(As seen in the March '22 Issue)
Q: With work, friends, family, and school, I find that I don’t have much time for myself. Do you have any advice for time management for a 16 year old?
A: Of course! I can’t tell you how important it is to find time for yourself whatever age you are at.
It may be a good idea to spread your time out semi-evenly. Obviously school is a 5 hour a day, 5 days a week thing that you can’t drop or change. Let’s assume that you work on weekends, 5 hours every Saturday and 2 hours on Sunday (as Government permits). We’ll also assume that after travel, you get home around 4pm and do your homework for 2 hours each day meaning that by the time you’re done it is 6pm and dark so you can’t go out.
However you may use this to spend time with your family. That means you can only see your friends on the weekends.
My advice here would be use one of the weekend days for yourself and one for friends…every other week. Assuming that the friends you’re seeing on the weekend are friends you go to school with, you may want to consider seeing them every other weekend rather than every single weekend. This would leave you with some extra time to do something fun by yourself, or make it a rest day. After all, there is nothing as relaxing as laying in bed and binge watching Netflix, curled up in bed on the weekend. Or going to the gym to take your frustrations out on the Stair Master. Besides, these two activities could be done in the same day. Hit the gym first, and then go home to let those muscles rest with snacks and a comfy bed!
Love,
Annie