quantitative research about time management of students

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Does time management work? A meta-analysis

1 Concordia University, Sir George Williams Campus, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Aïda Faber

2 FSA Ulaval, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Alexandra Panaccio

Associated data.

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Does time management work? We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the impact of time management on performance and well-being. Results show that time management is moderately related to job performance, academic achievement, and wellbeing. Time management also shows a moderate, negative relationship with distress. Interestingly, individual differences and contextual factors have a much weaker association with time management, with the notable exception of conscientiousness. The extremely weak correlation with gender was unexpected: women seem to manage time better than men, but the difference is very slight. Further, we found that the link between time management and job performance seems to increase over the years: time management is more likely to get people a positive performance review at work today than in the early 1990s. The link between time management and gender, too, seems to intensify: women’s time management scores have been on the rise for the past few decades. We also note that time management seems to enhance wellbeing—in particular, life satisfaction—to a greater extent than it does performance. This challenges the common perception that time management first and foremost enhances work performance, and that wellbeing is simply a byproduct.

Introduction

Stand-up comedian George Carlin once quipped that in the future a “time machine will be built, but no one will have time to use it” [ 1 ]. Portentously, booksellers now carry one-minute bedtime stories for time-starved parents [ 2 ] and people increasingly speed-watch videos and speed-listen to audio books [ 3 – 5 ]. These behaviors are symptomatic of an increasingly harried society suffering from chronic time poverty [ 6 ]. Work is intensifying—in 1965 about 50% of workers took breaks; in 2003, less than 2% [ 7 ]. Leisure, too, is intensifying: people strive to consume music, social media, vacations, and other leisure activities ever more efficiently [ 8 – 11 ].

In this frantic context, time management is often touted as a panacea for time pressure. Media outlets routinely extol the virtues of time management. Employers, educators, parents, and politicians exhort employees, students, children, and citizens to embrace more efficient ways to use time [ 12 – 16 ]. In light of this, it is not surprising that from 1960 to 2008 the frequency of books mentioning time management shot up by more than 2,700% [ 17 ].

Time management is defined as “a form of decision making used by individuals to structure, protect, and adapt their time to changing conditions” [ 18 ]. This means time management, as it is generally portrayed in the literature, comprises three components: structuring, protecting, and adapting time. Well-established time management measures reflect these concepts. Structuring time, for instance, is captured in such items as “Do you have a daily routine which you follow?” and “Do your main activities during the day fit together in a structured way?” [ 19 ]. Protecting time is reflected in items such as “Do you often find yourself doing things which interfere with your schoolwork simply because you hate to say ‘No’ to people?” [ 20 ]. And adapting time to changing conditions is seen in such items as “Uses waiting time” and “Evaluates daily schedule” [ 21 ].

Research has, furthermore, addressed several important aspects of time management, such as its relationship with work-life balance [ 22 ], whether gender differences in time management ability develop in early childhood [ 23 ], and whether organizations that encourage employees to manage their time experience less stress and turnover [ 24 ]. Despite the phenomenal popularity of this topic, however, academic research has yet to address some fundamental questions [ 25 – 27 ].

A critical gap in time management research is the question of whether time management works [ 28 , 29 ]. For instance, studies on the relationship between time management and job performance reveal mixed findings [ 30 , 31 ]. Furthermore, scholars’ attempts to synthesize the literature have so far been qualitative, precluding a quantitative overall assessment [ 18 , 32 , 33 ]. To tackle this gap in our understanding of time management, we conducted a meta-analysis. In addressing the question of whether time management works, we first clarify the criteria for effectiveness. In line with previous reviews, we find that virtually all studies focus on two broad outcomes: performance and wellbeing [ 32 ].

Overall, results suggest that time management enhances job performance, academic achievement, and wellbeing. Interestingly, individual differences (e.g., gender, age) and contextual factors (e.g., job autonomy, workload) were much less related to time management ability, with the notable exception of personality and, in particular, conscientiousness. Furthermore, the link between time management and job performance seems to grow stronger over the years, perhaps reflecting the growing need to manage time in increasingly autonomous and flexible jobs [ 34 – 37 ].

Overall, our findings provide academics, policymakers, and the general audience with better information to assess the value of time management. This information is all the more useful amid the growing doubts about the effectiveness of time management [ 38 ]. We elaborate on the contributions and implications of our findings in the discussion section.

What does it mean to say that time management works?

In the din of current debates over productivity, reduced workweeks, and flexible hours, time management comes to the fore as a major talking point. Given its popularity, it would seem rather pointless to question its effectiveness. Indeed, time management’s effectiveness is often taken for granted, presumably because time management offers a seemingly logical solution to a lifestyle that increasingly requires coordination and prioritization skills [ 39 , 40 ].

Yet, popular media outlets increasingly voice concern and frustration over time management, reflecting at least part of the population’s growing disenchantment [ 38 ]. This questioning of time management practices is becoming more common among academics as well [ 41 ]. As some have noted, the issue is not just whether time management works. Rather, the question is whether the techniques championed by time management gurus can be actually counterproductive or even harmful [ 26 , 42 ]. Other scholars have raised concerns that time management may foster an individualistic, quantitative, profit-oriented view of time that perpetuates social inequalities [ 43 , 44 ]. For instance, time management manuals beguile readers with promises of boundless productivity that may not be accessible to women, whose disproportionate share in care work, such as tending to young children, may not fit with typically male-oriented time management advice [ 45 ]. Similarly, bestselling time management books at times offer advice that reinforce global inequities. Some manuals, for instance, recommend delegating trivial tasks to private virtual assistants, who often work out of developing countries for measly wages [ 46 ]. Furthermore, time management manuals often ascribe a financial value to time—the most famous time management adage is that time is money. But recent studies show that thinking of time as money leads to a slew of negative outcomes, including time pressure, stress, impatience, inability to enjoy the moment, unwillingness to help others, and less concern with the environment [ 47 – 51 ]. What’s more, the pressure induced by thinking of time as money may ultimately undermine psychological and physical health [ 52 ].

Concerns over ethics and safety notwithstanding, a more prosaic question researchers have grappled with is whether time management works. Countless general-audience books and training programs have claimed that time management improves people’s lives in many ways, such as boosting performance at work [ 53 – 55 ]. Initial academic forays into addressing this question challenged those claims: time management didn’t seem to improve job performance [ 29 , 30 ]. Studies used a variety of research approaches, running the gamut from lab experiments, field experiments, longitudinal studies, and cross-sectional surveys to experience sampling [ 28 , 56 – 58 ]. Such studies occasionally did find an association between time management and performance, but only in highly motivated workers [ 59 ]; instances establishing a more straightforward link with performance were comparatively rare [ 31 ]. Summarizing these insights, reviews of the literature concluded that the link between time management and job performance is unclear; the link with wellbeing, however, seemed more compelling although not conclusive [ 18 , 32 ].

It is interesting to note that scholars often assess the effectiveness time management by its ability to influence some aspect of performance, wellbeing, or both. In other words, the question of whether time management works comes down to asking whether time management influences performance and wellbeing. The link between time management and performance at work can be traced historically to scientific management [ 60 ]. Nevertheless, even though modern time management can be traced to scientific management in male-dominated work settings, a feminist reading of time management history reveals that our modern idea of time management also descends from female time management thinkers of the same era, such as Lillian Gilbreth, who wrote treatises on efficient household management [ 43 , 61 , 62 ]. As the link between work output and time efficiency became clearer, industrialists went to great lengths to encourage workers to use their time more rationally [ 63 – 65 ]. Over time, people have internalized a duty to be productive and now see time management as a personal responsibility at work [ 43 , 66 , 67 ]. The link between time management and academic performance can be traced to schools’ historical emphasis on punctuality and timeliness. In more recent decades, however, homework expectations have soared [ 68 ] and parents, especially well-educated ones, have been spending more time preparing children for increasingly competitive college admissions [ 69 , 70 ]. In this context, time management is seen as a necessary skill for students to thrive in an increasingly cut-throat academic world. Finally, the link between time management and wellbeing harks back to ancient scholars, who emphasized that organizing one’s time was necessary to a life well-lived [ 71 , 72 ]. More recently, empirical studies in the 1980s examined the effect of time management on depressive symptoms that often plague unemployed people [ 19 , 73 ]. Subsequent studies surmised that the effective use of time might prevent a host of ills, such as work-life conflict and job stress [ 22 , 74 ].

Overall, then, various studies have looked into the effectiveness of time management. Yet, individual studies remain narrow in scope and reviews of the literature offer only a qualitative—and often inconclusive—assessment. To provide a more quantifiable answer to the question of whether time management works, we performed a meta-analysis, the methods of which we outline in what follows.

Literature search and inclusion criteria

We performed a comprehensive search using the keywords “time management” across the EBSCO databases Academic Search Complete , Business Source Complete , Computers & Applied Sciences Complete , Gender Studies Database , MEDLINE , Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection , PsycINFO , SocINDEX , and Education Source . The search had no restrictions regarding country and year of publication and included peer-reviewed articles up to 2019. To enhance comprehensiveness, we also ran a forward search on the three main time management measures: the Time Management Behavior Scale [ 21 ], the Time Structure Questionnaire [ 19 ], and the Time Management Questionnaire [ 20 ]. (A forward search tracks all the papers that have cited a particular work. In our case the forward search located all the papers citing the three time management scales available on Web of Science .)

Time management measures typically capture three aspects of time management: structuring, protecting, and adapting time to changing conditions. Structuring refers to how people map their activities to time using a schedule, a planner, or other devices that represent time in a systematic way [ 75 – 77 ]. Protecting refers to how people set boundaries around their time to repel intruders [ 78 , 79 ]. Examples include people saying no to time-consuming requests from colleagues or friends as well as turning off one’s work phone during family dinners. Finally, adapting one’s time to changing conditions means, simply put, to be responsive and flexible with one’s time structure [ 80 , 81 ]. Furthermore, time management measures typically probe behaviors related to these three dimensions (e.g., using a schedule to structure one’s day, making use of downtime), although they sometimes also capture people’s attitudes (e.g., whether people feel in control of their time).

