259 Time Management Strategies for Middle and High School Teens
Ever feel that sinking frustration when your child casually mentions a major project or test just hours before it's due? In this episode, I dive into why this happens so often and how you can put an end to the last-minute chaos. I'll walk you through a simple yet powerful three-step time management process specifically designed for middle and high school students. By using this strategy, you can help your child get a handle on their schoolwork and manage their time with ease. Plus, I’ll share why developing this essential life skill early is key and give you practical tips to get started right away.
In this episode, I cover:
- Why Time Management is Crucial for Teens
- The Three-Step Time Management Process That Teens Can Use
- Empowering Your Child to Take Control
Mentioned in this episode:
TOP Planner - https://thetopplanner.com/
Kaleidoscope Living Wall Calendar - https://shopthekaleidoscope.com/?sca_ref=3031436.BYXi1LP8x5
Listen to the episode here!
Or watch the episode here!
I’d be honored and grateful if you would head over to iTunes to leave a review and let other female entrepreneurs know what you learned! While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Okay. Be honest. Have you ever been really frustrated with your child? Because it's the night before some big project or test is, and you're just now hearing about it for the first time. And now everybody's in a panic about it. Well, if you have trust me, you're not alone, but here's the interesting thing.
[00:00:18] There's valid reasons why this is going on. And I have been asked for years, if I would create some specific time management and planning strategies for teens kind of middle school, high school, to help them plan and manage their time, both inside and outside of school. So in this episode, I'm actually going to share with you a incredibly Elegantly simple, but so powerful three step process that you can start doing with your child today.
[00:00:48] Hey there, welcome back to work life harmony. This particular episode is long overdue. I have been asked so many times over the last several years when I am holding Q and A sessions, et cetera, with students saying, Hey Megan, what is your number one resource for my teen or my student? And what they're really asking for here is kind of that grades, you know, six through 12 middle school, high school, and even into college, but specifically middle school and high school.
[00:01:41] I mean, they've been saying, should I have them go through the top program? Like, how can I help teach them how to better plan and manage their time during the school year? So I've been putting a lot of thoughts and experimentation, et cetera, into this. And today I'm going to be sharing with you A three step process that I strongly encourage you to start doing immediately if you have kids kind of in that age range, or if you're listening to this and you happen to be an educator, this might be something you can bring into your classroom as well.
[00:02:16] Now, let's first kind of tackle why does this question come up a lot, right? Why are, why do we feel this need to help our kids? Now, I am in, I am parenting in this age right now. At the time I'm recording this, my daughter is in ninth grade. And I, I'm sure you all can relate to those moments where it's Wednesday at 6 30 at night, and all of a sudden your child's asking you to go to a store to pick up supplies for a project that's due the next day, right?
[00:02:49] Or the last minute panic session over the paper that's due the next day. And we are left getting, as parents, Very frustrated, right? Because we're like, why am I just hearing about this now? Why didn't you tell me sooner? Why weren't you planning ahead? Right. And what we are, what we are led to believe is our kid is procrastinating.
[00:03:11] They're not, you know, they're not staying on top of their stuff. They're forgetting things. Now I want to talk about this for a minute. Because there is, I believe, a 100 percent legitimate reason why this is happening with our kids. So imagine if you will, let's say you had 7 different jobs, alright? And you worked at each job for like an hour a day.
[00:03:42] And each job had a different boss. And each boss has their own style of communicating and assigning their tasks to you. All right, and so all day long, you're jumping from job to job with a different boss. Some might use the same tools. Some don't, but there's no one collectively looking across all 7 jobs and there's no boss above all 7 bosses.
[00:04:11] It's kind of orchestrating, planning, centralizing at a bigger picture. How challenging would it be for you to keep all this together, right? At the end of your day, figuring out what you need to do to prep for the next day, et cetera. Well, friends, that's really what a middle school, high school life is like for our kids.
[00:04:36] They are moving from classroom to classroom teacher to teacher and every teacher has their own style of teaching and every teacher has their own style and sometimes even different tools of communicating the expectations in that class. Meaning homework assignments, test dates, project assignments, et cetera, right?
[00:05:03] So our kids are essentially conducting, you know, I just said seven because that's an average amount of classes. You, you may have less, your school may only have six, maybe you have eight, whatever it is, but your child is essentially navigating having each of these individual jobs with information coming at them in different styles and then assignments being done differently.
