Author and entrepreneur Michael Altshuler once said, “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” For many of us, helping our children, teens, and even ourselves learn effective time management takes the ultimate flight school training. Especially for teens and young adults with unique learning needs, learning to budget and spend time wisely can take months and years of careful instruction and practice.
For a clear picture of how executive functioning abilities evolve from infancy through adulthood, see our Executive Functioning Skills by Age Guide.
So how does a parent or teacher know where to begin?
Which time management skills are most important?
How do you set SMART goals to help a learner develop executive functioning skills like time management?
All of these questions are important to ask as you begin to evaluate and identify the most critical time management skills your learner needs to know right now.
Why Time Management Skills are Essential
In earlier articles, we’ve covered how executive functioning skills like planning and time management support overall success. We’ve also reviewed how under-developed executive functioning skills can contribute to chronic challenging behavior and set the stage for challenging behaviors like aggression and meltdowns. In some ways, executive functioning skills can be just as essential as a learner’s goals related to communication and socialization.
The 12 Time Management Skills Every Learner Needs To Know
After you’ve completed a pre-assessment to identify your learner’s strengths and areas of need related to time management, start identifying goals and skills to develop. Note, though, that these skills have a range. Pre-teen expectations might be different from what a young adult learner might need to know. Time management skills, like other executive functioning skills, can be thought of as a developmental progression, including beginner, intermediate, and advanced skills. Some of the skills below might not be appropriate for your learner. Others might be a terrific end-goal, but not necessarily the best place to start.
By using the pre-assessment guide and considering how time management relates to any interfering or challenging behaviors, you can focus on identifying the best place to start. There are hundreds of different resource guides for brainstorming ideas for time management skills, including individual guides for teachers, college students, and young adults with unique learning needs. Narrowing them down to the essentials can be challenging, so use this list of 12 time management skills to brainstorm the best goals for your learner:
1. Identifies and understands time concepts (minute, hour, tomorrow, week, month, etc.)
Before learners can ever begin to manage time properly, they must have a clear understanding of time concepts. Many parents and educators take for granted that teens and young adults fully understand abstract concepts related to time and can effectively log the passage of time using a clock or calendar. Before beginning any time management interventions, make sure that your learner can identify and communicate the differences between units of time.
2. Completes simple tasks within an allotted amount of time.
Another foundational skill for good time management relates to completing simple tasks within an allotted amount of time. To test this skill, identify a job your learner can do independently (brushing teeth, changing clothes, walking down a hallway, and back). If your learner struggles with low motivation or distractions when completing basic timed tasks, more advanced time management skills will likely be difficult. Use a ‘beat the timer’ game until your learner has a strong repertoire of completing tasks while timed.
3. Follows a timeline to finish chores or homework tasks on a deadline.
Once your learner begins to finish simple tasks within an allotted amount of time, expand that skill to completing multiple tasks within a time limit. Our adult lives are filled with timelines and deadlines. By beginning to chain together familiar tasks like chores and homework, you provide the structure of a schedule but still set the stage for success.
4. Accurately estimates how much time it will take to complete a task.
As your learner moves from completing familiar tasks to new situations, it will be essential to develop the time management skill of estimating time. Start with everyday tasks and have your learner practice determining how long a particular task might take. Does it take 5 minutes to brush your teeth? Does it take 30 minutes to get to school? To manage and budget time, your learner must first be able to estimate how long tasks take.
To test out your student’s skills, try our free downloadable .pdf time estimation worksheet by entering your email below.
5. Completes a time record or uses time tracking tools.
Perhaps your learner already has a good sense of time and can complete simple tasks within a time limit, but they struggle to avoid distractions or utilize their time effectively. To address those challenges, your learner might benefit from learning how to use a time record or time tracking tools. Can your learner use a timer? A calendar? Or an app-based time recording tool? There are many different options—including a paper-and-pencil chart—that can help learners improve time management.
6. Budgets and prioritizes sufficient time to complete a task.
As your learner gains more experience with estimating tasks and following a timeline, the next step is to start working on budgeting and prioritizing time. Work with your learner to develop a to-do list with a set of 3-5 tasks. Then assist your learner in creating a priority list and a time budget for how long it should take to complete it. Reward your learner for completing each task within the budgeted time and when they can complete the entire task list with sufficient time. Start with simple tasks and then move to more complex activities until your learner can consistently budget and prioritize tasks.
7. Creates a schedule with sufficient time to complete all necessary activities in a week.
Once your learner can budget and prioritize sufficient time to complete a set of tasks, the next step is to expand that to your learner’s responsibilities for a full week. At the start of each week, work with your learner to create a schedule with required appointments, activities, and events. Budget time for these items first and then fill in all the other optional activities for the week. Work with your learner to budget for leisure time, social time with friends and family, and homework time. It may take several months for your learner to build a consistent habit of scheduling, so look for ways to monitor gradual progress and improvement.
After your learner develops a schedule for the week, hold them accountable for what’s on the calendar. Arriving on time for appointments and social activities is a skill and a bi-product of well-developed time management. Reward your learner for timeliness and point out how others are impacted when your learner doesn’t arrive on time. Finally, it’s important to model this behavior for your family and classroom. It’s unfair to expect young learners to arrive on time for things if you don’t demonstrate the action either.
9. Increases work speed to complete a deadline but avoids ‘rushing around’ except on rare occasions.
It’s inevitable that at some point, we all end up running behind. When we fall behind on a deadline or appointment, we need to increase work speed or reprioritize tasks to catch back up eventually. This dynamic adjustment requires time management and falls within the executive functioning skills of flexibility and self-monitoring. Work with your learner to adjust his or her behavior when things don’t go according to plan.
10. Understands and avoids procrastination or putting tasks off to the last minute.
Arguably, the biggest enemy of effective time management is procrastination. Putting tasks off to the last minute, avoiding responsibilities, or prioritizing less important tasks before urgent needs are ways our time management skills can be derailed. Work with your learner to identify and understand behaviors that lead to procrastination. Identify the consequences of procrastination and work to establish bigger rewards for completing and prioritizing tasks.
11. Limits distractions.
As your learner develops more advanced time management skills, he or she may begin to identify the habits that pull them off track. It’s one thing for you to identify these things, but it’s even better if your learner can define and limit distractions, off-task behavior, or procrastination. Limiting distractions is a challenging skill for all teens and young adults, regardless of learning needs. In our highly digital, highly distracting world, we probably all could benefit from practice on limiting interruptions!
12. Able to analyze and adjust routines around time management to increase effectiveness.
Ultimately, all of these time management skills lead to the final goal of identifying and adjusting behaviors to become more effective and efficient with our time. As your learner builds time management skills, praise, and reward instances where he or she identifies areas to improve budgeting time and prioritizing tasks.
Further Reading
- Author Michael L. Altshuler Website
- Harvard Graduate School of Education – Time Management Lesson Plans for Educators
- Life Skills Advocate Blog – 10 Planning Skills Everyone Should Learn
- Life Skills Advocate Blog – How Teaching Executive Functioning Skills Can Reduce Challenging Behaviors
- NYU – Time Management Guide for Students
- Strategies for Coping with Time-Related and Productivity Challenges of Young People with Learning Disabilities and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder