How to Actually Manage Your Time Better
2024-10-03. Updated 2026-06-26
As someone who likes solving problems, I think solving your own character flaws/habitual problems is a unique challenge to tackle.
Here’s some tips I learned through other people that helped me manage my time better.
Define “Good Time Management”
The first step to fixing bad time management is defining what good time management looks like.
In high school, I wanted to:
- Spend the minimum amount of time on studying to get good grades (≥ 96)
- Fulfill my responsibilities in school clubs (computer science club, math club)
- Spend time daily on coding projects: make at least 1 contribution/day
- Sleep ≥8 hours a day
- Have at least 3 hours/week to exercise, socialize, and have fun
In university, my goals are slightly different:
- Sleep ≥8 hours a day
- Exercise 3 times/week
- Every recruiting term, polish my resume before roles start opening
- Spend time weekly on coding projects: make at least 1 contribution/week
- Spend 4 hours/week with friends & family
- Spend the minimum amount of time on studying to get decent grades (≥80)
- Finish my assignments at least 6 hours before they are due
I believe that listing down your goals immediately makes them more achievable, because there is a clear way to check whether you are meeting them. If your goal is something like “spend less time playing video games”, does that accurately represent what you actually want? Like, if you spent 1 fewer second every month on video games, technically that’s less time, but you probably wouldn’t call that (significantly) better time management.
Analyzing the Difference
So, you’ve decided what “good” time management looks like. Take the time to analyze the difference between the quality (or lack thereof) of your current time management and your goal.
If you often feel like you don’t even know where your time is going, (or simply don’t want to admit it), try tracking your screen time usage (because, after all, that’s likely where all your time is going).
Spending too much time on Instagram and Reddit?
Spending too much time on gaming?
Spending too much time on something else that isn’t productive?
Put systems in place
Whatever the case is, make a concrete goal to reduce that difference until it is 0. For example, for me, I added an app blocker to my phone called StayFree. It sets limits on my apps and websites, and also sends me a daily summary of how much time I spent on my phone. I’ve personally found some workarounds to StayFree, so I also got NoScroll (yes, I have an Android…) to have double layers of security for my own degeneracy. Similarly, I have a Chrome extension called StayFocusd which blocks sites when using a laptop/PC.
Don’t become a victim of your own weaknesses. Put systems in place to stop yourself!
Amortizing Self-Control
Sometimes, I have decent self-control and discipline; other times, I have poor self-control and I just want to waste time. But the moments of low self-control make a disproportionately large, negative impact on our time; for example, when I’m just bored one night and I end up scrolling Reddit until 3 AM.
When you have moments of high self-control, use that motivation to set up systems in place to protect yourself from low self-control. You’ve effectively carried the momentum of high self-control forward.