By: Jacob Daheim, MA

There is an enormous amount of responsibilities that athletes have to manage both mentally and physically. Between practices, games, travel, classes, homework, and work, it can be a real challenge to get everything done. We often feel stretched thin or that there just isn’t enough time in a day for what we need to do. Time is at a premium when you’re a athlete.

According to the NCAA, it is estimated that student-athletes spend on average between 30-40 hours a week toward their sport. This is equivalent to a full-time job and does not even consider all of their academic responsibilities. To attempt to handle all of these responsibilities requires a great deal of focus and time management. 

The Importance of Time Management

We all have the exact same number of hours in a given day, week, month, etcetera. No matter how you slice it, there are 24 hours in a day or 168 hours in a week. How we manage or use this time can differ. Unlike many other things in our lives, what we chose to do with these hours is in our control. How we manage these hours can act as a leveler or distinct advantage toward the pursuit of our goals.

So where to begin? 

Record Your Baseline

To help develop time management skills, a great place to start is to see what we do during a typical week. For the next week, record how you spend your hours. You could track this on a table or a spreadsheet. Try and record when you started the action and when it ended. We recommend that you record this throughout the day, so you don’t have to try and remember everything at the end of the day where your memory could fail you. We also recommend that you do not include judgment in your recording. Simply record the actions. For example, rather than putting “nothing”, you could record “watched TV” or “laid in bed.” Be very objective.  

This exercise could be very beneficial right away. It can help you gain an awareness of what you do during the week and identify potential areas for change. Being more aware can help you be more purposeful with your time. With awareness and purpose, we can start to minimize squandered time and maximize quality time.

Recording a baseline is a great place to start, but other techniques can be vital toward effective time management. Great time management is practiced on a day-to-day basis.

Tackett and Bradstreet Psychological Services

All providers at Tackett and Bradstreet use time management techniques to help themselves succeed. We can help you improve your time management abilities and develop specific time management skills. We can also help show you how time management can take your performance to the next level.

Failure to plan is planning to fail.

Quote of the Day: “You can’t make up for lost time. You can only do better in the future.”

– Ashley Ormon - 

Joke of the Day: Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants?...

In case he got a hole in one.