage your time correctly, you will have plenty of time to return to your work, refreshed and eager to get down to business.
These are a few of the ways you can improve your time management. But remember: make a personal plan that suits you and your personality and style the best. Whatever you come up with, always make sure that maximizing your potential and minimizing the risks of submitting something late and/or incomplete.
