By De’Marca McLemore and Colton Wright/reporters

Time — one of the world’s most valuable resources — is often taken for granted, South students were told in a Time Management Workshop Sept. 11.

“Prior planning prevents poor performance,” said South Campus counselor Valerie Groll.

Groll’s focus was to help students not only in their academic careers but also in their daily lives.

Groll put the participants into two groups — extroverts and introverts — to help them understand how to best tailor their time management skills to fit their personalities to reach their highest potential.

Once the groups were established, Groll had everyone measure their “planning skills” to see what needed to be tweaked.

“Procrastination is a time management eater,” she said.

Written out plans and goals, rather than just spoken ones, have a higher percentage of being accomplished, Groll said.

All participants listed the things they had to do during the day and the things they wanted to do. Next, they created a written schedule to post wherever they would see it regularly to help ensure that the promises they made to themselves were kept.

People sometimes have to trick their brains into doing what needs to be done with a reward, Groll said. The planned out schedule helped do that by finding free time where the person thought there might not be any and adding “playtime.”

Student Angelo Collins said he always pushed those around him to get their education but never had his own.

“After my marriage, I said I was going to focus on my education without any interruptions,” he said.

He decided to be a full-time student instead of a full-time worker to keep his commitment to himself. Collins said he already incorporates a lot of what Groll covered into his daily life, but just to hear it coming from someone who does it better motivates him to make some changes in his own routine.

Another South Campus student, Marah Irving, said she wanted to gain more knowledge on how to become a better student and be more effective.

“I have learned a lot more strategies on how to do things and how to accomplish different aspects of my school life,” she said.