“Teaching time management skills to your teen is the best gift you can give to your child for life. Read more to find out importance and effective ways to teach time management to your teens.”
The scenario today demands teens to be equally good at academics, sports, volunteering, social and family responsibilities. If we adults struggle to manage time, teens are no different.
The time of teens is splintered by multiple tasks and responsibilities, it’s important to make the teens learn how to set priorities and manage time effectively.
Parents play an important role in securing their future by stepping in and offering them valuable insights and tips to manage time efficiently.
Lacking time management skills can turn your teens into life-long procrastinators. Leaving things to the last minute not only leads to high-stress levels but also can result in relationship troubles and harming their academic grades as well.
Let’s understand why teens are stressed out and how can time management helps and prepares them for a successful beginning.
Why are teens so stressed out?
Here are some of the common reasons why teens are stressed out these days:
- Academic grades and not being able to make it through a good university.
- Social stress like maintaining good relationships with teachers, classmates and resolving conflicts with bullies.
- Unrealistic expectations from family.
- Mental stress due to COVID.
- Loss of any friend or family member may result in trauma or stress.
Well, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to deal with the stress but inculcating time management skills in one’s life certainly enables one to reduce the last-minute fuss and stay less anxious.
Apart from that, teens can deliver their academic commitments on time and take out time to hang out with their friends freely and guiltlessly.
Learning to manage time is a lifelong skill. Be it college, university or school life, time management ensures a fulfilled and happy life.
Importance of Time Management
Transition to the high school can be a little busy but this beginning of adolescence could be even busier. So, it’s very important to teach the importance of time management now!
Here are the benefits of time management.
- Teens will become independent and more responsible.
- Improved decision-making skills as there is no last-minute hassle.
- Excellent performance in academics and other activities at school.
- Plenty of opportunities to relax and unwind with family and friends.
- No stressing out due to an approaching deadline or upcoming test.
- Teens remain calm and composed most of the time.
Why does your teen needs to manage time?
Just like money and energy, time is a finite resource and keeps on exhausting every millisecond.
Time management is all about planning, scheduling and controlling time spent on various activities in a manner to avoid time wastage.
Check out few important skills that time management helps them to achieve effectively and optimally.
· Prioritisation
Based on the importance, teens learn to prioritize the task according to importance or urgency. They can set their priorities for the day or week or even month.
This enables them to achieve the desired target on time and accomplish goals seamlessly.
· Goal-setting
One cannot utilize the time well until you don’t know what to do with it. By learning time management, your child understands the importance of setting long and short term goals.
From small petite things such as brushing at night to heavy tasks such as completing homework and going for music class, everything can be streamlined by managing time properly.
· Organisation
Once the priorities and goals are set, you need to work out a solid plan to achieve them and time management is the sole player.
Some children are you may need to maintain a to-do list or carry a timetable which encapsulates all the things that you intend to do.
There are many software and apps available that send you a notification whenever you schedule your work and aid in better organization.
· Managing stress
If the work is completed on time, there will not be any stress of a missing deadline.
Last-minute hassle creates unwanted stress that badly impacts the efficiency of the child. Maintaining a proper sleep and exercising cycle can help reducing stress to greater levels.
How to empower your teen to build time management skills?
Here are a few ways by which you can empower your teen to build time management skills.
· Find out your teen’s style
Help your child in identifying their unique productive period where their efficiency is maximum. It’s the time when they are most productive.
For example, some kids prefer to work-study at night while some at day. Time should be managed in such a way that resonates with the teen’s rhythm.
Let them be in charge of everything and be the decision-makers.
· Encourage them for an organised lifestyle
Just like a scholastic schedule is given in the school that helps the adolescents to manage their time in school, similarly help your child develop a lifestyle schedule that gives a structure to their life.
Developing a life schedule enables them to participate in household chores, extracurricular activities and social events along with academics.
· Learn to Start Early
Help them understand the importance of prioritizing work and setting goals to achieve them.
The best way to do this is to teach them to start the work early. Waiting till the last minute, be it preparation for a test or attending a family function – will result in procrastination.
· Manage technology distractions
Every coin has two sides. On one hand, there are numerous upsides of technology, the downsides cannot be ignored when it comes to academics.
The devices especially phones are highly distracting. Make sure to teach your teens the importance of time and set their own limits on these electronic gadgets.
How to Incorporate Time Management as a part of your teen’s routine?
Have a look at these 100% effective tips that will help your child incorporate the skills of time management easily.
· Start with an agenda
Sit with your teenager or let her alone record all the dates of upcoming tests, assignments or project submissions. Pen it down on a paper or school diary.
All the important activities should be highlighted and planned out in such as way that there is no pressure of the deadlines. Set the deadlines a couple of days before the actual date.
This will give you space to cover in case things get delayed due to some emergencies.
· Set up a Master Schedule
After preparing the agenda, prepare a timetable and block the time slots after calculating the expected time for completion.
Decide on how much effort is required and how much you can give it daily, weekly or monthly. Work out on the planner every week.
Colour coding the subjects makes your schedule easier to interpret and follow.
· Break into smaller steps
It’s always better to kick start early. Apart from that, completing the assignment or the entire project in one go could be daunting.
To avoid that, make your child learn how to break things into parts i.e. creating small milestones of a goal and working in pieces to achieve that goal.
Occasionally celebrate the completion of your small milestones.
· Avoid Multitasking
Multitasking is purely an inefficient way to learn and perform tasks. It reduces productivity and efficiency dramatically.
Make your child understand the importance of focussing on one thing at a time and they’ll surely hit the bull’s eye in that timeframe.
Find out proper ways to reduce distractions such as hunger, sleepiness, urge to unlock the phone etc. Make sure to have adequate sleep and have snacks before starting to work.
Keep a water bottle handy to minimize the time wasted in going to another place for drinking water. Keep the electronic gadgets away to reduce distractions.
· Set the limits
As a parent, you need to be strict and set the limits for your teen.
For example: “Finish the Introduction for your Chemistry project by 4: 30 pm”.
Just a slight input from your side would motivate the kids to complete the task on time and not waste their time on unimportant stuff.
You along with your teenager can take the help of technology such as time apps to manage things in a better way. Keep a clock handy or visible from the study table so that they are aware of the current time.
· Avoid perfectionism
Take small breaks in between to recharge yourself for the next task. Continuous working may tire you and hamper your productivity.
Rather than fussing over minute details and trying to make your work perfect in the first round will be a huge time waster and frustrating as well.
Just complete your work and then, go back and revise to improve it.
· Reward achievement
Don’t forget to celebrate when your teenager accomplishes a task. You don’t need to do something big or expensive, just an icecream, extra TV time or a visit to her favourite park will go.
· Set expectations with clear consequences
Rather than giving repetitive reminders, let your teen take ownership and responsibility for her schedule.
This will not only help your child in estimating and planning her daily routine and manage lifestyle schedule but will also help her work towards hr complicated long-term goals.
After’ll, Rome wasn’t built in a day…
Always remember success is not an overnight journey, it needs patience, determination and excellent time management skills.
Motivate and encourage your child to value and respect time. Even a one millisecond delay in a sprint race can take away the first position from your hands.
There will be times when your teenager feels low, stressful or forgets the deadline, make sure that she learns from these mistakes.
Our professional tutors understand your teenager’s rhythm and design the learning in such as way that she grabs maximum in minimum time.
Bring out the genius in your child by enrolling with our well-tailored courses that not only make your kids perform better in academics but makes them future-ready!
Contact us to book your teen’s FREE demo class today!