A prospective study tested the hypothesis that college grade point average would be predicted by time-management practices. Ninety college students completed a time-management questionnaire in 1983; their high school Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores were obtained from college records. Principal-components analysis of the 35-item time-management instrument revealed 3 components. In 1987, 4 years later, each student's cumulative grade point average was obtained from college records. Regression analyses showed that 2 time-management components were significant predictors of cumulative grade point average (R²  = .21) and accounted for more variance than did SAT scores (increment in R²  = .05). It is concluded that time-management practices may influence college achievement.

Students' time is a limited resource. Like other limited resources, time can be more or less effectively managed. We propose that differences among individuals in time-management practices account for some of the differences in how much people achieve during their college years. Time-management practices have been the subject of an extensive popular literature (e.g., Bliss, 1976; Greene, 1969; Lakein, 1973), but this literature presents only anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of time-management practices.

In the scholarly literature, researchers generally agree that intellectual achievement takes time (Barron, 1988; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Gruber & Davis, 1988; Johnson-Laird, 1988; Tardif & Sternberg, 1988; Torrance, 1988) and perseverance (Gardner, 1988; Gruber & Davis, 1988; Simonton, 1988; Sternberg, 1988; Tardif & Sternberg, 1988; Torrance, 1988). If educational achievement, like intellectual achievement in general, takes time, then time-management practices should play a role in educational achievement. In empirical studies of self-regulated learning, researchers have often measured time-management variables in the context of other variables such as self-monitoring, self-judgment, and alertness (Corno & Mandinach, 1983; McCombs, 1986; Zimmerman, 1990; Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989). In some cases the group of variables has been found to influence empirical measures of school achievement (McCombs, 1986; Zimmerman, 1990).

As we sought clear empirical evidence that time-management practices influence educational achievement, we...