
Shreya Patel’s passion and perseverance have led her halfway around the world, earning her two master’s degrees, on her journey to a career in cancer research.
As an adult taking classes, you may have some advantages over your younger peers: clearer goals for school and your career, and life experiences to help guide the way.
But it’s also likely you have more responsibilities and life zigzags than you had when you were younger. Maybe you’re navigating a career change or have to juggle textbook time with home and work life.
In the 2018-19 academic year, 7.6 million of the projected 19.9 million students attending U.S. colleges and universities are expected to be 25 years old or older, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. If you’re trying to navigate school as an adult, here are some tips to help manage your valuable time.
Sure, this is much easier said than done. But when you get into the habit of taking on tasks even though you don’t feel like it, the huge feeling of relief when you’re done will build your motivation to beat procrastination in the future.
Waiting until you’re motivated to start a project can leave you lagging in a fast-paced, rigorous educational environment. That could lead to feeling overwhelmed and intimidated by the learning material you now need to catch up on.
Beat procrastination with the following tips:
Ranking your tasks in order of importance can help give you a better idea of which ones to tackle first. Clustering tasks into groups (high priority, mid-level priority and low priority) will help give you a clearer view of the big picture.
For example, you may need to finish your financial aid application, change your address at the registrar’s office, review an approaching exam with a professor and meet classmates for a study session. Taking into account all factors, such as deadlines and relevance to school success, you may decide to rank them as follows:
Otherwise, tasks can get jumbled, which makes them feel daunting. Completing the most important and time-sensitive items first will give you a sense of accomplishment and make everything else seem easier by comparison.
Reward yourself when you complete tasks you dread. You’ll condition yourself to be more excited to tackle the next tough task on your list.
Your reward doesn’t have to be a big-ticket item, such as an extravagant vacation or a new car, though it certainly can be. This exercise isn’t an excuse to spend. Treats that cost little or no money are often just as powerful, whether it’s a high-quality cup of coffee, exercising or catching up with a friend.
You work hard, so you deserve to stop and smell the roses. Plus, the break you take will leave you feeling recharged to take on what’s next.
You have a long to-do list. But why are you doing all of those to-dos? Because you have big plans for now and the future. It’s sometimes tough to see the forest for the trees, though.
If you link unpleasant tasks to a larger goal, you’ll be more motivated to complete chores you may have otherwise put off.
Here are two examples:
With your busy schedule, you’ll benefit from eliminating things that interfere with reaching your goals. That starts with your cell phone.
Turn your phone off, switch it to silent or Do Not Disturb mode when you’re in class, studying, with a patient in the clinic or meeting with a professor.
Modern technology is amazing, but taking a break to check Facebook while you’re trying to write a term paper will divide your attention and raise your chances of phoning it in. So get the phone out of the picture.
There are times, however, when you may need to be keep your phone close: waiting for an update about a sick family member or a scheduled call from someone about a career opportunity. Even then, you can limit the phone’s ability to pull attention away from classwork by adjusting its settings and turning off notifications from apps that aren’t critical.
Lastly, aspire to be excellent rather than perfect. True perfection is impossible and may lead you down a rabbit hole that will whittle away more time than it’s worth.
Excellence, meanwhile, is attainable. A grade of 93 on an exam is an excellent performance. A perfect grade would certainly be nice, but the time it would take to ensure a 100 may unnecessarily take you away from using your energy on other tasks that need your attention.
And as an adult learner, you certainly have no shortage of other responsibilities.
Hilarie C. Terebessy, PhD, Director, Rush University Counseling Center, contributed to this piece