[00:05:28] It's no wonder it's hard to keep track of now, you may be thinking you know, a lot of schools are trying to centralize on a particular platform. Almost everyone I know right now, their kids are using laptops and all assignments are being done through some kind of a website portal, et cetera. Be it Google classroom, that seems to be kind of the front runner.
[00:05:51] My daughter's school uses something different called Veracross. You know, there's lots of systems. But even that, even if your school has centralized on something, a previous school we were at, they were centralized on Google Classroom. Well, there wasn't one, like, main dashboard that, Pulled all the information up across all the classes for a clear view of here's everything.
[00:06:16] I'm juggling this week across all of my classes. Here's all the dates. Here's everything. So all this is swirling around in your kid's head. The only thing they're typically being taught is log into the portal, you know, whatever it is, just log in and look at your homework. We're there where they're logging in and they're clicking onto this class and they're clicking onto that.
[00:06:34] But this teacher assigns it through a Google Doc. This teacher puts their assignment information somewhere else. Sometimes I know this has happened to us where a teacher is verbally assigned something as they're walking out the door at the end of that class session, and it doesn't show up in Google Classroom for two more days.
[00:06:50] They say, Oh, we're gonna have a, you know, starting on a project that's due in two weeks, but it's a couple days before it even shows up into the portal. So we need to take a step back and realize it's no wonder this is incredibly challenging for a lot of kids to. Keep on top of this and really be thinking about how to plan and manage their time outside of school to stay on top of all of that.
[00:07:14] Right? So the, the first step before I even get into this three step process, I want to share with you that I would really encourage you to do is to have a conversation with your kids, explaining to them. That learning how to organize information and plan your time is a skill that is not something you are either born with or born without.
[00:07:39] It is a skill that is something that needs to be taught and developed. But unfortunately this just isn't something that we're teaching in, you know, the majority of our schools and even in jobs. And almost just, you know, it's that validation point of like, yes. It's this is hard. And guess what? It's even harder because no one's teaching you how to kind of get on top of this information overload that you are experiencing at school.
[00:08:08] So now we have an opportunity to actually learn some skills here. And these skills are actually going to follow you through the rest of your life, right? Just like a lot of parents are sitting down and teaching financial literacy to their kids because that's typically not taught either. I encourage you to start with just, you know, that baseline of conversation.
[00:08:30] There's nothing wrong with you. It's not that you're, you know, a procrastinator absent minded or can't remember things. It's, it's overwhelming. So let's get a system in place to make this easier. Now, there are two things that you will need to have in place in order to do the three step process. I'm going to talk you through first and foremost is one central place That you and your child to decide upon is the place where all work assignments and any announcements like tests, projects, et cetera, get put.
[00:09:09] Now, being a little vague on this one because it's, it's going to be one of two things. Number one is your, your child may be in a school where they've done a great job and everybody is getting all the information into like, let's say Google classroom. If you are finding that every, you know, all of the assignments, project information, et cetera, is being housed in one central place efficiently and effectively, then you may be able to just use the platform that your school is using.
[00:09:42] If however and I still encourage this, even if they have that one central place, what I, what I love to see is that you get some kind of a small notebook for your kid. It can be just a little five by seven size. If you're watching the video, I'm holding mine up here. Something that's really small. It could even be half that size.
[00:10:02] It just lives in their backpack. And during each class, as assignments are given, they write them down in this notebook. And you don't get one notebook per class. The sole purpose of that little notebook is to capture information about any assignments. Because there is proven brain science. In always when you're right, rewriting something down, you're helping to commit it to your memory.
[00:10:26] All right. So the first input you need is where, where is that central place going to be? That all assignments, AKA tasks for school are going into now, if you are in my top program, if you're familiar with my top framework, time, management, organization and productivity, there's 9 key components to it and 1 of them is centralization.
[00:10:50] Right? So I'm bringing it here already. And for your kids, we need to learn how to get a sense It's a central repository that is one stop shopping for you to go look at what's everything that's going to be competing for my time with school. All right. Now the second input or tool that you're going to need to have to go through this three step process is, and I say 100 percent paper, do please do not go digital on this.
[00:11:16] And I'm going to tell you why when we get there is to have a Monthly style planner. Now notice I'm not a daily planner. Please, please, please. The process I'm going to walk you through. It's pointless to get a planner that has one page per day. All right. What you need is a planner that has a nice big month at a view.
