If you just want a glance of the main ideas, feel free to read the phrases in bold!
As a start point, at the beginning of each semester I like making a specific schedule (meaning hour by hour) of the set events I’ll have every week, such as attending to class, or going for a run. When I have marked everything needed to, I do the following:
1· I make a list of things that need to be done every week but don’t have a specific time to be done necessarily, such as going grocery shopping, cleaning my apartment, watering my plants, etc.
2· I check right after, the amount of time that this would take me and the gaps that I have in my schedule.
3· After determining how many time gaps I have, and how long these are, I will schedule easy tasks (which do not require brain power) to do in short-time gaps, such as going grocery shopping, and try to make them coincide with the moments of the day which I know I’m not at my energy peak. This is a smart way to do necessary things that are not directly related to school, as you are still being productive by doing them, taking advantage of the fact that you are not wasting valuable time that you could be using to study.
4· I will allocate, consequently, bigger time gaps to focus on more complex tasks, such as studying, summarizing, reading, etc. So for me, these would be days that I don’t attend to Law School.
Now you may be left with certain chunks of your week which are not filled with specific tasks or events, so here are some ideas on how you could use them:
- make to-do-lists in bullet point form regarding all the school related tasks that you should accomplish for that day/week, making it as specific as you can, as this might prevent you from procrastinating when you get home because you know exactly what you should be doing, and how you should be doing it. This way you have no excuses, even when you are overflown with the amount of work.
- listen to your lectures if you have recorded them, or listen to a record of yourself reading your notes. This is key for people like me who get dizzy if they read while commuting, so this “dead time” is perfect to keep some of the material fresh in your memory.
- make homework which does not require too much time or effort. If you are able to finish or at least start some of it, you will have more time for the more complex readings, homework, etc.
- brainstorm any ideas you may have for an essay. If you haven’t started yet, but you know there is a deadline approaching, giving yourself some time to think or investigate the necessary topics will help your brain start processing the information, giving you perhaps some good ideas to execute.
- revise the material from your previous classes and create mind maps or study guides to lock the information in your memory
- write down any question that you may have from the lecture, homework or assigned readings. You may want to re-read the material to see if you can figure it out by yourself, or if it still gives you some kind of difficulty.
- update your planner or bujo, set events that may have appeared, cross out the ones that have been cancelled, or plan the week or the month ahead.
- organize your notebooks, binders or documents in your laptop + sort through lose pieces of paper and place them where they should be.
- check if every stationary item you have works correctly, and if not, consider throwing the damaged ones away.
- make a list of “non-school related but still productive things to do”, such as cleaning your study space, Checking the weather for the next day and preparing the clothes that you’ll be wearing, etc. I have posted some more ideas if you are interested HERE.
Hope this helped you in some way, have a wonderful week!
