Every academic year starts with an ambitious and vast planning. Students are obsessed with how to cope with studying stuff and find time for friends, parties, shopping, cinemas and other attributes of their fascinating social life. But in reality, everything goes wrong. Time management tips don’t work, deadlines are violated and instead of accepting your buddy’s invitation to watch that eye-popping movie in the cinema, you have to spend the whole night finishing your report in Art, as the deadline was yesterday. If the situation is quite familiar to you, then the information below will do you a huge favor.
No Day without a Plan
Planning is the thing that make us who we are; otherwise, we are sentenced to gain the reputation of a low-performing or D-student unable to arrange one’s life. Someone advises on planning the forthcoming day in the evening while others recommend to start the process in the early morning of the target day. But the thing that it must be done is a fact. Try morning planning as well as the evening one, and this will help you to come to the most convenient option for you. Be ready to find around 20 minutes to pencil all activities in. Buy a decent personal organizer and tick every accomplished task.
Total all the Pluses
The very important thing is to control your plan realization. It gives an opportunity to analyze all the activities, what has gone wrong or has to be excluded at all. If you have never met with such experience, don’t get afraid of it. It’s simpler than it seems at the first glance. Just try to record all things in your organizer without introducing any corrections or modifications. At the end of a week draw the conclusion and evaluate every implemented item. That will render assistance to laying a scheme for the next week.
Consider Time Frames
Plan not only activities but also time-frames and even deadlines. Put yourself on a timer so not to dilly-dally on things. As far as time is up, turn to another item according to your plan in the organizer. Don’t forget to have a short 10 min pause even when there appears a great temptation to initiate another task. Try to follow your schedule as strictly as you can. That way you gain such a skill as self-organization, punctuality and a disciplined approach to the surroundings.
Do Not Ignore Modern Technologies
Everyone has a smartphone nowadays. You are not the exception. Use Calendar app on your smartphone as it’s more convenient to tick such things as meetings, lectures, workshops and other scheduled events. It’s up to you whether to combine and put the aforementioned events into your organizer as well. But keep in mind that your phone is used only for such items as shopping lists or event listings when it’s quite comfortable to delete the completed action. To enter comments or detailed notes into the list, still, it’s better to use the time-honored method of paper organizer usage.
Don’t be Distracted by Trivia
While you’re in the process of writing a course paper or preparing for the exam in Sociology, forget about the existence of such things as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Top performance is to switch off your phone, tablet, and notebook (the last leave switched on in case of a direct studying need) and leave behind your social life. If you answer the message later, the heavens won’t fall. Moreover, when you take your mind off the current activity, then you’ll need additional time for the activity completion. As a result, your plan for the day fails and that demotivates you to turn back to your plan.
Be Flexible
We are all human beings with strong and weak traits of character. That means we have good and bad days. We may feel energetic and sometimes act like lazybones. It’s quite normal. But that doesn’t mean that if we haven’t the appropriate mood for doing this or that thing, we may kill time on Facebook or hang out somewhere all-day long. Being flexible means that the one is ready to introduce adjustments and replacements into the plans if something unpredictable happens.
Keep calm and sober-minded when postponing or canceling something. Stop worrying and blaming oneself if something went off course, just try to react as soon as possible and always have a plan B. No one has the power of keeping everything under control. But it’s for you to decide whether to be panic-stricken or stress-free.
Make a Habit of Assignment
That’s extremely topical for the students who are used to keeping everything for the last moment and, as a result, suffer from all night preparations for tests or exams. Any habit is built in a 21-day term that is a well-known fact. One may play that for one’s advantage.
For example, make an effort to start preparing home tasks at the same time daily. It’s a must to set the time limit (strict time frames, set up for a definite activity). In a month of such an experiment, you’ll find out how easy and comfortable it is to start doing home tasks at the same time every day and arrange your free hours however you wish. All reputable British essay writers create a schedule like that to be able to respond to your requests as quickly as possible. Most likely, you will even start taking pleasure in that, and such a daily responsibility won’t be so burdensome anymore.
Set out the Priorities
Prioritizing is a key and a magic road to get the title “Winner at life.” Try to classify all your plans to the most important or “with blank due date” tasks. Pencil at least three tasks of a high priority in. One shall complete them till 5 pm, as after 5 or 6 pm we are in our worst intellectual form. That will prune down your life as you won’t experience evening brain activity collapse anymore. It’s better to devote evenings to more pleasant things, such as teapot talks with friends, reading interesting books, cooking something delicious, going to a concert of the favorite band, etc.
Sport as Motivator
Think over the popular attributes that may help you become more proactive, improve your memory and mental determination. Sport reigns supreme among those attributes. Don’t ignore physical activities, as it’s a scientifically based fact that any kind of sport optimizes brain activity, helps to get rid of depression, anxiety and contributes much to the general condition. Those useful habits will bring energy, willingness, and inspiration into your life, and you will start every new day with a smile on your face and happiness in your body. Make sport a necessary part of your daily planning activity.
Find Inspiration in Relaxation
Do you remember the proverb “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow” and its meaning? Let’s refresh our memory. It means that an average person is not a death-to-all-feelings robot that is created only for work and nothing more. Life consists not only of lectures, course papers, and deadlines. To feel alive, a person shall always find time for hobbies or some other occupations that bring pleasure and joy. Nobody argues that studying is of a great importance. But without a good rest and positive emotions, studying or hard work molds us into zombies who lose appetite for life. That’s why you can sometimes indulge in a guilty pleasure asking someone: “Please, write an essay for me!” and get yourself a longer break before diving into another period of intense studying.
Think over pleasant daily rituals which serve as a whiff of fresh air after all that planning routine. Everyone has some habits that help to abstract oneself from the daily grind. Find inspiration everywhere. Spend much time outdoors admiring sunrise and sunset, travel to places with a rich cultural heritage, and make every moment special and unforgettable.