As shown in Fig 1 , the initial search yielded 10,933 hits, excluding duplicates.

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The search included no terms other than “time management” to afford the broadest possible coverage of time management correlates. Nevertheless, as shown in Table 1 , we focused exclusively on quantitative, empirical studies of time management in non-clinical samples. Successive rounds of screening, first by assessing paper titles and abstracts and then by perusing full-text articles, whittled down the number of eligible studies to 158 (see Fig 1 ).

Data extraction and coding

We extracted eligible effect sizes from the final pool of studies; effect sizes were mostly based on means and correlations. In our initial data extraction, we coded time management correlates using the exact variable names found in each paper. For instance, “work-life imbalance” was initially coded in those exact terms, rather than “work-life conflict.” Virtually all time management correlates we extracted fell under the category of performance and/or wellbeing. This pattern tallies with previous reviews of the literature [ 18 , 32 ]. A sizable number of variables also fell under the category of individual differences and contextual factors, such as age, personality, and job autonomy. After careful assessment of the extracted variables, we developed a coding scheme using a nested structure shown in Table 2 .

Aeon and Aguinis suggested that time management influences performance, although the strength of that relationship may depend on how performance is defined [ 18 ]. Specifically, they proposed that time management may have a stronger impact on behaviors conducive to performance (e.g., motivation, proactiveness) compared to assessments of performance (e.g., supervisor rankings). For this reason, we distinguish between results- and behavior-based performance in our coding scheme, both in professional and academic settings. Furthermore, wellbeing indicators can be positive (e.g., life satisfaction) or negative (e.g., anxiety). We expect time management to influence these variables in opposite ways; it would thus make little sense to analyze them jointly. Accordingly, we differentiate between wellbeing (positive) and distress (negative).

In our second round of coding, we used the scheme shown in Table 2 to cluster together kindred variables. For instance, we grouped “work-life imbalance,” “work-life conflict” and “work-family conflict” under an overarching “work-life conflict” category. The authors reviewed each variable code and resolved rare discrepancies to ultimately agree on all coded variables. Note that certain variables, such as self-actualization, covered only one study (i.e., one effect size). While one or two effect sizes is not enough to conduct a meta-analysis, they can nonetheless be grouped with other effect sizes belonging to the same category (e.g., self-actualization and sense of purpose belong the broader category of overall wellbeing). For this reason, we included variables with one or two effect sizes for comprehensiveness.

Meta-analytic procedures

We conducted all meta-analyses following the variables and cluster of variables outlined in Table 2 . We opted to run all analyses with a random effects model. The alternative—a fixed effects model—assumes that all studies share a common true effect size (i.e., linking time management and a given outcome) which they approximate. This assumption is unrealistic because it implies that the factors influencing the effect size are the same in all studies [ 83 ]. In other words, a fixed effects model assumes that the factors affecting time management are similar across all studies—the fallacy underlying this assumption was the main theme of Aeon and Aguinis’s review [ 18 ]. To perform our analyses, we used Comprehensive Meta-Analysis v.3 [ 84 ], a program considered highly reliable and valid in various systematic assessments [ 85 , 86 ].

Meta-analyses do not typically perform calculations on correlations (e.g., Pearson’s r). Instead, we transformed correlations into Fisher’s z scales [ 83 ]. The transformation was done with z = 0.5 × ln ( 1 + r 1 − r ) , where r represents the correlation extracted from each individual study. The variance of Fisher’s Z was calculated as V z = 1 n − 3 where n corresponds to the study’s sample size; the standard error of Fisher’s Z was calculated as S E z = V z .

In many cases, studies reported how variables correlated with an overall time management score. In some cases, however, studies reported only correlations with discrete time management subscales (e.g., short-range planning, attitudes toward time, use of time management tools), leaving out the overall effect. In such cases, we averaged out the effect sizes of the subscales to compute a summary effect [ 83 ]. This was necessary not only because meta-analyses admit only one effect size per study, but also because our focus is on time management as a whole rather than on subscales. Similarly, when we analyzed the link between time management and a high-level cluster of variables (e.g., overall wellbeing rather than specific variables such as life satisfaction), there were studies with more than one relevant outcome (e.g., a study that captured both life satisfaction and job satisfaction). Again, because meta-analyses allow for only one effect size (i.e., variable) per study, we used the mean of different variables to compute an overall effect sizes in studies that featured more than one outcome [ 83 ].

Overall description of the literature

We analyzed 158 studies for a total number of 490 effect sizes. 21 studies explored performance in a professional context, 76 performance in an academic context, 30 investigated wellbeing (positive), and 58 distress. Interestingly, studies did not systematically report individual differences, as evidenced by the fact that only 21 studies reported correlations with age, and only between 10 and 15 studies measured personality (depending on the personality trait). Studies that measured contextual factors were fewer still—between 3 and 7 (depending on the contextual factor). These figures fit with Aeon and Aguinis’s observation that the time management literature often overlooks internal and external factors that can influence the way people manage time [ 18 ].

With one exception, we found no papers fitting our inclusion criteria before the mid-1980s. Publication trends also indicate an uptick in time management studies around the turn of the millennium, with an even higher number around the 2010s. This trend is consistent with the one Shipp and Cole identified, revealing a surge in time-related papers in organizational behavior around the end of the 1980s [ 87 ].

It is also interesting to note that the first modern time management books came out in the early 1970s, including the The Time Trap (1972), by Alec MacKenzie and How to Get Control of your Time and your Life (1973), by Alan Lakein. These books inspired early modern time management research [ 21 , 58 , 88 ]. It is thus very likely that the impetus for modern time management research came from popular practitioner manuals.

To assess potential bias in our sample of studies, we computed different estimates of publication bias (see Table 3 ). Overall, publication bias remains relatively low (see funnel plots in S1). Publication bias occurs when there is a bias against nonsignificant or even negative results because such results are seen as unsurprising and not counterintuitive. In this case, however, the fact that time management is generally expected to lead to positive outcomes offers an incentive to publish nonsignificant or negative results, which would be counterintuitive [ 89 ]. By the same token, the fact that some people feel that time management is ineffective [ 38 ] provides an incentive to publish papers that link time management with positive outcomes. In other words, opposite social expectations surrounding time management might reduce publication bias.

Finally, we note that the link between time management and virtually all outcomes studied is highly heterogeneous (as measured, for instance, by Cochran’s Q and Higgins & Thompson’s I 2 ; see tables below). This high level of heterogeneity suggests that future research should pay more attention to moderating factors (e.g., individual differences).

Time management and performance in professional settings

Overall, time management has a moderate impact on performance at work, with correlations hovering around r = .25. We distinguish between results-based and behavior-based performance. The former measures performance as an outcome (e.g., performance appraisals by supervisors) whereas the latter measures performance as behavioral contributions (e.g., motivation, job involvement). Time management seems related to both types of performance. Although the effect size for results-based performance is lower than that of behavior-based performance, moderation analysis reveals the difference is not significant (p > .05), challenging Aeon and Aguinis’s conclusions [ 18 ].

Interestingly, the link between time management and performance displays much less heterogeneity (see Q and I 2 statistics in Table 4 ) than the link between time management and other outcomes (see tables below). The studies we summarize in Table 4 include both experimental and non-experimental designs; they also use different time management measures. As such, we can discount, to a certain extent, the effect of methodological diversity. We can perhaps explain the lower heterogeneity by the fact that when people hold a full-time job, they usually are at a relatively stable stage in life. In school, by contrast, a constellation of factors (e.g., financial stability and marital status, to name a few) conspire to affect time management outcomes. Furthermore, work contexts are a typically more closed system than life in general. For this reason, fewer factors stand to disrupt the link between time management and job performance than that between time management and, say, life satisfaction. Corroborating this, note how, in Table 6 below, the link between time management and job satisfaction ( I 2 = 58.70) is much less heterogeneous than the one between time management and life satisfaction ( I 2 = 95.45).

* p < .05

** p < .01

*** p < .001.

k = number of studies related to the variable | N = total sample size related to the variable.

r = effect size of the correlation between time management and the variable | 95% CI = confidence interval of the effect size.

Q = Cochran’s Q, a measure of between-study heterogeneity | τ 2 = measure of between-study variance | I 2 = alternative measure of between-study heterogeneity.

Moreover, we note that the relationship between time management and job performance (see Fig 2 ) significantly increases over the years ( B = .0106, p < .01, Q model = 8.52(1), Q residual = 15.54(9), I 2 = 42.08, R 2 analog = .75).

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Time management and performance in academic settings

Overall, the effect of time management on performance seems to be slightly higher in academic settings compared to work settings, although the magnitude of the effect remains moderate (see Table 5 ). Here again, we distinguish between results- and behavior-based performance. Time management’s impact on behavior-based performance seems much higher than on results-based performance—a much wider difference than the one we observed in professional settings. This suggests than results-based performance in academic settings depends less on time management than results-based performance in professional settings. This means that time management is more likely to get people a good performance review at work than a strong GPA in school.

In particular, time management seems to be much more negatively related to procrastination in school than at work. Although we cannot establish causation in all studies, we note that some of them featured experimental designs that established a causal effect of time management on reducing procrastination [ 90 ].

Interestingly, time management was linked to all types of results-based performance except for standardized tests. This is perhaps due to the fact that standardized tests tap more into fluid intelligence, a measure of intelligence independent of acquired knowledge [ 91 ]. GPA and regular exam scores, in contrast, tap more into crystallized intelligence, which depends mostly on accumulated knowledge. Time management can thus assist students in organizing their time to acquire the knowledge necessary to ace a regular exam; for standardized exams that depend less on knowledge and more on intelligence, however, time management may be less helpful. Evidence from other studies bears this out: middle school students’ IQ predicts standardized achievement tests scores better than self-control while self-control predicts report card grades better than IQ [ 92 ]. (For our purposes, we can use self-control as a very rough proxy for time management.) Relatedly, we found no significant relationship between time management and cognitive ability in our meta-analysis (see Table 8 ).

a Female = 1; Male = 2.

b Single = 1; Married = 2.

