It happens all the time. Everything is going smoothly and according to plan and then all of a sudden things start to pile up. You realize you haven’t called your mom in a week. A professor assigns you a huge paper. You have to squeeze in one last workout before spring break comes around. At this point, you barely have time to even take a shower. Now your hair is greasy and you have a pile of sticky notes peppered on your desk with random reminders. You need to get your life together.
In college, this sort of thing happens all the time. It’s hard to balance school, social life, self-care, and all those other little things floating around in your head. You know you need to take action but have no idea where to start.
Begin by writing everything down. Tear out a huge piece of paper and let the thoughts come to mind. They can be something small like ‘take a shower’ or ‘check email’ and they can be big like ‘complete service hours’ or ‘write history paper.’ You just need to get everything out of your head and onto paper.
Once you’ve written everything down, now it’s time to plan. The best way to do this is to invest in a planner. Take the list you just frantically scribbled down and begin to plan it out in your planner. Calendar specific dates in the monthly section such as the day of a midterm exam or the day that your community service hours are due.
Once you’ve calendared all the dates that you can control, it’s time to set your own dates for the rest of the things on your list. Do you have an overflowing email inbox and need to clear it out? Schedule a day to sit at your desk with a cup of coffee and clear out your inbox.
Once you calendar everything into specific dates, it will spread out everything on your to-do list and make it much easier to tackle. A new task comes up? Find a date and scribble it in. You won’t have to stress about it if you know that it’s on a set day and time.
Now your mind is clear and your planner is full but you don’t need to stress because you know exactly when and what you are going to do. You can wake up in the morning, hop out of bed, and scan your planner for your daily to-do list. Alas, your life is finally together.