Searching for a way to manage my relationships, curricula, activities, toilet time, and college apps, I have been bombarded with countless time-management tips: Eisenhower matrix, Pomodoro techniques and a bunch of other [techniques] that take more time to pronounce than actually save.

Oh yeah, you also need to create a to-do list for every single time you [something generic], set a timer for using the bathroom, and wake up at 3:42 am. If you do all those things, you can finally meditate in the morning, stay on track with 6 AP classes, excel at those college essays, watch an hour of TikTok, and read 20 pages of the book, watch an hour of TikTok. And afterwards burn out and die.

Restart.

I hope you first tested this for yourself, reduced your life-span by a couple years from sleep-deprivation and are now open for suggestions.

First, make your bed. Then, clean your room and throw away all the junk. Next, you need to clean your head of all the junk that you are consuming. Human attention is the gold of today’s age. Corporations are creating more innovative and cunning ways to take it away from you. And you are happy to let them do it.

There is a finite amount of time in a day, and instead of giving it away, you need to set your priorities. What really matters to you? Focus on it. Everything else is junk. You should be hungry for your time. You should not want a single minute to go to waste because it will never come back.

Think about all those dreams that you have. All the things you want to do. Do you think you will ever get to them if you watch TikTok or check your messages every five minutes?

To manage the craziness of my senior year, I had to get rid of YouTube, avoid social media, and focus only on things that matter to me: people, education, sports. Make sure that when you close your eyes, you do not regret what you did today. Because the way your day goes, is the way your life will go as well.