Time management and wellbeing

On the whole, time management has a slightly stronger impact on wellbeing than on performance. This is unexpected, considering how the dominant discourse points to time management as a skill for professional career development. Of course, the dominant discourse also frames time management as necessary for wellbeing and stress reduction, but to a much lesser extent. Our finding that time management has a stronger influence on wellbeing in no way negates the importance of time management as a work skill. Rather, this finding challenges the intuitive notion that time management is more effective for work than for other life domains. As further evidence, notice how in Table 6 the effect of time management on life satisfaction is 72% stronger than that on job satisfaction.

Time management and distress

Time management seems to allay various forms of distress, although to a lesser extent than it enhances wellbeing. The alleviating effect on psychological distress is particularly strong ( r = -0.358; see Table 7 ).

That time management has a weaker effect on distress should not be surprising. First, wellbeing and distress are not two poles on opposite ends of a spectrum. Although related, wellbeing and distress are distinct [ 93 ]. Thus, there is no reason to expect time management to have a symmetrical effect on wellbeing and distress. Second, and relatedly, the factors that influence wellbeing and distress are also distinct. Specifically, self-efficacy (i.e., seeing oneself as capable) is a distinct predictor of wellbeing while neuroticism and life events in general are distinct predictors of distress [ 94 ]. It stands to reason that time management can enhance self-efficacy. (Or, alternatively, that people high in self-efficacy would be more likely to engage in time management, although experimental evidence suggests that time management training makes people feel more in control of their time [ 89 ]; it is thus plausible that time management may have a causal effect on self-efficacy. Relatedly, note how time management ability is strongly related to internal locus of control in Table 8 ) In contrast, time management can do considerably less in the way of tackling neuroticism and dampening the emotional impact of tragic life events. In other words, the factors that affect wellbeing may be much more within the purview of time management than the factors that affect distress. For this reason, time management may be less effective in alleviating distress than in improving wellbeing.

Time management and individual differences

Time management is, overall, less related to individual differences than to other variables.

Age, for instance, hardly correlates with time management (with a relatively high consistency between studies, I 2 = 55.79, see Table 8 above).

Similarly, gender only tenuously correlates with time management, although in the expected direction: women seem to have stronger time management abilities than men. The very weak association with gender ( r = -0.087) is particularly surprising given women’s well-documented superior self-regulation skills [ 95 ]. That being said, women’s time management abilities seem to grow stronger over the years ( N = 37, B = -.0049, p < .05, Q model = 3.89(1), Q residual = 218.42(35), I 2 = 83.98, R 2 analog = .03; also see Fig 3 below). More realistically, this increase may not be due to women’s time management abilities getting stronger per se but, rather, to the fact that women now have more freedom to manage their time [ 96 ].

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Other demographic indicators, such as education and number of children, were nonsignificant. Similarly, the relationships between time management and personal attributes and attitudes were either weak or nonsignificant, save for two notable exceptions. First, the link between time management and internal locus of control (i.e., the extent to which people perceive they’re in control of their lives) is quite substantial. This is not surprising, because time management presupposes that people believe they can change their lives. Alternatively, it may be that time management helps people strengthen their internal locus of control, as experimental evidence suggests [ 89 ]. Second, the link between time management and self-esteem is equally substantial. Here again, one can make the argument either way: people with high self-esteem might be confident enough to manage their time or, conversely, time management may boost self-esteem. The two options are not mutually exclusive: people with internal loci of control and high self-esteem levels can feel even more in control of their lives and better about themselves through time management.

We also note a very weak but statistically significant negative association between time management and multitasking. It has almost become commonsense that multitasking does not lead to performance [ 97 ]. As a result, people with stronger time management skills might deliberately steer clear of this notoriously ineffective strategy.

In addition, time management was mildly related to hours spent studying but not hours spent working. (These variables cover only student samples working part- or full-time and thus do not apply to non-student populations.) This is consistent with time-use studies revealing that teenagers and young adults spend less time working and more time studying [ 98 ]. Students who manage their time likely have well-defined intentions, and trends suggest those intentions will target education over work because, it is hoped, education offers larger payoffs over the long-term [ 99 ].

In terms of contextual factors, time management does not correlate significantly with job autonomy. This is surprising, as we expected autonomy to be a prerequisite for time management (i.e., you can’t manage time if you don’t have the freedom to). Nevertheless, qualitative studies have shown how even in environments that afford little autonomy (e.g., restaurants), workers can carve out pockets of time freedom to momentarily cut loose [ 100 ]. Thus, time management behaviors may flourish even in the most stymying settings. In addition, the fact that time management is associated with less role overload and previous attendance of time management training programs makes sense: time management can mitigate the effect of heavy workloads and time management training, presumably, improves time management skills.

Finally, time management is linked to all personality traits. Moreover, previous reviews of the literature have commented on the link between time management and conscientiousness in particular [ 32 ]. What our study reveals is the substantial magnitude of the effect ( r = 0.451). The relationship is not surprising: conscientiousness entails orderliness and organization, which overlap significantly with time management. That time management correlates so strongly with personality (and so little with other individual differences) lends credence to the dispositional view of time management [ 101 – 103 ]. However, this finding should not be taken to mean that time management is a highly inheritable, fixed ability. Having a “you either have it or you don’t” view of time management is not only counterproductive [ 104 ] but also runs counter to evidence showing that time management training does, in fact, help people manage their time better.

Does time management work? It seems so. Time management has a moderate influence on job performance, academic achievement, and wellbeing. These three outcomes play an important role in people’s lives. Doing a good job at work, getting top grades in school, and nurturing psychological wellbeing contribute to a life well lived. Widespread exhortations to get better at time management are thus not unfounded: the importance of time management is hard to overstate.

Contributions

Beyond answering the question of whether time management works, this study contributes to the literature in three major ways. First, we quantify the impact of time management on several outcomes. We thus not only address the question of whether time management works, but also, and importantly, gauge to what extent time management works. Indeed, our meta-analysis covers 53,957 participants, which allows for a much more precise, quantified assessment of time management effectiveness compared to qualitative reviews.

Second, this meta-analysis systematically assesses relationships between time management and a host of individual differences and contextual factors. This helps us draw a more accurate portrait of potential antecedents of higher (or lower) scores on time management measures.

Third, our findings challenge intuitive ideas concerning what time management is for. Specifically, we found that time management enhances wellbeing—and in particular life satisfaction—to a greater extent than it does various types of performance. This runs against the popular belief that time management primarily helps people perform better and that wellbeing is simply a byproduct of better performance. Of course, it may be that wellbeing gains, even if higher than performance gains, hinge on performance; that is to say, people may need to perform better as a prerequisite to feeling happier. But this argument doesn’t jibe with experiments showing that even in the absence of performance gains, time management interventions do increase wellbeing [ 89 ]. This argument also founders in the face of evidence linking time management with wellbeing among the unemployed [ 105 ], unemployment being an environment where performance plays a negligible role, if any. As such, this meta-analysis lends support to definitions of time management that are not work- or performance-centric.

Future research and limitations

This meta-analysis questions whether time management should be seen chiefly as a performance device. Our questioning is neither novel nor subversive: historically people have managed time for other reasons than efficiency, such as spiritual devotion and philosophical contemplation [ 72 , 106 , 107 ]. It is only with relatively recent events, such as the Industrial Revolution and waves of corporate downsizing, that time management has become synonymous with productivity [ 43 , 65 ]. We hope future research will widen its scope and look more into outcomes other than performance, such as developing a sense of meaning in life [ 108 ]. One of the earliest time management studies, for instance, explored how time management relates to having a sense of purpose [ 73 ]. However, very few studies followed suit since. Time management thus stands to become a richer, more inclusive research area by investigating a wider array of outcomes.

In addition, despite the encouraging findings of this meta-analysis we must refrain from seeing time management as a panacea. Though time management can make people’s lives better, it is not clear how easy it is for people to learn how to manage their time adequately. More importantly, being “good” at time management is often a function of income, education, and various types of privilege [ 42 , 43 , 46 , 109 ]. The hackneyed maxim that “you have as many hours in a day as Beyoncé,” for instance, blames people for their “poor” time management in pointing out that successful people have just as much time but still manage to get ahead. Yet this ill-conceived maxim glosses over the fact that Beyoncé and her ilk do, in a sense, have more hours in a day than average people who can’t afford a nanny, chauffeur, in-house chefs, and a bevy of personal assistants. Future research should thus look into ways to make time management more accessible.

Furthermore, this meta-analysis rests on the assumption that time management training programs do enhance people’s time management skills. Previous reviews have noted the opacity surrounding time management interventions—studies often don’t explain what, exactly, is taught in time management training seminars [ 18 ]. As a result, comparing the effect of different interventions might come down to comparing apples and oranges. (This might partly account for the high heterogeneity between studies.) We hope that our definition of time management will spur future research into crafting more consistent, valid, and generalizable interventions that will allow for more meaningful comparisons.

Finally, most time management studies are cross-sectional. Yet it is very likely that the effect of time management compounds over time. If time management can help students get better grades, for instance, those grades can lead to better jobs down the line [ 110 ]. Crucially, learning a skill takes time, and if time management helps people make the time to learn a skill, then time management stands to dramatically enrich people’s lives. For this reason, longitudinal studies can track different cohorts to see how time management affects people’s lives over time. We expect that developing time management skills early on in life can create a compound effect whereby people acquire a variety of other skills thanks to their ability to make time.

Overall, this study offers the most comprehensive, precise, and fine-grained assessment of time management to date. We address the longstanding debate over whether time management influences job performance in revealing a positive, albeit moderate effect. Interestingly, we found that time management impacts wellbeing—and in particular life satisfaction—to a greater extent than performance. That means time management may be primarily a wellbeing enhancer, rather than a performance booster. Furthermore, individual and external factors played a minor role in time management, although this does not necessarily mean that time management’s effectiveness is universal. Rather, we need more research that focuses on the internal and external variables that affect time management outcomes. We hope this study will tantalize future research and guide practitioners in their attempt to make better use of their time.

