How to Manage Your Time at Home

By Nicteha Rico Arellano | Learning Support Centre Student Success Mentor

If you are finding yourself feeling like the day doesn’t have enough hours, welcome to the club!

I remember back in the day – pre-COVID – when I used to get up early for my eight am class. At the time I wished I could stay asleep for five more minutes or felt like I spent too much time commuting from place to place.

Even though I have more time now, virtual classes can be more time consuming, so I need to organize all my activities, including work, school, assignments, and anything else that I have to do during the week.

I’ve tried different things to organize myself and see which one better fits my needs.

Here are 4 tips to organize yourself a little bit better:

• Agenda

  There are some cool agendas out there that have different designs, sizes and sections to write down contacts, assignments, and more! – Another tip is to use different colours for different courses, if you are a more visual learner.

• Calendar

  A calendar is a good option too, similar to an agenda, but bigger. This semester I am working from home, so I don’t need to commute, and I decided to try a calendar! Now, I have a giant calendar in my room with all my tasks and due dates, which is very helpful because I spend most of my time there. 

• Email calendar

  All email addresses have the option of a connecting calendar, whether it’s through Mohawk or your personal email. This allows you to put notes, have a recurring event every week, once a month, or customize the date and time; add people in your contact list to the events and even add links, Zoom rooms or Teams channels. And, you can also add reminders before every meeting or event. I’ve found this to be very helpful, since it synchronizes automatically with your account.

• Apps

  If you are one of the people who feels more comfortable with using something smaller and easy to carry, you can use your phone to create reminders! If you often forget to put it in your calendar, here are some apps that might help you organize better:

  • TickTick

    This app allows you to build to-do lists and add task by just typing or speaking them in.

  • Google Tasks

    This app helps you create tasks directly from your email or Gmail, so all events you already have in your email get synchronized with the app. It also has notes, so that you can add information on each task.

  • Productive

    Tracks habits like drinking water, exercise, and medication, as well as your tasks. It also gives you a summary of what is scheduled for the day and analyzes your progress.

Try different ways to keep track of your tasks, due dates, and meetings! If one doesn’t work, there are many ways to reach your goals and cross off that to-do list of the week. Need help organizing your courses or setting up a study schedule, connect with the Learning Support Centre.