Many high school and college students take on more than they can handle at times. When this happens it causes stress, anxiety and many more unwanted feelings. A lot of students have taken on having a full class schedule, full time jobs and still having to cope with their everyday life. In these difficult situations, it’s easy to see that students will over work themselves immensely. Being able to keep focus, work one task at a time and have life scheduled out is extremely important and will help you in the long run if these simple steps of the time management matrix are followed.

     Many students nowadays believe they have mastered multitasking, which is when a person does more than one task at a time. What students don’t know is that you’re really better off doing tasks one after another than trying to do them at the same time. While doing more than one task at a time it’s actually taking longer than it normally would doing it one after another. Multitasking is when one takes the focus off of one thing, then on to the other. Once the focus is back on the first task, “multitaskers” will have to concentrate all over again which isn’t very efficient. While doing multiple tasks at once they’re not being completed efficiently which turns out badly in some cases. The brain cannot be in two places at once, so don’t over work it! When doing one thing at a time putting all of ones focus into it and gives it the right amount of attention that is needed. There is a famous test that studies the immediate gratification that is called the “marshmallow test.” For the marshmallow test, children are placed in an isolated room with a chair for them to sit in and with one marshmallow placed on the table. Once the child is placed in the room you explain the directions which are: they will stay unmonitored for fifteen minutes and they can either have one marshmallow now or wait the fifteen minutes without eating it and they will receive a second one. Many of the children ate the marshmallow as soon as the adult left the room, and many of them waited until they just couldn’t take it anymore. But studies show the children that waited the full fifteen minutes showed socially and academically more success in the years that followed. It seems like for the older kids there is a new marshmallow test: texting. Texting seems to be one of biggest distractions for teenagers these days. Similar to the marshmallow test, studies showed that if the students didn’t hold off from texting while studying then they would end up receiving a 10% lower grade than the students that didn’t text at all. (Sparks) People aren’t multitaskers at all, if a task cannot be completed well while trying to do several at a time, might as well do them one at a time. I also believe that multitasking should not be taught. Students should understand how to do each task they complete effectively.

     Focusing on homework can be extremely back-breaking when having so many distractions around. While I am doing homework for any of my classes, I find myself shifting my focus from different things that are distracting. Most of the time, I end up watching TV, making food, or getting on social media and then get right back to where I was.  Many people have noticed that they’re doing all these things but it’s important to know it’s not multitasking, but instead it’s shifting a person’s focus from one thing to another. During something like homework, it’s very difficult for myself to get back on track with what I was doing because I’m only paying partial attention to the tasks I am trying to do at once. Going over this topic has helped me realize doing this isn’t very efficient while I’m trying to understand a specific concept in school.

     School, work and at home activities can all be a little difficult sometimes, but Steve Mueller will go into detail in his blog article about how to successfully manage a time consuming life. The time management matrix helps one plan and prioritize everything that's going on in his or her life. Before you plan out your matrix you must figure out what your everyday life is consisting of. Make an honest to do list and figure out what is most important to least important. In this matrix there are four quadrants. The first quadrant represents the most important tasks that have deadlines and need to be done immediately. In the second quadrant, you put tasks that you are able to long term plan for and are able to strategize, so it will come out as perfect as you can make it. The third is the quadrant where you would place everything that’s highly distracting, and finally the fourth quadrant would be pure waste. Anything that keeps you away from your number one priorities would go in the fourth quadrant. Ways that can also help re-prioritizing your to do list is doing weekly assessments. When you do theses assessments you have six sheets of paper, five during the work or school week and one to summarize your whole week. Doing HONEST weekly assessments helps you look at your everyday schedule to see how you can organize, and achieve everything you plan on doing! (Mueller, 2015) Applying the time matrix has completely helped re-prioritize my to do list by using the four quadrants often to organize my workload and meet my academic success.

     While I am looking back at my time matrix I’ve noticed I spend a lot of my time in quadrant 2. Quadrant 2 is when I have time to schedule out what I am doing accordingly. I spend most of my time in this quadrant because when I  have 2 jobs and go to school full time there's not much time to slack on what is due. My work schedule goes around my class schedule so when I’m given test and homework assignments I figure out where I have the free time to complete them. It’s very important to be in quadrant 2 for college so I can be on a schedule and it’s least likely I will get overwhelmed with assignments if I plan it out correctly. Something I’ve also noticed is the quadrant I’m in the least would be quadrant 1. I don’t do well under pressure, so I’ll always try and put it in quadrant 2, but it doesn’t always work out.