Supporting information

S1 checklist, acknowledgments.

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge our colleagues for their invaluable help: Mengchan Gao, Talha Aziz, Elizabeth Eley, Robert Nason, Andrew Ryder, Tracy Hecht, and Caroline Aubé.

Funding Statement

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Data Availability

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Research Article

Does time management work? A meta-analysis

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Concordia University, Sir George Williams Campus, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Roles Methodology, Validation

Affiliation FSA Ulaval, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Roles Validation, Writing – review & editing

Brad Aeon,
Aïda Faber,
Alexandra Panaccio

Published: January 11, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066
Reader Comments

Citation: Aeon B, Faber A, Panaccio A (2021) Does time management work? A meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 16(1): e0245066. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066

Editor: Juan-Carlos Pérez-González, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED), SPAIN

Received: October 27, 2020; Accepted: December 21, 2020; Published: January 11, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Aeon et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist

Introduction

What does it mean to say that time management works?

Literature search and inclusion criteria

As shown in Fig 1 , the initial search yielded 10,933 hits, excluding duplicates.

PPT PowerPoint slide
PNG larger image
TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.g001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t001

Data extraction and coding

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t002

Meta-analytic procedures

quantitative research about time management of students

Overall description of the literature

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t003

Time management and performance in professional settings

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t004

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.g002

Time management and performance in academic settings

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t005

Time management and wellbeing

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t006

Time management and distress

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t007

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.t008

Time management and individual differences

Time management is, overall, less related to individual differences than to other variables.

Age, for instance, hardly correlates with time management (with a relatively high consistency between studies, I 2 = 55.79, see Table 8 above).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.g003

Contributions

Future research and limitations

Supporting information

S1 checklist. prisma 2009 checklist..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.s001

S1 File. Funnel plots.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.s002

S2 File. Dataset.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066.s003

Acknowledgments

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge our colleagues for their invaluable help: Mengchan Gao, Talha Aziz, Elizabeth Eley, Robert Nason, Andrew Ryder, Tracy Hecht, and Caroline Aubé.

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The Impact of Time Management on Students' Academic Achievement

S N A M Razali 1 , M S Rusiman 1 , W S Gan 1 and N Arbin 2

Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd Journal of Physics: Conference Series , Volume 995 , International Seminar on Mathematics and Physics in Sciences and Technology 2017 (ISMAP 2017) 28–29 October 2017, Hotel Katerina, Malaysia Citation S N A M Razali et al 2018 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 995 012042 DOI 10.1088/1742-6596/995/1/012042

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1 Department of Mathematics and Statistic, Faculty of Applied Science and Technology University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia.

2 Department of Mathematic, Faculty of Science and Mathematics, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, 35900 Perak, Malaysia.

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Time management is very important and it may actually affect individual's overall performance and achievements. Students nowadays always commented that they do not have enough time to complete all the tasks assigned to them. In addition, a university environment's flexibility and freedom can derail students who have not mastered time management skills. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the time management and academic achievement of the students. The factor analysis result showed three main factors associated with time management which can be classified as time planning, time attitudes and time wasting. The result also indicated that gender and races of students show no significant differences in time management behaviours. While year of study and faculty of students reveal the significant differences in the time management behaviours. Meanwhile, all the time management behaviours are significantly positively related to academic achievement of students although the relationship is weak. Time planning is the most significant correlated predictor.

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The interplay of time management and academic self-efficacy and their influence on pre-service teachers’ commitment in the first year in higher education

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Published: 14 February 2023
Volume 86 , pages 1507–1525, ( 2023 )

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The first academic year involves a variety of challenges students must overcome to maintain their commitment to enter the teaching profession. Students can build on their initial experience in the second semester, while everything is new in the first semester. This longitudinal study investigates the interplay of academic self-efficacy and time management, which are seen as crucial in the first year, and their effects on pre-service teachers’ commitment to their studies in the first year. By considering three measurement points in a random intercept-cross lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to data from 579 students, we distinguish for the first time between-person and within-person effects and compare the students’ experiences in the first and second semester. As expected, students with higher self-efficacy were more committed to their studies and reported better time management. We found considerable differences in the relationships between the first and second semesters at the within-person level, revealing that students’ prior time management was not significantly connected with subsequent commitment in the first semester, but in the second semester. Surprisingly, students’ self-efficacy showed a small negative relationship with commitment in both semesters. Theoretical and practical implications for students, lecturers, and higher education institutions are discussed.

Effects of pre-college variables and first-year engineering students’ experiences on academic achievement and retention: a structural model

Rafael García-Ros, Francisco Pérez-González, … José M. Tomás

Longitudinal examination of optimism, personal self-efficacy and student well-being: a path analysis

Huy P. Phan

Academic Self-efficacy and Its Influence on Teachers’ Postgraduate Study Experiences: Voices from the Field

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Introduction

Managing the challenges of the first year of study is a crucial task for students who are laying the foundation for an academic career (Heublein et al., 2017 ; Trautwein & Bosse, 2017 ; van der Meer et al., 2018 ). Upon starting their studies, students enter a new learning environment that places new challenges on students’ time management and academic self-efficacy (McKenzie & Schweitzer, 2018 ; van der Meer et al., 2010 ).

Accordingly, students’ time management and academic self-efficacy are already known as crucial in students’ first year in higher education: Research emphasised the important role of time management for students to cope with the challenges in the first year of study (Haarala-Muhonen et al., 2017 ; van der Meer et al., 2010 ; Wolters & Brady, 2020 ) and, in accordance with the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986 , 1997 ), of academic self-efficacy as a vital predictor of commitment and retention in studies (Brahm et al., 2017 ; Chesnut, 2017 ; Lent et al., 1994 ).

We also know that students’ commitment to their studies and the teaching profession is a notable determinant of their retention (Chesnut & Cullen, 2014 ; Hagenauer et al., 2018 ; Hong et al., 2018 ; Klassen & Chiu, 2011 ). Although, commitment shows up comparatively broadly in current research (Bowman & Holmes, 2018 ; Chesnut, 2017 ; Hong et al., 2018 ), to our knowledge, no previous study has investigated whether and how pre-service teachers’ commitment to their studies changes in the first and second semester at higher education.

Often research considered the first year of study as a whole (e.g. Bowman & Holmes, 2018 ; Fryer, 2017 ) or focused only on the first semester, when students encounter a broad range of new requirements at university (Girelli et al., 2018 ; Gorges, 2019 ; Perander, et al., 2020 ). To look at the whole year does not consider that students, who have no previous experience at the university in the first semester, can build on the experience from the first semester in the second semester. For example, prior researchers point out that students’ self-efficacy beliefs and commitment are supposed to change because of their personal experience of success and failure at university (Bandura, 1986 ; Chesnut & Cullen, 2014 ). Additionally, in the first semester, students may improve their time management or realise that it is worse than they expected (van der Meer et al., 2010 ; Wolters et al., 2017 ). Therefore, it seems appropriate to distinguish these semesters in the research on the first year in higher education.

Summarising, prior research indicates that students’ commitment is positive related to their academic self-efficacy and time management. However, longitudinal studies that take a more differentiated view on first- and second-semester development of academic self-efficacy and time management and their influence on commitment are lacking. Prior longitudinal research mostly based on between-person designs which describes whether differences between individuals in one construct are associated with differences in individuals in the other construct (e.g. self-efficacy and interest; Nauta, et al., 2002 ). But these designs cannot account for intra-individual effects. Based on this, we derive the following research questions:

RQ 1: How do time management and academic self-efficacy interact on the intra-individual level in the first year of study?

RQ 2: How do time management and academic self-efficacy influence commitment on the intra-individual level in the first year of study?

RQ 3: Does the relationship between time management, academic self-efficacy and commitment differ in the first and second semester?

As we expect changes in all three constructs over time within one person, we used state-of-the-art statistical analyses which allows us to differentiate trait-like between-person and state-like within-person fluctuation over time: We applied the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM, Hamaker et al., 2015 ) for the first time to longitudinal data of pre-service teachers. Moreover, by using three measurement occasions, we examine not only the interplay over time between time management and academic self-efficacy and their impact on commitment but also the extent to which these relationships differ in the second semester from the relationships in the first semester. This seems like a promising deeper dive into first-year processes, as second-semester students can build on experiences they did not have in the first semester. Thus, our research expands existing literature on pre-service teachers’ first year.

The effect of time management and academic self-efficacy on commitment to studies

First-year students enter a new learning environment when deciding to study. Along with increasing opportunities comes the challenge to manage all the new demands occurring with the transition to university (Jansen & van der Meer, 2012 ; Trautwein & Bosse, 2017 ), such as gaining an overall orientation within the university system, scheduling learning activities, and encountering different challenges regarding the content of their study programme and subject matter of their courses (Trautwein & Bosse, 2017 ). In that process, students need the ability to regulate the amount of time available to complete their academic work, to make plans and set priorities (Haarala-Muhonen et al., 2017 ; Mah & Ifenthaler, 2018 ; van der Meer et al., 2010 ; Wolters & Brady, 2020 ). Claessens et al., ( 2007 , p.262) define time management as ‘behaviours that aim at achieving an effective use of time while performing certain goal-directed activities’ that includes planning behaviour such as setting goals, planning tasks, and prioritising and monitoring behaviours.

Research has shown that students’ time management practices is positive associated with satisfaction, academic performance, and negative associated with procrastination (Chang & Nguyen, 2011 ; Claessens et al., 2007 ; Gibney et al., 2011 ; Haarala-Muhonen et al., 2017 ; Limone et al., 2020 ; Wolters et al., 2017 ). As a part of non-cognitive attributions, time management shows a positive relationship to commitment both directly and indirectly via social adjustment and grade point average (Bowman et al., 2019 ; Collier et al., 2020 ). Thus, in terms of robustness checks, we firstly analysed the relation between time management and commitment. We expected that students who report good time management skills would be more committed to their studies than students who struggle with their time management in the first year of study.

