Since the beginning my college career, I’ve found myself extremely lucky in making my class schedules. Somehow I’ve always managed to get pretty decent professors and even better class times. Aside from a few instances, I usually manage to get Fridays off. I’ve also learned to love night classes, even though they’re longer than the average class they only meet once a week. This semester, I find myself having a lot of time between classes and other obligations. I’m always tempted to go back to my apartment and get a quick nap in or watch an episode of a show, but then I would find myself with quite a bit of work to finish over the weekend.
It took a while for me to be honest with myself, but after all I only had myself to blame. After some well needed introspection, I decided that I needed to work on my time management and my work ethic. Basically I need to stop being so lazy. I challenged myself for one week to do better. To make sure I actually did better I made some specific goals for the week. Here’s how it went.
My goals/challenges for the week were:
- Write down assignments and other responsibilities out in my planner and divide them up for the week
- Don’t come back to my apartment in between classes
- Bring my work that you planned with for the day
- No naps
- Bring lunch and snacks with me, so I don’t have to go back to my apartment
- Do work at three new places in the week
I took these challenges pretty seriously and noticed that these few steps weren’t that annoying after all. Since I brought all my work and notes that with me, I found myself reading over notes, annotating chapters and doing things I normally wouldn’t be doing in the comfort of my apartment. Staying out took a lot of energy at first, but after Wednesday it wasn’t too bad. I noticed it took more energy to get back into student/work mode leaving my apartment than it did to just sit in the library or outside for an hour. It definitely helped with having energy for my night classes. My planner helped keep me on track and it was helpful to see my overall week as well as small day to day things. I was felt very organized and like I had my life together.
My favorite part about this challenge was finding three new places to do work or study. I found out we have a balcony at the library, a rooftop garden on the art building and a cute coffee shop a couple blocks off campus. I’m not saying that I’ve got this adulting thing completely figured out, because I will definitely go back to my apartment and nap sometimes, but I’ve picked up some habits that have helped increase my productivity.
Photo Credits: cover photo, 1, 2