I attend college full time, majoring in a finance degree. Not only do I attend college, but I also run an online business. To give you an idea, I own over 100 domains and a majority of those domains are live websites, just like this one.
In my business ventures most of my time is spent on content creation, managing the websites, answering emails. While as far as college, most of my time is spent, attending classes, studying and doing the homework assigned for those classes.
The combination of college and the business is a downright tough and painstaking routine. And in my personal opinion, it takes a strong mentality, to stay focused on what I have to accomplish. After all, if you think about it for 16 straight weeks I am residing on a college campus, a mini city of young adults, where a good portion of them, care more about partying, over anything else. Thankfully I refrain from participating in those events.
To bounce between my work, and my studies, it can be very tough, and without proper scheduling, my chances of failure are certainly increased. Without scheduling, I find myself spending most of my time on my online ventures.
By scheduling, I can see the real picture. I can manage my time more properly, and get things done more efficiently. Since I schedule, I can get a realization of how much time I actually have per day to get what I want accomplished.
Being a math geared person, I like to play with numbers, and that’s what I start with when making my general outline schedule.
I first take a general look, of how many actual hours I am awake. If I wake up each morning at 7am, and I go to sleep at midnight. I have 17 hours per day to do whatever. Per week that would be a total of 119 hours. And in a perfect case scenario I want to spend, 40 hours for college, and 40 hours for my work. That would still leave me with 39 hours left of free time. That free time, will go towards the personal needs, such as showering, eating, socializing, relaxing, etc!
My thought process behind scheduling is simple. First I schedule the required things or times that do not change, an example of something this would be, attending class. After I do that part, I then schedule in the remainder!
On a side note, the professors say that for every one class hour, a student should study for two to three hours outside of class time. If I were to follow this method, since, I am in class for a total of around 15 hours; I would at the most have to study, for 45 hours! Therefore 60 hours would be spent towards college. Ideally I would want to do this. But I find that I am able to get by with just one to two hours per class time. The fact is, some classes it may be necessary to study up to 3 hours for 1 class session, but others you might not. It’s a fine balance really. In the end, I generally put up to 40 hours per week into my college degree.
Below you can see my current schedule break down.
As for the schedule above, yellow indicates food time, orange means class time, and blueish-purple means study time. The orange is not accurate because, most of the classes are not 1 hour long. Some go for 50 minutes, while others go for an hour and 15 minutes. But in general, I spend roughly 37 hours per week on my school work, and for most of the remainder of my time, I work on my online ventures, which is highlighted in green. The green period is my very flexible period.
The key to making a successful time management schedule is to make it as flexible as possible. There are times, when you can’t account for things to happen, and you have to be prepared to change your times around. Example…. A friend might come over to visit, during your study session. If you have made a flexible schedule, you know you can sacrifice one of your other block schedules for it. So the key to a good schedule, in my opinion, is to be flexible, and open to modifications.
What’s the takeaway? By scheduling your time, you will increase your efficiency. And chances are if you have said in the past, that you are too busy, to start something new, write down in a piece of paper, and schedule your time. You may be surprised to see how much free time you might actually have.
I am not hardcore with my schedule, but I use it as a guide, to make sure I get my things done. I would highly recommend it to anyone, to at least write down in a weekly schedule at least once, to see their break down of what they are doing each day. By doing so, you can see where you are losing time, and what you can do to increase efficiency. You might be surprised, how much extra time you might have!
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That’s so crazy. I cannot organize my time for the life of me. I have a feeling that when i go to college next year, I will be in quite a predicament. Jealous…
Well, its not the easiest thing to do. It’s always easier to write it down, and plan it out. But implementing it, and putting it into action is the hardest part. Usually, when I start studying, I get into it, but there are always times, when I really don’t feel like it, and does those are the times that you are truly put to the test.
Proper planning is crucial when you want to make growth in any and all areas of your life. Putting down where you can see it as you have done is a huge key to achieving your growth.
Kudos to you Jean for making your growth a priority and being aware of how valuable your time is.
I’m not detracting from anything you’ve said, Jean, but it pains me to read that you don’t party-cipate! (If you can refer to a well of links running dry, I can pun too!)
You are young only once, and whilst I appreciate what you’re trying to achieve — and from all accounts you’re succeeding — you need recreation and relaxation to achieve balance.
Wishing you the best of luck in all your endeavours;-D
Coming from the experience of having done my share of “having fun” when I was younger, I would have much rather done what Jean is doing now, so that I would not being working so hard currently in my life.
There’s a saying “if you are willing to do what’s hard now, you won’t have to later”. I certainly would have preferred that looking back as what I actually thought was having fun at the time was a complete waste. But that’s just my .02. To each his own.
That’s a great plan. I started running websites in college and I’ve continued now that I have a full-time job. The downside is that the job and commute take up a huge amount of time, but at this point it’s still very enjoyable so I’ll continue despite the fact that it definitely decreases my overall income.
What’s your plan after school?
Your are a hardworking guy. You have 100 domains. I have 2 domain and 1 blogspot blog. I gave up on the blogspot. It is time consuming because I am in college also. Well, goodluck with your business