In this week’s Mindful Monday, our Portola High School counseling team is sharing tips for effectively managing time to help reduce stress.
Managing time effectively means finding balance between your responsibilities, while taking time to care for yourself, spending quality time with loved ones, and doing fun activities or hobbies. The following tips from School Counselors Melissa Gibson, Rachel LeGrand, Jamie Murphy and Ryan Ichon are designed to support students of any age and their families.
Track how you spend your time for a day or a week to see what activities or tasks are filling your days. This can help you better understand how you’re spending time and make changes if needed.
If you feel overwhelmed by a big project or a homework assignment, try breaking it down into smaller chunks and spread the work out rather than trying to do it all at once.
While it can be tempting to multitask and work on multiple things, it’s more effective to work on one thing at a time.
If you feel like you are always saying “yes” to things and have a lot on your plate, then learn to say “no.” For students, this can mean not taking on an additional activity, joining another club or taking more AP classes. For parents, this could look like prioritizing family time instead of adding an extracurricular activity for your child.
While some level of stress or anxiety is normal and part of the learning and life process, when stress is constant, it can have negative impacts on mental and physical health. If students are feeling overwhelmed, they should talk to their teacher(s), school counselors and/or school mental health staff. Visit iusd.org/counseling or iusd.org/prevention for counseling, academic and mental health supports and staff directories.
Visit iusd.org/MindfulMondays for additional time management resources and to watch previous Mindful Mondays videos on a variety of topics.
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