It´s the same for every aspect of life, if you want to improve in something you need to make a time investment. The challenge is balancing crucial parts of your life and following your goals while not forgetting important responsibilities like friends, family, school and your health. So how can you actually balance your day and get everything done? In the following article we will give you a short introduction of four basic areas you should work on to improve your time management.
Focus
Set clear goals
Before organizing your time, you have to become aware of your goals. What do you want to achieve and what is important to you? If you don’t exactly know what you want, you will find it hard to become very good at anything. Decide what you want to achieve, whether in esports, school or private life. The sooner you set clear goals and priorities, the easier it will be for you to make a plan to achieve your goals.
Concentration
When you do something, you should be 100% focused on the activity. People can make much better use of their abilities if they concentrate on just one thing. So when you do homework, sit down and do it, concentrate and get it over with. The same applies if you want to improve in esports. Concentration is one of the most important qualities of an esports athlete and one of the most important criteria for improvement. Without full concentration and focus in training you will improve much slower. Get a competitive mindset and always be there when you do something. If you acquire this ability, you will not only use your time more effectively, but also improve much faster in everything you do.
Planning your day
To use your time efficiently, it´s important to gain control over your time. A detailed daily plan allows you to keep track of your time, structure your day correctly and set your priorities. In addition, it is much easier to stick to a written daily plan than if you only plan your tasks in your head. With a plan you can clearly see what eats up your time and how to eliminate or change activities to optimize your day. There are many free tools that make time planning much easier. For example: Microsoft to do, todoist, ticktick or any.do
Discipline
In order to get everything under control, you have to approach each of your tasks in a highly disciplined manner. You can’t allow yourself to follow through with your plan for two days and then go back to doing it from your gut. Stick to your plan and overcome yourself. Set smaller goals at the beginning. For example, you can agree with yourself to run your daily schedule as a self-experiment for the next two weeks only and then evaluate your progress and effectiveness. This psychological trick takes away your fear of following the plan because you are only bound to it for two weeks. If you manage to get through the whole two weeks, you will realize that much more is possible than you thought, and that it has become easier with each day to stick to your plan. Discipline is not inborn, you have to just get used to it. Once you get used to certain activities, they become easier and easier over time and eventually become a routine.
Relaxation
Another important point, which is often underestimated in time management is relaxation. The tasks you have planned for the next day can only be tackled if you are rested and refreshed. So find out how many hours of sleep are best for you personally. Some people need less (5-6 hours) and some more (8+ hours) sleep. The time you go to bed is irrelevant as long as you reach your target sleep time. Accourding to scientific research it is much more important to regularly go to bed at the same time and thus develop a routine [1,2]. This way the body gets used to a certain cycle and you feel much more relaxed when you are awake. In addition to sleep, you should also take regular breaks during work, study or when you are playing. Time management is not about spending every minute with exhausting tasks, but rather about organizing your time in a way that allows you to achieve all your goals while feeling good and healthy.
Sources
[1] Christodulu, K. V., & Durand, V. M. (2004). Reducing
Bedtime Disturbance and Night Waking Using Positive Bedtime Routines and Sleep
Restriction. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 19(3),
130–139.
doi:10.1177/10883576040190030101
[2] Taub, J. M. (1978). Behavioral and psychophysiological
correlates of irregularity in chronic sleep routines. Biological
Psychology, 7(1-2), 37–53. doi:10.1016/0301-0511(78)90041-8