Thus, we expected to find positive relationships over time between time management and pre-service teachers’ commitment (Fig. 1 ).

Relationships over time between academic self-efficacy, time management and pre-service teachers’ commitment

Moreover, social cognitive theory highlights the importance of self-efficacy as a cognitive component regarding commitment and retention (Bandura, 1986 ; Bowman et al., 2019 ; Chesnut, 2017 ; Lent et al., 1994 ). Self-efficacy refers to ‘people’s judgments of their capabilities to organise and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances’ (Bandura, 1986 , p.391). Students’ academic self-efficacy refers to their beliefs in their abilities that they can succeed academically (Bowman et al., 2019 ).

Research has shown that self-efficacy is a major predictor of in-service and pre-service teachers’ commitment (Chesnut, 2017 ; Chesnut & Burley, 2015 ; Chesnut & Cullen, 2014 ). Based on multiple prior research, we analysed the relation between academic self-efficacy and commitment as part of our robustness checks. Students who report high self-efficacy might be more committed to their studies than students who report low self-efficacy. Thus, we expected to find positive relationships over time from academic self-efficacy to pre-service teachers’ commitment to their studies.

The interplay of time management and academic self-efficacy over time

Several previous studies showed that prior self-efficacy predicts subsequent self-efficacy; along the same line, prior competencies predict the competencies that follow (e.g. Alisic & Wiese, 2020 ; Fryer & Ainley, 2019 ). Furthermore, social cognitive theory assumes triadic reciprocity (Bandura, 1986 ), meaning that individuals’ attributes (e.g. academic self-efficacy), behaviour (e.g. time management strategies), and external environmental factors operate as an interlocking mechanism, affecting one another bidirectionally. Research shows that self-efficacy and time management skills are positively associated (Bowman et al., 2019 ; Galindo-Domínguez and Bezanilla, 2021 ; Wolters & Brady, 2020 ). Based on these findings, in terms of robustness checks, we analysed the relation of academic self-efficacy and time management in our study. We expected academic self-efficacy and time management to be reciprocally interrelated over time.

Comparison of first and second semesters

Additional to the reciprocity between individuals’ attributes and behaviour the social cognitive theory assumes that both are influenced by the environment (Bandura, 1986 ; Lent et al., 1994 ). By entering universities, students encounter a very different learning environment in contrast to their experience at school (Christie et al., 2008 ). This transition requires students to make major adjustments to their learning strategies (Coertjens et al., 2017 ).

There are several challenges (e.g. self-directed learning activities, planning study-tasks, study independently, academic integration) in this new learning environment related to effective time management and academic self-efficacy (Perander et al., 2020 ; Schaeper, 2020 ). First-year students seem unable to accurately assess their own abilities to deal with these challenges (e.g. gaining an overall orientation, scheduling learning activities, confidence in long-term planning), as they have never been challenged to apply themselves in an environment resembling higher education (Lindblom-Ylänne et al., 2015 ; Mah & Ifenthaler, 2018 ; Perander et al., 2020 ; Trautwein & Bosse, 2017 ; van der Meer et al., 2018 ). Even students who have knowledge of time management struggled by applying their knowledge in practice (van der Meer et al., 2010 ). Thus, students’ self-perception of their time management and academic self-efficacy and their commitment to their studies might change due to their experiences at university (Chesnut & Cullen, 2014 ). However, one semester may provide students with enough opportunity to gain experience and develop a clearer picture of their time management, academic self-efficacy, and commitment (Wright et al., 2013 ). Thus, we expect the relationships between the constructs of interest to differ in the first and second semesters, with stronger relationships occurring in the second semester. In the first semester, the environment and feedback processes students experience in the higher education context might have a major impact on their perceived time management skills, academic self-efficacy, and commitment. This theoretical concept is supported by several studies. Van der Meer et al ( 2010 ) and Kantanis ( 2000 ) pointed out in their quality studies that the adjustment to the new learning environment is a process which takes time. Although students may have had good intentions and study plans, they are not immediately able to implement those plans (Lindblom-Ylänne et al., 2015 ). Students described that they firstly struggled but that they learned what worked for them as they proceeded in their studies (Perander et al., 2020 ). Thus, students might need the first semester to learn how to organise their study at university and apply their learnings from the first semester in the second semester. Quantitative research has been shown that students’ self-perception is highly unstable across the introductory study phase (Gorges, 2019 ). Longitudinal studies showed that the predictive value of self-efficacy for study performance depends on when self-efficacy was measured. Students’ self-efficacy at beginning of their studies was only an indirect predictor (Putwain et al., 2013 ) or even worser compared to self-efficacy measured during studies (Gore, 2006 ; Wright et al., 2013 ) that indicate that students’ academic self-efficacy changes substantial during their first experience at universities. This is in line with the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986 ), which supposed that self-efficacy beliefs develop because of experience. We therefore expected that students’ experience in the new learning environment in the first semester influences their perceived time management skills, academic self-efficacy, and commitment and as a result that the relationship between these constructs are stronger over the second than over the first semester.

Hypotheses 1 (H1): The positive relationship of academic self-efficacy to (a) pre-service teachers’ commitment, (b) time management, and (c) subsequent academic self-efficacy is stronger during the second semester compared to the first semester.

Hypotheses 2 (H2): The positive relationship of time management to (a) pre-service teachers’ commitment, (b) academic self-efficacy, and (c) subsequent time management is stronger during the second semester compared to the first semester.

Participants and procedure

The study was part of a comprehensive research project evaluating the development of preservice teachers. N = 579 participants of 2 cohorts enrolled in the Bachelor program at a university of technology in Germany took part in this complete survey of all pre-service teachers: N = 251 in the first cohort started their studies in October 2017; 328 in the second cohort started their studies in October 2018. Teacher training in Germany takes place in a three-stage process: six semester Bachelor program, four semester Master program, and 18 months teacher traineeship at schools. In the first year of the Bachelor program, students start with courses in pedagogy, didactic, and the two major they had to choose. Sixteen percent of the participants studied majors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), 11.6% studied majors in languages, 20.1% of the participants studied majors in social science and STEM, 32.2% studied majors in social science and languages, 18.4% studied their majors in languages and STEM, 5.7% of the participants studied majors in STEM and physical education, and 2.7% studied majors in languages and physical education. Table 1 displays the participant characteristics of the cohorts.

The longitudinal survey was integrated into the study programme for all pre-service teachers. The participants were recruited in the first week of their studies. The current study used the initial survey (T1) and two further surveys: The second survey (T2) took place 6 month after the first survey at the end of the first semester and beginning of the second semester. The third survey (T3) took place 12 months after the first survey at the end of the second semester and beginning of the third semester. Each semester is structured the same way including two phases: 3.5 months lecture time and 1.5 months examination time.

Pre-service teachers’ commitment to their studies was measured by the career decidedness scale (Nägele & Neuenschwander, 2015 ), which consists of three items. All items are presented in the Appendix A . The scale reflects students’ certainty about their chosen career path and their intention to continue in this area. Therefore, although the name of the scale suggests that it is only about career decidedness, in the study context, the items correspond to the definition of study commitment. Participants responded to items on a six-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.855 at T1, 0.834 at T2, and 0.839 at T3.

Time management

Time management (related to students’ perception of their competences to plan study-related tasks and master everyday life at university) was measured by the planning competence scale (Janneck & Hoppe, 2018 ), which consists of five items (see Appendix A ). Participants responded to the items on an eleven-point scale from 1 (0%) to 11 (100%). Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.889 at T1, 0.927 at T2, and 0.928 at T3.

Self-efficacy

ASE (related to students’ beliefs in their own capabilities to attain given goals) was measured by the self-efficacy beliefs scale (Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 1999 ). The scale consists of ten items whose phrasing was slightly adapted to the study context (see Appendix A ). Participants responded to the items on a four-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.848 at T1, 0.923 at T2, and 0.929 at T3.

Missing data

The challenges in longitudinal research generally involve missing data and careless responding (Graham, 2009 ; Meade & Craig, 2012 ). For this reason, we conducted a careless response analysis for each of the three surveys, as recommended by Meade and Craig ( 2012 ; please see our missing data analysis in Appendix B ), and used the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation, making use of all available data points to estimate model parameters (Graham, 2009 ).

Analytic strategy

We used Mplus version 8 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998 – 2017 ) for exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM) to analyse the factor structure and test for measurement invariance across measurement times. To examine our research hypotheses, we applied the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM; Hamaker et al., 2015 ) to our data. This allows us to overcome the shortages of prior cross-lagged panel models by separating the within-person fluctuation from stable between-person differences. Please see Appendix C for a detailed description of the ESEM and the RI-CLPM.

We compared the RI-CLPM with the stability model (M0) and the CLPM (M2) to assess whether the hypothesised RI-CLPM fit the data better than those models. The RI-CLPM contained the paths between time management, academic self-efficacy, and students’ commitment as assumed in hypotheses 1, 2, 3, and 4. Afterwards, we stepwise placed equality constraints on stability and cross-lagged paths in RI-CLPM (M5–10) and compared the resulting models with the even less restrictive model to test hypotheses 5 and 6. Models that did not show a poorer model fit indicated that the effects were constant across the measurement occasion for the constrained paths.

Post hoc analyses

Finally, several control variables were included in the resulting model: cohort, gender, age, final school grade, majors of studies, and satisfaction with studies. All of them might have an impact on the relationships in the assumed model (Berens et al., 2018 ; Chesnut, 2017 ; Kim & Corcoran, 2018 ). Therefore, we dummy-coded the major groups. Since the two groups with physical education students were very small, they were assigned to the respective second major the students studied.

Measurement model

The analysis of our measurement model allows the assumption of scalar measurement invariance over time (see Appendix D ). Table 2 presents the model fit indices of the configural, metric, and scalar measurement invariance model across time.

Our further analytics were based on the nine ESEM factors as manifest indicators of the three variables at the three measurement occasions (Table 3 ).

