Last year at this time, I followed up my posts about goalsetting and using time wisely with a post about setting priorities. In that post, I emphasized that the more able you are to set your own priorities, both with your time in general and with your schoolwork in particular, the more able you will be to expect things of yourself and see your success as your own. When I mentioned that you might wish to prioritize certain activities that teachers who are concerned about whether you will be able to meet their expectations might think you should avoid, I stressed that the key to making time for them while still prioritizing your schoolwork and other important aspects of your life is to set reasonable limits on them. In this post, I will extend the idea of reasonable limits to all aspects of your life, including your studies. No matter how much of a priority something is to you, whether it is a challenging class, a preferred extracurricular activity, or a favorite leisure activity that tempts you to lose track of time to the point that you neglect your other priorities, there is a point at which the amount of time you put into an activity is too much. Obviously, this can lead to the neglect of other important things in your life. What is less obvious, but just as important to realize, is that it can also lead to diminishing returns. No matter how important an activity is, including your schoolwork, setting priorities also means setting reasonable limits, because without them, your chances of success might actually decrease, and the frustration this can cause will in turn negatively impact other important aspects of your life.
Obviously, if school is challenging for you, and sometimes even when it’s not, it is very tempting to want to put a lot of other things before your studies. While becoming better at prioritizing your studies most likely means you will have to spend more time on them than you did before, and might even mean that increased amount of time is significant, your studies should not take up all of your time. No matter how strict the homework policy is at your school, no teachers or administrators want you to spend all your time outside of school on your studies. Just as I have said that knowing your school’s schedule of grading periods can improve your study skills by helping you keep better track of your grades and the time you have to make improvements to them where necessary, so I will say that knowing your school’s homework policy can improve your study skills by giving you a benchmark by which you can set your priorities. If your school sets an expectation that you should spend a certain amount of time on your studies each night, improving your study skills means striving to spend that time and making it as productive as possible, whether you do it in one long or several short sessions. Set reasonable limits on how long you can focus, as well as on how long your breaks are. If you find that your total working time, minus any breaks you take, far exceeds what your school’s expectations are, make sure you speak up, so that parents, teachers, or anyone else who supports you can help you adjust your priorities and/or provide accommodations that might help you make better use of your time. If you are someone who needs extra time to complete your work, and you have documentation and accommodations in place, you may need to go beyond the stated homework policy timeframe to meet the expectations your teachers have for you, but if you do, make sure you speak up if a little extra time turns in to a lot. If that happens, you have the right to ask for further accommodations and support, and the more able you are to show that you are doing the best you can and truly need more help, the more receptive your teachers will be to giving it to you.
Taking breaks from your studies for things that can certainly be seen as priorities, such as extracurricular activities or planned social events, shouldn’t count as study time, either, but making them priorities still involves setting reasonable limits. Depending on the activity or event, sticking to a prescribed amount of time and/or making sure that a little extra time doesn’t turn in to a lot can be just as important as it is with your studies. If you are involved in something you feel is taking too much time from your studies, but it is something you are passionate about and do not wish to give up, speaking up to see if there are accommodations that can help you stick with it while better balancing it with your studies is well worth considering. If, on the other hand, you have overextended yourself with too many activities, and/or do not feel passionate about what you are doing, carefully considering changes to your schedule and prioritizing what is most important to you is another way you can set reasonable limits. Not only will it allow you to better prioritize your studies, it will also also allow you to better prioritize whatever activities you have chosen to keep.
Making sure a little extra time doesn’t become too much might be harder to do when it comes to your social life, but it is still important. Depending on how social you are, whether on social media, in real life, or both, even considering setting reasonable limits might seem nearly impossible, but it can be done. Just as I said in last year’s post about social media and video games, so I will say in this year’s post about socializing in real life: I am not someone who says you should severely limit or even avoid activities such as these during the school week without exception. However, just as I said before, there is a huge gap between strict limits and no limits, and part of learning to set your own priorities is learning to figure out what is reasonable. If you are not far enough along on your study skills journey to be able to set reasonable limits on socializing during the week, then you need someone else to set them, and they need to be strict. Over time, as you become better at making your schoolwork a priority and balancing it with your other priorities, you might just be able to find or increase time for socializing during the week, and if you can do that without losing sight of your other priorities, then I am one of the first teachers who would say that that time is well deserved.
Whether with your studies, with your extracurricular activities, or with your social life, setting priorities means setting reasonable limits on how you spend your time. Both following prescribed times for each type of activity and making sure a little extra time does not become too much are ways to make sure you are setting reasonable limits. Whether it involves your studies or your activities, speaking up to make sure you get whatever support you need to make the best possible use of your time is an important step to take, not only on your study skills journey, but in your life as well. While this post focused on setting priorities with both your studies and your activities, my next post will focus on setting priorities within your study time. Just as you have many priorities that compete with your study time, so you have many priorities within your studies that compete with each other, and setting reasonable limits on certain aspects of your studies to make time and space for others is another way you can work to improve your study skills.