How to Decrease Your Workload for the Semester

By Allison Johnson
Blog Content Contributor

Time management is a difficult thing to conquer as a young adult. You know the general rule of studying for nine hours per week for just one three-hour course? It’s nearly impossible with a job, 15 hours of school and volunteer work as well. Sometimes if I want to study for four hours a week for one class, I have to settle for a four hour nap, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. I don’t even call that a night’s worth of sleep.

Here are some ways to avoid work overload:

You might have a class where weekly homework and quizzes are assigned. If this is a class that does not take much studying to grasp each chapter, then why not get through a few weeks of homework in a day. For example, in my computer science class our weekly online assignments consisted of reading a chapter followed by quiz. If you take notes, or can refer to the online text, you can get through a quiz quick. I did an entire semester of computer science homework in three hours last semester.

Read your notes after class each day. You’ll be surprised at how much information you can retain when you read before bed. Make this part of your schedule. The more you retain, the less you have to study. Quick tip: only study what you do not know. You are setting yourself up for failure looking at note cards that you do not need to study. Only make note cards for what you DO NOT know. Your three-hour review session before the test could decrease to one hour if you only focus on what you’re not understanding.

If you have one day of the week where it is a short class day, no extracurricular or work then go to bed early the night before so you are rested. Wake up an extra two to three hours early, too. So, if you were to have class from 11a.m. to 3:30 p.m., go to bed at 8 p.m. the night before and wake up at 6 a.m. Brush your teeth and sit in the living room and get some assignments done for about three hours. By 9 a.m. you should have a lot of stuff done, with time left over to shower and make it to class. You will soon learn that 6:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. day feels much shorter than staying up late to study after procrastinating for a few hours.

Delegating your time is the most important step when it comes to organizing your workload. Try to implement this advice into your weekly schedule, and see if it helps you along the way. Leave a comment below if you have any other time management tips for our busy readers!

Featured illustration by KTSW Multimedia.