Intra-class correlations

For commitment, the ICC was 0.637. This result indicates that 63.7% of the variance in commitment can be explained by differences between persons, and 36.3% of the variance can be explained by fluctuations within a person. For academic self-efficacy, the ICC was 0.673. In comparison, the ICC for time management was 0.587. All ESEM factors taken together consisted of within-person variance to a considerable extent, supporting the use of a RI-CLPM. However, it turns out that time management consisted of relatively more trait-like characteristics in contrast to commitment and ASE.

Model comparison

Table 4 displays the fit indices and results of the model comparisons. The detailed model comparison is descripted in the appendix (see Appendix E ).

The assumed model displayed in Fig. 2 showed good absolute model fit indices (M10: \(\upchi\) 2 (10) = 24.99, p < 0.01; RMSEA = 0.051; CFI = 0.991; TLI = 0.968; SRMR = 0.023). Additionally, we added the control variables to this model to gain our final model (M11) with mostly improved model fit ( \(\upchi\) 2 (10) = 19.69, p = 0.03; RMSEA = 0.042; CFI = 0.996; TLI = 0.954; SRMR = 0.011). For clarity, the influence of the control variables on the constructs of interest is not shown in Fig. 2 . But Table 6 displayed the influence of all control variables on all constructs of interest (see Appendix F ). It turned out that only the cohort, the age of the students and their satisfaction with studies showed significant relationships to students’ commitment.

Random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) of the relationships between academic self-efficacy, time management, and commitment across three waves

Final model

At the between-person level, moderately strong correlations emerged between the random intercept factors of academic self-efficacy and time management ( \(\upbeta\) = 0.614) and academic self-efficacy and commitment ( \(\upbeta\) = 0.338), but not between time management and commitment (Table 5 ).

This finding indicates that individuals who reported higher stable trait-like levels of academic self-efficacy would likely report a higher stable trait-like level of time management and are more decided about their studies in general. But these results indicate that there is no relationship of time management and commitment on the between-person level. At the within-person level, all constructs of interest seemed to be reasonably stable over the first year (commitment ( \(\upbeta\) T1-T2 = 0.364; p < 0.05; \(\upbeta\) T2-T3 = 0.260); time management \((\upbeta\) T1-T2 = 0.514; \(\upbeta\) T2-T3 = 0.605; p < 0.05); academic self-efficacy \((\upbeta\) T1-T2 = 0.302; \(\upbeta\) T2-T3 = 0.428; p < 0.05)). Against our expectation, cross-lagged paths from time management to commitment were only significant over the second semester ( \(\upbeta\) T1-T2 = − 0.051, p = 0.48; \(\upbeta\) T2-T3 = 0.468, p < 0.05), and both cross-lagged paths from academic self-efficacy to commitment were significant ( \(\upbeta\) T1-T2 = − 0.133; \(\upbeta\) T2-T3 = − 0.205, p < 0.05). However, contrary to expectations, the effects were negative. That outcome surprisingly indicates that at the within-person level, high levels of academic self-efficacy led to lower commitment afterwards.

Considering the cross-lagged paths from time management on academic self-efficacy, we found significant effects over the second semester but not in the first ( \(\upbeta\) T1-T2 = 0.104, p = 0.14; \(\upbeta\) T2-T3 = 0.292, p < 0.05). Furthermore, cross-lagged paths from academic self-efficacy to time management were not significant ( \(\upbeta\) T1-T2 = 0.034, p = 0.38; \(\upbeta\) T2-T3 = 0.055, p = 0.38).

Notably, significant positive relationships emerged at the within-person level between commitment and time management at T1, T2, and T3, while there was only a significant positive relationship between commitment and academic self-efficacy at T2 and between time management and academic self-efficacy at T2 and T3.

Main analyses

After the robustness checks, we tested our hypotheses by adding constraints to our model. Interestingly, by constraining paths within the first semester and the second semester, we found that the paths from academic self-efficacy to subsequent academic self-efficacy, time management and commitment were the same for the first and second semesters without any decrease in model fit, thus rejecting H1a, H1b, and H1c. That said, it can be noted that the effects of academic self-efficacy on commitment and subsequent academic self-efficacy were somewhat greater in the second semester. However, further constraints led to a worse model fit. We found significant effects of time management on commitment and on academic self-efficacy over the second semester but not over the first semester. Additionally, the effect of time management on subsequent time management was slightly stronger in the second semester, supporting H2a, H2b, and H2c.

By using the RI-CLPM our study contributes to prior research in two ways: First, we differentiated between trait-like between-person level and state-like within-person fluctuation over time and examined for the first time the dynamic interplay between time management and academic self-efficacy and their influence on commitment on the intra-individual level. Second, by using three measurement occasions, we examine the extent to which these relationships differ in the first and second semester.

In line with prior research on time management (Bowman et al., 2019 ; Haarala-Muhonen et al., 2017 ; Limone et al., 2020 ), our results highlight the relevance of time management for students’ development over time, especially in the second semester, as on the intraindividual level the students’ time management seemed to impact the level of their commitment at the end of the first year. In contrast, individual academic self-efficacy showed a smaller and unexpectedly negative relationship to subsequent study commitment on the intraindividual level, which is in contrast to the time-independent positive relationship of academic self-efficacy with study commitment on the interindividual level.

Theoretical implications

We have expanded prior research on students’ first year experience in higher education and development based on social cognitive theory by comparing the dynamic interplay of time management and self-efficacy in the first and second semester as well as distinguishing trait-like differences between individuals and fluctuation in the development of constructs over time within an individual.

For all constructs of interest, we found variance between persons and within persons, indicating that all constructs can be separated in a more trait-like component and a more fluctuating situational component. Prior research mostly considered the trait-like component (e.g. Chesnut, 2017 ; Girelli et al., 2018 ).

As expected, the trait-like components of academic self-efficacy and commitment were positively related (Chesnut, 2017 ; Chesnut & Burley, 2015 ). However, mention should be made of the small but negative relationship between academic self-efficacy and subsequent commitment that occurred in both semesters within an individual. This seems to be contrary to previous research on pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy and commitment (Chesnut, 2017 ; Chesnut & Burley, 2015 ; Chesnut & Cullen, 2014 ), but this research has dealt only with the trait-like differences between persons. A possible cause for our results could be due to the fact that pre-service teachers with higher measured academic abilities might be more likely to leave their chosen studies (Guarino et al., 2006 ). It could be that pre-service teachers who experienced an unexpected high degree of academic self-efficacy over the course of their first year at university doubt their initial career decision and consider another course of study that they previously labelled too difficult. Because of the strong positive relationship of the trait-like components, however, this should be interpreted with caution. Regardless of this, we have to note that the relationships of academic self-efficacy to subsequent commitment, time management, and academic self-efficacy are the same in the first and second semester. Thus, our results indicate no stabilisation process of students’ academic self-efficacy during the first year in higher education and its influence on commitment, as research suggested (Gore, 2006 ; Gorges, 2019 ; Kantanis, 2000 ; Putwain et al., 2013 , Wright et al., 2013 ).

Contrary to our expectations, we found no relationship between time management and commitment on the between-person level, indicating that students with high time management skills are not in general more or less committed to their studies than students with lower time management skills. Interestingly, the constructs were related to each other on all occasions on the within-person level, indicating that a student who reported high time management skills at one time likely reported high commitment to studies at the same time. This fits into the picture painted by previous research (Bowman et al., 2019 ; Perander et al., 2020 ): Students are more committed to their studies and experienced less stress if they have positive experiences regarding their time management during their studies. This relationship appears to fluctuate over time and to be situational rather than general. Additionally, after the first and after the second semester, time management was also positive related to academic self-efficacy. This indicate that students’ situational perception of their time management skills is also directly linked to their situational academic self-efficacy after the first semester, supporting research which indicates that academic self-efficacy changed during the first semester related to students’ experience in this semester (Bandura, 1986 ; Gore, 2006 ; Gorges, 2019 ; Wright et al., 2013 ). First-year students are confronted with new demands on their time management again and again in the first year (Lindblom-Ylänne et al., 2015 ; Perander et al., 2020 ; Trautwein & Bosse, 2017 ), which they either master or not. Depending on their current experience, they report high or low time management skills and related high or low commitment to their studies and academic self-efficacy.

Furthermore, differences between the first and second semesters occurred regarding students’ time management and its relationship to subsequent commitment to studies, academic self-efficacy, and time management. Although pre-service students’ commitment appeared to be relatively stable over the first year, students’ time management seemed to play a prominent role in the second semester. These results are in accord with recent studies (Lindblom-Ylänne et al., 2015 ; Perander et al., 2020 ; Wright et al., 2013 ) indicating that students develop their time management skills and gain experience in managing their daily study routine in the first semester when they explore the new learning environment in higher education. This experience allows them to evaluate their commitment to their studies after the first semester. Students with poor time management might fail to achieve their first semester goals and as a result question their decision to pursue academic career. In contrast, students who experience their time management as successful might feel confirmed in their study choice. These findings suggest that the processes in the first and second semesters should be considered separately.

Practical implications

Our results provide guidance for universities, lecturers, and students by highlighting the relevance of time management within the first year at university and questioning the relationship of academic self-efficacy to following commitment.

Students often enter the higher education environment with a lack of understanding how to organise their study at university (van der Meer et al., 2010 ). This could be especially true for pre-service teachers who must study two majors at possible different faculties. Trainings and study skill guidance are recommended for the first year in higher education (e.g. Coertjens et al., 2017 ; Girelli et al., 2018 ). Our results suggest that universities could benefit from offering time management trainings to students especially in the second semester, when students have gained experience regarding how well they can manage their time at university. These trainings could be during the second semester providing students with the opportunity to apply time management methods to their daily studies, creating a sense of accomplishment and ultimately strengthening their commitment to their studies.

Lecturers could support their students by identifying students at risk of poor time management, integrating time management methods in seminars and providing support tailored to the students’ individual needs.

