Time Management Q&A: Balancing Big Commitments

By: Anika Fassett

What are your best time management tips? 

I LOVE planners. I’m an out-of-sight, out-of-mind person so I forget things super easily. I was practically married to my planner in college so thankfully that didn’t happen often. I wrote every single commitment down in it – class, practice, meetings, coffee with friends – nothing was too little. Now that I have a work calendar, I’ve combined that with my personal calendar on my phone. That way, if I have an 8pm work meeting, it’s on my phone calendar as well so I know I’m not available for a movie night with friends. Having any kind of organized schedule is an absolute gamechanger.  

I frequently accidentally overcommit myself (so even having three calendars doesn’t make me perfect). I want to say ‘yes’ to everything without checking my calendar. It’s way easier to say ‘no’ upfront and work out a different time with someone than to have 4 things scheduled at the same time and needing to go back and cancel on three people.  

I also block off time to exercise and to have personal time. If I don’t, then those things tend to take the back burner even though they are extremely important to me.  

It’ll look different for each person based on what’s important to you, but my recommendation is to put everything on there and check it frequently. It might look overwhelming at first to see a really full calendar, but soon that’ll turn into peacefulness because you’ll know exactly what you’re committed to each day, when your free time is, and how to plan your week. 

When you are looking at your to-do list and don’t know how to start prioritizing your commitments, how do you get started? 

It helps that I’m a little bit of a nerd and get excited to check things off my to-do list. One of my favorite parts of the week is planning the week ahead and making my list. But when it’s full of stressful things or I don’t know where to start, I usually find the smallest task and start there. That gets me in the right mindset to be productive. I know crossing something off the to-do list will feel really good even if it’s a small task. Then I’ll want to cross everything off the list so I’ll be able to keep going. It’s like a snowball of motivation. 

I would also think about how I feel when I got everything done. I could go do something I really enjoyed with a clear head and be fully invested in it without worrying about the homework I still needed to do or the exam I still had to study for. That thought process motivated me to get things done.  

I think college athletics, especially in an individual sport, requires you to be a self-starter. No one is going to do my practices or swim my races for me. I have to do that whether I want to or not. And I took that mindset with me to the other aspects of my life as well. 

How do you know when you are overcommitted? And when you are, how do you decide what to quit? 

I actually learned this in high school which made setting boundaries in college a lot easier from the get-go. I looked at the things I was currently involved in and then what I was considering taking on and ranked them from most important to least important with how they would help me achieve my goals. I knew I wanted to go to a good college and be a collegiate athlete so swimming and school took the top priorities and then everything else took the back burner. 

It wasn’t easy to learn this, but it was forced upon me. My two sports were swimming and volleyball going into high school. They were both Fall sports, which meant I had to pick one. Since I was committing to swimming, I was going to be fully committed. I always felt bad when I was a part of something and couldn’t fully commit. I joined clubs that I had to back out of because their meetings would be during practice. I wanted some leadership positions outside the team that would also conflict with swimming so I couldn’t do those. I had a job in the summers only with a schedule that worked with my training. 

It all came down to goal setting. I set goals very early on, and if something conflicted with those goals or wasn’t going to help me achieve them, then I wouldn’t do it. It definitely took trial and error and it still happened a bit in college. I’d join more clubs or try to pick up more jobs. But at the end of the day, I had goals and I was committed to those goals and they won out over everything else. 

How did you deal with clashing expectations of others when everyone thinks their activity should be your number one priority? 

Luckily, this was really easy for me in college. I had a couple large commitments: school, Hillsdale Swim, Chi Omega, and my job. They were prioritized in that order because they had to be. It helped expectations were set from day one with classes and swimming being one and two. I added on Chi O after that and my job last so I was able to set boundaries with them because the expectations of the two biggest and most important commitments were clearly laid out.  

I worked for athletics who understood that swim was an objective top priority. Chi O requires involvement in additional campus activities and also acknowledges that class and varsity athletics come first. I struggled to set boundaries in my personal life, so it was very helpful that part of my life was organized for me whether I wanted it to be or not. 

How did you set boundaries for personal time and friendships? 

This was and still is one of my weakest areas. Like I’ve already said, I had my priorities. I haven’t talked much about friendships yet though. I really struggled to make time for friendships outside of my teammates. It’s really easy to be best friends with your teammates when you’re spending 20 hours per week together plus eating meals together plus living together plus classes plus everything else. Then I joined Chi O and had another group of people to become friends with but no extra time in my schedule. Throw dating in on top of that and – is there any time left to be alone or sleep or do homework?  

I hurt a lot of people with my inability to set boundaries in my friendships. Maybe my solution isn’t foolproof but it worked for me. If I was in the midst of swim season, my priorities were my teammates. I really worked hard to cultivate those relationships and the majority of my time was spent with them. When swim season was over, I would jump headfirst into Chi O. I didn’t ever ignore one group or another, but with some pretty major commitments I needed to find a balance for my relationships. Communicating to my friends also helped ease transitions from one phase to another. It’s amazing what open communication can do to maintain a relationship. 

I still struggle balancing my friends with talking to my family and cultivating other relationships, but especially in post grad life I’ve learned that low maintenance friendships are really easy to maintain if you’re long distance and both on the same page about that. I don’t have to call every day or every week, but if I’m in the car on a long drive then I’ll see if they’re available to talk. Nothing feels better than seeing a name pop up on your phone that you haven’t seen in a while and having a long catch-up. 

How did you avoid or deal with burnout? 

I felt a LOT of burnout in college. As I’ve mentioned throughout the article, I love saying ‘Yes!’ to everything and that leads really quickly to intense burnout. By freshman year, I’d been swimming for 14 years and committed to four more years of 20-hour training weeks. Covid hit at the end of freshman year. I had a leadership position in Chi Omega sophomore and junior year. I averaged 15 credits a semester. I worked at minimum 6 hours per week. None of this is unusual for a Hillsdale College student. We’re all here because we’re overachievers in some way. I say all that to explain that by the middle of junior year, I was burnt out of just about everything. 

At times, I didn’t handle it very well. I could get very negative and would consider getting rid of a commitment or two. However, I maintained all of my commitments, friendships, and grades. I usually needed to take a step back and remind myself why I got involved in the first place. I needed to look at it with the rose-colored glasses of the little girl who loved to read (if I was burnt out of classes) or who loved getting to play with her friends and call it a sport (if I was burnt out of swimming). Jesus calls us to have faith like a child, and I think we should live most of our lives that way. Live with a child-like love for the very essence of the thing we’re doing. It’s harder to burn out of something if your motivation is making younger you proud of yourself.

Anika Fassett | ‘23

Anika Fasset is a Hillsdale graduate and was a swimmer and a member of Chi Omega. She now works for Hillsdale Athletics as the Compliance Manager and is recently engaged to her college sweetheart. All three of her siblings also attended Hillsdale. She took up running post grad and her goal for the upcoming year is to run a marathon!