[00:11:38] I'm holding up the top planner month at a view. And my planner comes in two sizes. There's one that's Full eight and a half by 11 paper size. That could be a really nice size monthly view. Now two other options for this could be that you get one of those monthly dry erase boards, right? Where they have the grid laid out for you and then you can just erase it and redo it every month.
[00:12:00] The, the other option I want to throw out for this, it's what my daughter uses up in her room. I'm going to flip my camera around. And I have these giant. erasable wall calendars. I'll put links to those in the show notes. I get them through Kaleidoscope Living. They're amazing. But what we ultimately need is a nice paper or dry erase month at a view where you're going to go and actually execute on the three step process I'm going to walk you through.
[00:12:30] All right. Now, if you are, if you are a top student, if you have already learned my weekly planning process, that is not what we are doing here with your kids. All right. They do not need that level of, of weekly planning because A large portion of their day is spoken for every day in school, right? I mean, all you'd be doing is filling out the whole middle part being like you're at school.
[00:12:54] So here's the three step process. I encourage you to walk through step one is something you do once a week and you can, depending upon how confident, confident you are, In outside of school activity information, you could actually do this once a month instead. And step one is to actually write on that monthly view any activities or events outside of school.
[00:13:26] That is going to consume your child's time. So for instance, maybe they take piano lessons on Tuesday afternoon. Well, every Tuesday you're going to write down piano lesson. And then I would actually write down how long is it? So maybe piano lesson, and it could be a total of an hour by the time you drive, attend it, come back.
[00:13:44] So you might have piano lesson one hour maybe they're involved in an afterschool, you know, club or sport. Well, if there's time outside of school that they're committed to that, right? Maybe they have soccer practice on Tuesday and Thursday for one hour in the afternoon. Maybe they are involved in baseball and you have a big baseball game on Saturday.
[00:14:05] Maybe there is your family going to church on Sunday and you're writing in the time for that. So either at the start of the week or the month your child should have a clear view of all of the commitments of their time outside of school on the days that they're happening. Okay. So that's helping them get the lay of the land of here's what I'm, here are things I'm spending my time on when I'm not at school.
[00:14:28] Now that that was step one, step two, and step three are things that you are going to do very quickly. Every day together. Now, over time, your child should be able to, they'll start to be able to do this on their own, right? But what you're doing is you're teaching them the process and helping them work through challenges as they're learning how to do it.
[00:14:50] So the first part of the daily thing that you're going to do is a quick recap. When they're home from school is to go look at where was that central place, right? Maybe it's their notebook. Maybe you're logging into whatever portal, Google classroom, et cetera. And the first question you're asking and looking at together is, Was there anything assigned today?
[00:15:14] That's due tomorrow. All right. So what we're looking for is 1st, those urgent tasks urgent, meaning it's important. Right? And it has a time sensitivity of tomorrow. So we're going to look through all of those. Look classes and say, is there anything that was assigned today that's due tomorrow? And if so, you can jot it down in that square for the day to make sure they're seeing, okay, here, this is what still needs to happen today.
[00:15:45] Now, the next layer of this and the final step, right? Cause step one was getting the outside of school activities and you're doing that either at a monthly or weekly rhythm. The, the step two was what was assigned a day that's due tomorrow. Okay. And then the final step is, was there anything assigned today that has a future due date outside of tomorrow?
[00:16:06] So you're looking for two key things here. Were there any projects that were assigned? Assigned, right? Like maybe a paper that's due in two weeks or they're starting on, you know, science fair projects or, you know, group projects, let's, let's not gonna start on group projects, but is there any project work and or were there any test announcements?
[00:16:26] Right? Did you find out today on Monday that you have a big test on Friday in your math class? Now for those here is this is where it gets a little bit more detailed, right? With the assignments that are due tomorrow, that's just very quick. Okay, here's the homework I have to get done tonight. Now with those tests and or projects, what you're going to do is you're going to go on that monthly page that you have there and you're going to write down the due date.
[00:16:53] So let's take the math test example that I just said. So here we are, it's Monday. They find out there's a test on Friday, so they're going to write on that Friday math test. Now you get to engage in a conversation with your child to say, Hey, let's look at your week right now. Right. Namely looking at what are the things that we're already committed to spend time on outside of school, because you might see, Oh, this is a week where I have two soccer games and I have this meeting after school.
