Time Blocking – A College Admissions Hack
Jack Beecher, here.
College admissions is overwhelming.
There are seemingly a million tasks to accomplish each week all while you have school, practices, and clubs to balance.
Some people attempt to combat the busyness with reactive attacks:
I’m in class reading my personal statement. I don’t like it. Let’s make some tweaks.
My friend told me about a new hack for phrasing activities. I’m going to go change mine.
I saw a TikTok about the honors section. Let’s go fix it.
This is reactive college admissions–not proactive–and this strategy can become overwhelming.
Why? Because sometimes reactivity convinces you to work on the wrong thing. Instead of writing a new supplemental essay that’s due in a week, you waste time modifying the phrasing for your 5th activity.
It’s easy to fall into this trap. Trust me, I did it quite a lot.
So what’s the solution? How can we be proactive in college admissions?
Two words: Time Blocking.
Time Blocking is defining strict blocks of time where you will work on specific things.
It’s the exact opposite of having an always increasing to-do list that you work on reactively.
Above is an example of what time blocking for college admissions could look like. Now, why is this beneficial?
Three reasons:
It helps you accomplish the hard things easily
It allows you to stay focused on one task at a time
It provides clear start and end times so you’re not worried about not doing enough
Let’s break those reasons down.
It helps you accomplish the hard things easily
Why is it so hard to do hard things? Because there are always easier tasks to procrastinate with.
Instead of actually writing an essay, you could do more research. Instead of doing practice problems for the ACT, you could watch another tips and tricks video.
Time blocking forces you to do the hard thing, which actually makes it quite easier.
It allows you to stay focused on one task at a time
The #1 problem with reactivity is that it’s so hard to finish something in one sitting. You might be halfway through an essay, and then suddenly remember that you have to do a math worksheet. You then abandon the essay and do that instead.
This is a problem because multitasking is hard. It forces you to switch your brain's context from writing to solving math problems and that’s not something your mind is very good at.
Instead, by using time blocking, you focus on the 1 task until you get it done.
It provides clear start and end times so you’re not worried about not doing enough
You could waste days on college admissions doing stuff that doesn’t matter. In order to feel like you’re being busy or putting in enough effort, you use time as a proxy for admissions success.
With time blocking, you avoid this and work in clear windows so you don’t spend more time than you have to on admissions.
How to implement Time Blocking:
Every Sunday night, ask yourself: what are the 3 key tasks I need to do this week.
Then, you take those 3 key tasks and give them a set 2-hour window on the calendar.
That’s it.
Then, when that day comes around, you do it.
All of a sudden, in a week, you’ll have accomplished 3 key tasks in 6 hours or less with little stress and context switching.
My academic life completely changed when I learned about time blocking. I hope yours does too.
Best of luck,
Jack Beecher
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