Going through college is stressful enough, but then you find out you have no time management skills, worsening your experience even more.

When you’ve been in college for a long time, it is hard to change your outlook on your scheduling techniques, but it would be worthwhile. Changing your schedule can help lessen your stress that college automatically throws on you.

Pinterest has many tips on how to change your time management and improve your day by taking away the stressors of college.

Eisenhower box

This helps establish and prioritize which tasks are more important and urgent, preventing you from doing the wrong assignment first and then regretting it later.

To create an Eisenhower box, simply draw a large square and have four quadrants inside that. Label the first column “urgent” and the second “not urgent.” Then label the first row “important” and the second “not important.”

The first box should be the “do it now” assignments; the one to the right should be in the planning stage; the one in the bottom left should be in the delegating stage and the last one is unimportant at this point so drop it until it moves into the other boxes.

Wheel of productivity

Create a wheel, starting at midnight, and then draw a clock around the circle. Inside the circle, create a key so there are different colors for work, exercise, commuting, sleep, class, life maintenance and any other actions you think take up enough time to categorize it.

With a wheel of productivity you will be able to track how well you manage your time throughout the day. Track this for a week or two so you can make adjustments to better manage your time.

Time blocking

Many people already use time blocking with their class schedule, but try adding in times for sleeping, studying, eating, etc. This is like the wheel of productivity, but gives a more precise outline for different actions and scheduling those tasks rather than tracking how you are spending your time each day.

Write out the days and times and color code each task you have every day. For example, classes could be yellow and work would be green. This can be written or created in an Excel worksheet.

Create a to-do list

Obviously, this is a part of time management, but it depends on whether you like the satisfaction of crossing things off when you are finished with the task.

By creating a to-do list you can see what needs to be done and then prioritize the list by numbering it in importance of the tasks.

Set boundaries

If you know you have two quizzes due at midnight and a test tomorrow and have done neither, just say no to your friends when they want to hang out.

You have to set boundaries to establish and stick to time management skills. By setting aside two hours a day for socializing, you can keep your friends and not fail all your classes.