[00:17:24] So now you get to start to have the conversation to say, Hey, where do you see, how do you see yourself fitting in the time that you need? To prepare for this test, right? Because what we're helping them to visually see is what if Thursday night was a late night, you know, soccer game or baseball game or something like that.
[00:17:46] And, and they know that they're not going to be done till 10 PM. Well, if that's the night before the test, now you get to chat and say, Hey, how do we want to handle this? Do you need to, you know, do we need to really move our prep time for the test up for Wednesday or maybe they're recognizing, gosh, when I come home from school on Thursday, I'm going to dig right in and get ready for that test because I'm going to be gone Thursday night.
[00:18:12] And what they're doing is now you together are kind of guiding them through. Let's make a plan. How much time do you need? To prepare for that test and where do we see this fitting in and now they get to go right in on the days, like maybe in that example, they might write Wednesday you know, study for math test, or they might on Thursday, right?
[00:18:33] Study for math test right after school. So they're starting to see this process of how do I get control of my time and plan ahead for those future projects as future things. And the same is true. Like maybe they have a paper due in two weeks. Well, now you get to have that same conversation with them.
[00:18:53] Hey, you've got a paper due in two weeks, but look, we're at a town next weekend. So if you were thinking you were going to have the weekend to work on that project, now let's talk through, how do we, how are we going to get this done? Right? How do you see taking control of your time and planning ahead? So that you know, you'll have the time you need to get that done.
[00:19:13] And then you can write down little milestones, right? So maybe maybe you're already seeing tomorrow's a really full day, but the day after, maybe that's a great time for you to start working on your outline for your paper. And you're helping your child take these bigger projects and learn how to start breaking them down into a meaningful plan of how to get there, acknowledging the realities of everything else.
[00:19:37] If you have a child that maybe gets a little more anxious with schoolwork, here's something I've seen time and time again, there will be a day where maybe, you know, there's three classes that have given out worksheets that are due tomorrow, but another class spent their whole day talking about this project that's due in two weeks, right?
[00:19:57] Well, which one do you think is going to take up kind of that brain power and stress for your kid? I know for us, my child is going to be coming home and all they're going to be talking about and freaking out about is this huge project. It's going to be 30 percent of my grade and it's doing, you know, three weeks and they're, they're spinning on it right then.
[00:20:16] And they're forgetting about the work that's due tomorrow because all they're doing is being consumed about this. Like I got to start on it right now. Well, when you have this month at a view, it allows you to sit down together and say, okay, here's what we've got, right? Here's our end date. Let's look at what we have going on over the next three weeks.
[00:20:34] And now you get to develop a plan together. And so this will help reduce stress for them as well. Cause I know, and sometimes for us at home, it's allowed us to see, Hey, it's okay. That you're not starting on this project for the next two days because you have these other things going on so you can not be stressed that you're not starting it because we see when we are and she gets to outline what that path looks like and I will tell you what, having that monthly and this is why you want it on paper.
[00:21:02] You want it somewhere where they are seeing it. Seeing it where you can visually look at it and interact together. You can update it. You can change it, right? It's going to be a game changer for them to have that. But the key to any of this working is that they're the ones in the driver's seat.
[00:21:20] Ultimately, they're the ones making the decisions, right? We've got to empower them to do that. We're just there to help ask those leading questions and to help, you know, bounce ideas off of, but I would encourage you have them be the ones writing on that calendar. You can even color code it if you want, right?
[00:21:38] Let them pick a color for afterschool activities and a different color for homework assignments. Really allow them to make it theirs. I know my daughter went and got a set of different colored erasable chalk pens for her erasable calendars. And she's actually now in our house, she actually has the current month and next month up.
[00:21:56] So you, you can even extend it to be two months out as well. So I hope that you have found this helpful. I 100 percent believe in helping our kids learn how to balance, manage and budget their time as early as possible is going to be a total game changer for them. And in doing this, it's also empowered my daughter sometimes to say no to invitations that have come her way because she can visually see.
[00:22:30] Gosh, if I do go do with that thing with my friends on Sunday, that's when I was working on that project, like what's going to happen if I don't spend my time there, right? So now they're being empowered to learn about, you know, getting some boundaries with their time and really having a great respectful relationship with it.
[00:22:50] So I hope you all are off to a good school year and as always, happy planning.
