To be completely honest, I have never considered myself an organised person, especially when it comes to plan my day. I always remember the big dates, such as exams or invitations, but I used to be simply mess with all the small responsibilties and tasks during a day or a week. I used to be really lazy person with so developed procrastination skills, that I always did all the learning day or two before quite big exams. But here I am, New Year, new me. Or something similar.
The reality of planning something is as simple as it sounds. However, when you have problems with sticking to certain notes, or just writing in notepad seems like waste of time (because you will forget eventually where is the notepad or if you even have written something in it), I recommend getting a small and simply one, that will be visible on your desk, with easy removing pages. I found mine in Tiger (these shops are in Europe, don’t know about rest of the world) for small amount of money. It’s quite thick so it will last for few months certainly. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with this whole planning industry, because it’s quite developed now, so you have to focus on what you really need and will use.
I write in those not only my main quests, such as studying, but also few things that I’ll usually forget about or just don’t care such as exercising. To be honest, when I wrote those down I didn’t think it will actually help. But this whole list was sticked to my mind like a glue, and finishing all of them was such a pride moment for me. Don’t get me wrong – this is still just a list – however, in my opinion tasks that are written down give more satisfaction later. You can try yourself – join the challenge of planning with me.
When it comes to studies, it’s even more necessary to have some plan, because without it you will be lost soon – especially if you’re studying in Norway as me. In Norway you get huge Pensumliste which is list with all the books you have to read. And believe me, you better plan this out if you don’t want to end up with tons of pages just by the end of a semester. So, what I did was just printing out the Pensumliste so I can have it on my desk to memorise what I need to read and to cross out what I have already read.
People tend to forget that, but if you want to be organised, you need to have clean environment. Not only because you won’t see your notepad in some mess, but also because clean space increases productivity. So if you need to do some cleaning, make a first use of your fresh notepad and write it down.
If you have some hobbies or passions which you want to pursue this year, I really recommend setting some new habits that will help you developing those skills. What I mean – planning in this case may be hard, especially when it comes to creative things such as art, but you can always write, for example: 15 minutes of drawing on your notepad in particular days. Another good thing to use in this case is using habits-creating apps, such as Habitica (it’s not an ad, I use it myself for learning Norwegian). You can set your own habits that you want to create or better and if you do it in certain time / days you will get experience points and levels, as if it was a game. Because life is a game sometimes, isn’t it?
Anyway, I hope this post was kind of helpful. I started doing it myself and I already see the results – so why not share the good things with other, when I have such platform to share? So I wish you all good luck with planning and I shall come back very soon with a new post.
Have a great week!
againorway 