For students, it might be helpful to take up time management trainings, when they already know the learning environment, in which they will use time management methods (Perander et al., 2020 ).

Furthermore, it is of concern that higher academic self-efficacy is related to lower commitment over time, supporting that students with high academic self-efficacy tend to leave the teacher profession. Universities should be aware of this possible path. Maybe they could improve the study conditions in order to keep students satisfied with their studies, as this factor is positively related to both academic self-efficacy and commitment to studies (Hagenauer et al., 2018 ).

Limitations and implications for future research

Despite the sophisticated statistical analyses and longitudinal research approach, our study has several limitations. First, our sample was limited to pre-service students at one university of technology in Germany and mostly consisted of female students, which is typical for teacher training programmes. Nonetheless, generalisations of the findings to other universities and study programs should be made with caution (Hagenauer et al., 2018 ). At this point, transferring the investigated model to further samples and examining to what extent the negative effect of academic self-efficacy at the within-person level can be replicated would be desirable.

Second, our study examined the relationship of time management to subsequent commitment to studies. It also could be that very committed students are more engaged in their studies and thus create more sense of achievement regarding their time management, which results in higher time management skills. Thus, longitudinal research on the interplay of those, for example, with weekly measurements could provide deeper understanding of the relationship between these constructs.

Third, our study is based on self-reported measurements, raising common concerns like biased responses due to perceived coercion or inaccurate self-beliefs (Chesnut, 2017 ), however all constructs are measured by validated scales. Future research could investigate the extent to which these self-assessments can be verified using objective measures (e.g. grades).

Finally, although by including several control variables (cohort, gender, age, final school grade, major of studies, and satisfaction with studies) the problem of unobserved heterogeneity was addressed, the use of more objective, less distal control variables would have been desirable. Nevertheless, we were able to show that the addition of the control variables had a relevant effect on the obtained parameters and thus at least tended to serve its purpose.

The current findings overall substantially contribute to the research in higher education by highlighting two relevant findings on pre-service teachers’ first-year experiences, supporting the relevance of this study phase (Trautwein & Bosse, 2017 ; van der Meer et al., 2010 ). First, the results of our analysis show that different processes take place in the first and second semesters: In the second semester, students’ time management seems to have a significant impact on their following commitment. Second, it is worthwhile to distinguish between the trait-component between persons and the fluctuating component within a person within constructs of interest. For academic self-efficacy, we found contradictory results at these levels that require further research. From a practical point of view, these results are particularly relevant to universities and teaching staff to support their students to foster their commitment to their studies.

Data availability

Due to the sensitive nature of the questions asked in this study, survey respondents were assured raw data would remain confidential and would not be shared.

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Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This work was supported by the research project “TU4Teachers” [reference number 01JA1609], funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; Berlin, Germany) from 2016 until 2019.

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Carina Bargmann and Simone Kauffeld. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Carina Bargmann, and Simone Kauffeld commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Bargmann, C., Kauffeld, S. The interplay of time management and academic self-efficacy and their influence on pre-service teachers’ commitment in the first year in higher education. High Educ 86 , 1507–1525 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00983-w

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Students’ Time Management, Academic Procrastination, and Performance during Online Science and Mathematics Classes

COVID-19 affected all sectors, including academia, which resulted in an increase in online learning. While education continued through online platforms, various students-related problems arose, including improper time management, procrastination, and fluctuating academic performance. It is in this context that this quantitative study was carried out to determine how time management and procrastination affected students’ performance in science and mathematics during the pandemic. We surveyed 650 Filipino high school students using the Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students and Wayne State University’s Time Management questionnaire with a 0.93 reliability coefficient. The findings revealed that in science and mathematics, female students outperformed males. Eleven 12-year-olds had the highest mean grades in science and mathematics, while 15 16-year-olds had the lowest. Younger respondents (11-14) were more likely to have better time management in than older ones. Further, older respondents (15-18) procrastinate more than younger ones. Time management correlates positively with success in science and mathematics. Achievement in science and mathematics is the highest among students with good time management. Procrastination negatively affects achievement. High school students who procrastinated less fare better in mathematics. With this, the study opens possibilities for teaching older learners in time management to boost their performance. Students across ages should be urged to avoid procrastinating as it negatively affects academic performance. As reinforcement, schools may educate learners on time management and procrastination avoidance through orientations and other platforms.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.21.12.8

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A quantitative exploration of time management skills and academic achievement: A case study of agriculture students in Universiti Teknologi Mara Cawangan Melaka

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Farah Nadzirah Jamrus , Fadhlina Izzah Saman; A quantitative exploration of time management skills and academic achievement: A case study of agriculture students in Universiti Teknologi Mara Cawangan Melaka. AIP Conf. Proc. 21 July 2021; 2347 (1): 020128. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0051500

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The main objective of this study is to analyse the effect of the time management skill among university students on their academic achievement. In this study, Time Management Questionnaire (TMQ) developed by Britton and Tesser was administered to 120 randomly selected Agriculture students in Universiti Teknologi Mara Cawangan Melaka. The respondents were 55 male and 65 female students. To analyse the effect of the time management, regression analysis was used and showed that there is exist positive linear relationship between time management skill and their academic achievement. When the data analysed with respect to gender variable, the female students obtained higher mean time management score than male students. Then, t-test is conducted and revealed that there is a difference in time management skills among gender statistically.

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Students’ Time Management, Academic Procrastination, and Performance during Online Science and Mathematics Classes

International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research

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8 Time Management Tips for Students

Don't let a hectic schedule get the better of you with these time management tips.

Lian Parsons

College can be a stressful time for many students and time management can be one of the most crucial — but tricky — skills to master.

Attending classes, studying for exams, making friends, and taking time to relax and decompress can quickly fill up your schedule. If you often find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day, this guide will offer time management tips for students so you can accomplish what you need to get done, have fun with your friends, and gain back some valuable time for yourself.

1. Create a Calendar

Don’t be caught by surprise by an important paper due two days from now or a dinner with your family the same night you planned for a group study session. Create a calendar for yourself with all your upcoming deadlines, exams, social events, and other time commitments well in advance so you can see what’s coming up.

Keep your calendar in a place where you can see it every day, such as in your planner or on your wall above your desk. If you prefer a digital calendar, check it first thing every day to keep those important events fresh and top-of-mind. For greater efficiency, make sure you can integrate it with your other tools, such as your email.

Digital calendar options include:

Google Calendar
Outlook Calendar
Fantastical

2. Set Reminders

After you’ve created your calendar, give yourself periodic reminders to stay on track such as to complete a study guide in advance or schedule a meeting for a group project. Knowing deadlines is important; however, staying on top of the micro tasks involved in meeting those deadlines is just as important. You can set an alarm on your phone, write it down in a physical planner, or add an alert to your digital calendar. The reminders will help to prevent things from slipping through the cracks during particularly hectic days.

Make sure you’ve allotted enough time to study for that big test or write that final paper. Time management is all about setting yourself up for success in advance and giving yourself the tools to accomplish tasks with confidence.

Read our blogs, Your Guide to Conquering College Coursework and Top 10 Study Tips to Study Like a Harvard Student , for more suggestions.

3. Build a Personalized Schedule

Each person’s day-to-day is different and unique to them, so make sure your schedule works for you. Once you’ve accounted for consistent commitments such as classes or your shifts at work, add in study sessions, extracurriculars, chores and errands, and social engagements.

Consider your personal rhythm. If you typically start your day energized, plan to study or accomplish chores then. If you fall into an afternoon slump, give yourself that time to take a guilt-free TV break or see friends.

Having a schedule that works for you will help maximize your time. Plus, knowing exactly when your laundry day is or when your intramural volleyball practice is every week will help you avoid trying to cram everything in one day (or running out of clean socks!)

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4. Use Tools That Work For You

Just like your calendar and schedule, the tools you use to keep you organized should be the right fit for you. Some students prefer physical planners and paper, while some prefer going totally digital. Your calendar can help you with long-term planning, but most of these tools are best for prioritizing from day to day.

Explore what best suits your needs with some of the following suggestions:

Planners can help you keep track of long-term deadlines, such as important essay deadlines, upcoming exams, and appointments and meetings. They often provide a monthly overview each month, as well as day-to-day planning sections, so you can stay ahead.

Papier – Offers a 20% student discount

If your schedule is jam-packed and you have trouble figuring out what to do and when, scheduling day by day—and sometimes even hour by hour—can help you slot in everything you need to do with less stress.

Structured app

Note Taking

From class to study sessions to errands, keeping track of everything can feel overwhelming. Keeping everything in one place, whether on the go or at your desk, can help keep you organized.

Bullet journals

5. Prioritize

Sometimes there really is too much to do with too little time. In these instances, take just a few minutes to evaluate your priorities. Consider which deadlines are most urgent, as well as how much energy you have.

If you are able to complete simple tasks first, try getting them out of the way before moving on to tasks that require a lot of focus. This can help to alleviate some of the pressure by checking a couple things off your to-do list without getting bogged down too early.

If you are struggling to fit everything in your schedule, consider what you can postpone or what you can simply say no to. Your friends will likely understand if you have to meet them for coffee another time in order to get in a final library session before a challenging exam.

6. Make Time to Have Fun — And For Yourself

Time management isn’t just about getting work done. It’s also about ensuring that you can put yourself and your mental wellbeing first. Consistently including time for yourself in your schedule helps to keep your mental health and your life in balance. It can also be helpful to have things to look forward to when going through stressful periods.

Whether it’s going for a bike ride along the river, spending time with your friends and family, or simply sleeping in on a Sunday, knowing you have space to relax and do things you enjoy can provide better peace of mind.

7. Find Support

Preparation and organization can sometimes only get you so far. Luckily, you have plenty of people rooting for your success. Keep yourself and your classmates on task by finding an accountability partner or study buddies. Remind your roommates when you need extra space to work on a paper.

Your school’s academic resource center is also there to support you and point you in the right direction if you need additional help. Getting—and staying—organized is a collaborative effort and no one can do it on their own.

