"I'm so busy. I don't have time for anything else."

My wise husband once said, “The only people that don’t have busy schedules are dead people.” Students sometimes feel that once they get out of school their schedules will get easier and less stressful. Take it from me, that is not the case.

As a high school student my schedule consisted of working, school, church, family functions, boyfriend, etc. As a college student my schedule consisted of working, school, church, family functions, fiancé, etc. As a full-time working adult my schedule consisted of working, church, family functions, husband, etc. As a stay at home mom my schedule consists of working at home, being a wife, raising my son, church activities, etc. As you can see, my schedule never really gets any easier.

Ask any college student I have invested time in and they can tell you I harp on time management a lot. I harp on it so much because I really believe in order to succeed in any arena of your life you need to learn to manage your time. Otherwise, you can not set healthy boundaries in your life, you will be easily overwhelmed, and you will experience intense burn out more often. When I was working full time away from home I was the supervisor over several young employees. I always encouraged them to look at their plans for the day and make three categories: URGENT, NOT URGENT, and CAN WAIT. Urgent, of course were things that had to be done that day, not urgent were things that had to be done but not necessarily that day, and can wait was items that could wait for another day.

Worst case scenario a leader says, “Oh my gosh! I don’t have time for anything!” I suggest an intervention of sorts. Take their calendar and adjust it for them. While in the work force my manager did this for me. I went to her office one day and said, “Okay, I need YOU to tell me what is MOST important.” She was more than willing to assist me because, at the time, everything was being handed to me with no expectation of when it needed to be completed or everything had the same due date and I only worked eight hours a day. Once leaders start placing items in these three categories they start to realize what really consumes their day and what can be weeded out.