Your Time, Your Rules

By Fintan Darragh

You can get much more out of your after school time if you follow a few simple rules. Whose rules are they? Why, yours of course!

It happens to the best of us. Come home, have a snack, watch a bit of telly, and before you know it Big Brother’s on and there’s no way you can get any homework done now!

Loosing track of time is very easy, so here’s a tip to help you have even more free time.

Define your own rules, and stick to them!

Firstly, you’re much more likely to stick to rules you’ve set for yourself. You’re in charge and you are responsible for how well you follow them.

But what sort of rules am I talking about? Simply the order in which you do things.

You need to decide (after giving it some thought) in what order you are going to do the things you need to do every day after you get back from school. Everyone has set things they do or need to do when they get home. You should take into account homework you may have to do, including the different types of homework (because some take more effort than others).

Here is a list of things you might want to consider putting into your order list:

• Languages
• Artwork
• Football practice
• Drama
• Music
• The dog’s walk
• Maths
• Science
• Coursework
• English

You won’t have to do all of that in one evening, but try to ask yourself ‘which of these do I need to do first?’

If you have more energy when you get home, you should try to do the tasks that require the most energy. For me, I’d want to get my coursework out of the way as soon as possible, then English, then Languages. They all take a lot of effort, so it’s best for me to get them out of the way as soon as I get in.

Thinking along the same lines, it takes far less effort to draw pictures, so that would be one of the last things I’d want to get done.

You should end up with an ordered list like this:

1. Coursework
2. English
3. Languages
4. History
5. Football Practice
6. The dog’s walk
7. Maths
8. Science
9. Music
10. Drama
11. Artwork

Now that you have this list, it’s time to stick to it. Say you only get three homeworks a night. It’s Monday and you have Science, English and some sketching for Art. All you do is take a look at your two lists (what you have to do and the order you want to do them in), and drop anything you don’t need to do from your ordered list.

So on Mondays you’ll end up with:

1. English
2. Football Practice
3. The dog’s walk
4. Science
5. Artwork

There you have it! It’s up to you to follow that, and when you’re done you can feel completely free to do whatever you want!

You’ll find that you have much more time to yourself if you make a to-do list like this, and follow it closely. Make it your own, and let it free up your time. After just a few weeks you’ll be able to order your work automatically, and get it done far quicker, to boot.