8. Be Realistic and Flexible

Sometimes unforeseen circumstances will come up or you simply may not be able to get to everything you set out to do in a given day. Be patient with yourself when things don’t go exactly to plan. When building your calendar, schedule, and priorities list, be realistic about what you can accomplish and include buffer time if you’re unsure. This can help to reduce obstacles and potential friction.

Time management isn’t just about sticking to a rigid schedule—it’s also about giving yourself space for change.

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Tips for time management in college

Julie holkovic shares her advice for managing time as a busy college student.

One challenge that many students face when transitioning to a college schedule and course load is how to manage their time. This is especially important in engineering since students, aside from after their first year, do not get summers off due to the co-op schedule.

University of Cincinnati civil engineering student Julie Holkovic provides helpful time management tips that she has learned through her five years at the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Julie Holkovic

Civil Engineering

[email protected]

University of Cincinnati civil engineering student, College of Engineering and Applied Science Ambassador, and member of Chi Omega sorority.

Time management is something that is so critical as an engineering student with the course load because it is necessary to have free time to unwind. Through my time at UC, I have been able to keep great grades while also being on the executive board of a sorority, being involved in a student organization and spending lots of time with friends.

Stay organized

Julie Holkovic was an executive board member of her sorority, a CEAS ambassador, and more during her time at UC. Photo/provided

The biggest piece of advice I have for time management is to keep track of everything in one place. Personally, I use my iPhone calendar for this, but Google calendar or different calendar apps are another option. I also utilize the Canvas to-do list on the mobile app. This feature lays out class assignments in chronological order by due date. This makes it easy to prioritize assignments and decide where to start when I sit down to do homework.

Along with keeping everything organized in a calendar, I also set aside a block of time for homework at least twice a week and find it very helpful. For me, I always do homework on Sundays and another day throughout the week depending on my schedule each semester. When I get overwhelmed, it is much easier to take homework one step at a time, beginning with what is due the soonest and going from there.

Having time to yourself is important. Keeping a calendar is helpful to give yourself more free time because it allows you to plan out your weeks in advance so you know when you need to set aside homework time. I also find it helpful to do assignments whenever I have a bit of free time because it allows me to keep my homework load at a minimum.

Utilize organizational tools

The biggest improvement in my time management recently has been getting an iPad. The reason this helped me is because everything I need for my classes is in one place. For instance, I take notes on my iPad, do homework on my iPad, and store class files on my iPad. Having everything in one place like this makes both homework and studying easier because it is all together and ensures I will not lose anything.

If you have an iPad, I love the note-taking app, Notability. If you do not have an iPad, that is no big deal. The main thing is to keep your assignments and schedule organized so you know where everything is and you can access it easily. How you choose to do that (whether it be an iPad, Google Calendar, a written planner) does not matter.

Go to class

My final piece of advice is to always go to class. If you skip class, it will take you so much longer to try to teach yourself what you missed instead of learning from your professors. If you spend one hour in class learning the material, it will save you time in the long run. Odds are, it will take you much longer to try and teach it to yourself. The most important aspects of time management improvement are organization, writing down a schedule, and keeping track of your homework. I wish you all the best of luck and go Bearcats!

Featured image at top: UC student Julie Holkovic talks about the importance of time management as a student. Photo/Pixabay

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(PDF) The Impact of Time Management on the Students ...
Time management scores o f the student's show the wa y to score of academic achievement as. concluded that students who scored poor in academic achieve ment gained significantly lower in time ...
Impact of Time Management Behaviors on Undergraduate Engineering
A number of studies have identified the positive impact of time management. Time management skills have been shown to have a positive impact on student learning and student outcomes (Kearns & Gardiner, 2007; Kelly, 2002; McKenzie & Gow, 2004) and Krause and Coates (2008) report that the capacity to successfully manage their time is the foundation of students developing good study habits and ...
(PDF) Relationship Between Time Management Behavior and Academic
The present study was based on quantitative (descriptive surve y) research design. ... a positive relationship was found between students' time management skills and their academic success (Carson ...
College Students' Time Management: a Self-Regulated Learning
Despite its recognized importance for academic success, much of the research investigating time management has proceeded without regard to a comprehensive theoretical model for understanding its connections to students' engagement, learning, or achievement. Our central argument is that self-regulated learning provides the rich conceptual framework necessary for understanding college students ...
PDF Path Relationship of Time Management and Academic Achievement of ...
The studies uncovered that a group of students has time management ability at moderate level and very few individuals have command on ... quantitative and survey method used for data collection. The outcomes of ... Various specialists evaluated the need to fuse time in hypothetical models and research structures in associations. With the
Does time management work? A meta-analysis
A critical gap in time management research is the question of whether time management works [28, 29]. ... Study must contain a quantitative measure of time management (e.g., scale, survey, questionnaire) and/or feature a time management experiment with at least one control group ... which depends mostly on accumulated knowledge. Time management ...
Does time management work? A meta-analysis
A critical gap in time management research is the question of whether time ... scholars' attempts to synthesize the literature have so far been qualitative, precluding a quantitative overall assessment ... Macan TH, Shahani C, Dipboye RL, Phillips AP. College students' time management: Correlations with academic performance and stress. J ...
The Impact of Time Management on Students' Academic Achievement
The Impact of Time Management on Students' Academic Achievement. S N A M Razali 1, M S Rusiman 1, W S Gan 1 and N Arbin 2. Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Volume 995, International Seminar on Mathematics and Physics in Sciences and Technology 2017 (ISMAP 2017) 28-29 October 2017, Hotel Katerina, Malaysia Citation S N A M Razali et al 2018 ...
The interplay of time management and academic self-efficacy ...
In line with prior research on time management (Bowman et al., 2019; Haarala-Muhonen et al., 2017; Limone et al., 2020), our results highlight the relevance of time management for students' development over time, especially in the second semester, as on the intraindividual level the students' time management seemed to impact the level of ...
PDF Time Management and Academic Stress in Lima University Students
problem, the present investigation has been focused on studying how time management is linked to academic stress in university students. This research study of a basic/substantive non-experimental type and correlational level has been developed under a quantitative approach with a cross section. The sample consisted of 328 students of both
PDF The Effect of Time Management Practice on the Academic Achievement: A
The aim of the study or the research was to assess general time management practice /behavior of regular program students of Dire Dawa University and its association with their academic achievement, gender, and year ... students score in time management (mean score=55.72) were higher than female (50.5) students. With respect to
PDF TIME MANAGEMENT AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF HIGHER SECONDARY STUDENTS
Results and Discussions. It is observed from Table 1, from the present investigation, 19.0% of higher secondary students have high level of time management and 23.8% of higher secondary students have high level of academic achievement. Moreover majority of the samples have moderate level of time management and Academic achievement.
Students' Time Management, Academic Procrastination, and ...
Younger respondents (11-14) were more likely to have better time management in than older ones. Further, older respondents (15-18) procrastinate more than younger ones. Time management correlates positively with success in science and mathematics. Achievement in science and mathematics is the highest among students with good time management.
A quantitative exploration of time management skills and academic
To analyse the effect of the time management, regression analysis was used and showed that there is exist positive linear relationship between time management skill and their academic achievement. When the data analysed with respect to gender variable, the female students obtained higher mean time management score than male students.
(PDF) Students' Time Management, Academic Procrastination, and
A quantitative research design was employed specifically utilising a descriptive, comparative, and correlational design. ... Differences on students' time management and academic procrastination when grouped according to sexes Variable Time Management Academic Procrastination Group Female Male Female Male Mean 2.122 2.110 3.284 3.300 SD 0.502 ...
PDF The effectiveness of Time Management Strategies Instruction on students
individual characteristics and others influence in time management research (Claessens et al, 2007). This is also in line with related empirical findings. For example, high achieving students were found to exhibit more self-regulated learning ... The effectiveness of Time Management Strategies Instruction on students' academic time management ...
The Study Efficacy of Time Management Training on ...
Proper time management is key to success in college. You need to manage time effectively if you‟re going to be successful. The purpose of this study aimed to assess the effectiveness of time management training on academic time management of students.In this experimental research, 70 students from university of Mohaghegh Ardabili in Iran were randomly selected and then assigned in ...
PDF The Effect of Time Management on Academic Performance among Students of
Aim: The research aimed to determine the relationship between the time management skills and academic performance of students, to assess time management and practice among students, to determine patterns of time ... Student time management skills questionnaire consisted of questions using a (4-point) scale. Participants answer (1) always, (2 ...
8 Time Management Tips for Students
3. Build a Personalized Schedule. Each person's day-to-day is different and unique to them, so make sure your schedule works for you. Once you've accounted for consistent commitments such as classes or your shifts at work, add in study sessions, extracurriculars, chores and errands, and social engagements.
Tips for time management in college
One challenge that many students face when transitioning to a college schedule and course load is how to manage their time. This is especially important in engineering since students, aside from after their first year, do not get summers off due to the co-op schedule. University of Cincinnati civil engineering student Julie Holkovic provides helpful time management tips that she has learned ...

Does time management work? A meta-analysis

Aïda Faber

Alexandra Panaccio

Introduction

What does it mean to say that time management works?

Literature search and inclusion criteria

Data extraction and coding

Meta-analytic procedures

Overall description of the literature

Time management and performance in professional settings

Time management and performance in academic settings

Time management and wellbeing

Time management and distress

Time management and individual differences

Contributions

Future research and limitations

Supporting information

Funding Statement

Data Availability

Does time management work? A meta-analysis

Introduction

What does it mean to say that time management works?

Literature search and inclusion criteria

Data extraction and coding

Meta-analytic procedures

Overall description of the literature

Time management and performance in professional settings

Time management and performance in academic settings

Time management and wellbeing

Time management and distress

Time management and individual differences

Contributions

Future research and limitations

Supporting information

S1 File. Funnel plots.

S2 File. Dataset.

Acknowledgments

The Impact of Time Management on Students' Academic Achievement

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The interplay of time management and academic self-efficacy and their influence on pre-service teachers’ commitment in the first year in higher education

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