Time management in the routine of university students: results of an intervention

Abstract

Those who make use of time management skills find them to be a useful tool for the purpose of overcoming procrastination tendencies and fostering better task management. These two matters — procrastination and task management — are two issues of considerable relevance in the lives of many university students. Poor time management skills can result in an unbalanced relationship with one’s academic responsibilities, resulting in an increase in stress levels. Uneven distribution of tasks throughout the week, procrastination, task overload and the absence of strategies for eliminating distractions are some of the possible means through which a student can undermine their own well-being as it relates to academic life. These bad practices may be remedied by adopting time management strategies. With the purpose of fostering such strategies, two online workshops were developed. A total of 17 students participated in the intervention, of whom, 12 showed improvements in their time management skills, with two displaying particularly remarkable positive changes. From these results, it was concluded that these interventions can be of great value, and that, despite the interventions being brief, it is possible to obtain results that lead to the improvement of participants’ time management skills.