College life is tough and there’s so much to balance. Sometimes I feel like it’s just too much. Too much stress. Today I will teach you how to learn better while saving time. Both combined will help relieve that stress and give you more time.

Listen, college is going to be stressful. It sure as hell makes me stressed out. It’s even worse for me since I have a girlfriend right now. Girlfriends are great, but they are also super stressful to maintain. Since I’ve been so stressed this semester, I’ve started trying new things that are relieving my stress.

And here is what I’ve started doing.

1) Not procrastinating - Procrastinating is fun, and some might say it even motivates them to work faster. However, for me, it’s always been a weakness and caused problems. Sometimes I would procrastinate so much on my schoolwork that I would just end up giving up and not turning in assignments. Needless to say this was causing my GPA to drop pretty badly.

So what to do?

Make it a priority to get your work done before a certain time. For me I decided on 10PM. Once 10PM hit, I am able to just relax and do things that I like to do, like watch TV, hang out with friends, go to the gym, etc.

2) Organizing my Time - It has a lot to do with not procrastinating, but now I’ve begun to make a schedule for myself. When do I do my work. When do I work on my website.

If you don’t have a schedule planned out already, you should make one. Don’t make it too rigid, but have some freedom. For example, if you’ve got some free time between classes push yourself to be productive and get some things done.

3) Getting rid of wasted time – You probably have some time wasters that you really need to get rid of. Five minutes here and five minutes there can sometimes equal out to be 3 or more hours. Get rid of these time wasters. I will talk about what time wasters I got rid of in a future post.

4)  Keep the weekends for yourself – Sure you gotta study sometimes on the weekends (like if you have a big exam), but for the most part, you should keep your Saturdays and Fridays to yourself for having fun. You need this off time to relax, go party, hang out with friends, etc. And if you don’t have this time you’re going to start taking time during the week.

5) Studying for tests a week in advance – All nighters are no fun and they can screw you up for a whole week, messing up your sleep schedule, making you cranky, and making it harder for you to learn. Give yourself at least a week in advance to study, maybe 30 minutes a night, and find yourself remembering things better than if you crammed all that study time into one 4 hour long session.

6) Stop RELEARNING – This is big because re-learning material is wasting your time. Learn it the first time by PAYING attention in class and not skipping. Skipping is okay once in a while, but making it a habit is going to have a big effect on your grades. Take notes with a laptop if you can, and make sure you understand the material the first time you learn it so when you go study, you’re just reviewing instead of learning it for the first time.

7) Learning ahead – If you have some kind of class outline, its helpful to take a look at the next chapter a day ahead. Skim through it so when your teacher teaches it to you, then you will really understand it. Just take 10-15 minutes looking over the major items in the chapter.

Thanks for reading!

- Beamer