Managing Your Time
Time Management is one of the most difficult skills to develop and apply to everyday life. How do we find a way to balance our social life, work life, and school life within a 24 hour day. A calendar can be very minimal and convenient as it can be setup with just a few buttons. Using this calendar to run a block schedule, and create artificial deadlines for yourself can prove beyond extravagant. Notion is a virtual workspace with an infinite amount of customization to your personal needs. This flexibility is beyond important because the organization possible can help organize your time significantly.
Simple Calendars
Everyone has used a calendar or planner at least once in their lifetime. Personally, I prefer a physical calendar on either a chalkboard or whiteboard so I can make constant adjustments. However, digital calendars can prove to be just as efficient. I recommend the stock Google Calendar or Dawn. Google Calendar will sync flawlessly between all your decides and lets you run a block schedule (explained later) more easily than Dawn. However, the latter is significantly more minimal and the widget for the app on your iPhone is very satisfying.
Adding a weekly checklist to a planner is also very effective. It also allows you to take a few days off at the end of your week if you have everything completed. This can help prevent burnout and I highly advise implementing this into your routine.
Running a Block Schedule
What is the best way to find time for everything you need to do in a day? Running a block schedule. To do this all you need to do is block out times of the day for things you need to get done. For example, if I needed to call my grandma I would do that some time between 1:00 and 1:30. I am allowed to have some time of flexibility and as long as that task is completed in the time slot I can consider it productive.
To run this schedule I recommend creating a To-Do list at the beginning of the day with everything you want to get done. I also would advise you to pick one thing out of that list that you would want to make your single goal. If nothing else got done today, what is the one thing you NEED to complete. Afterwards, go through your calendar or schedule and just block out time during the day with approximate completion times. With this format, it is easy to make time for everything that you want to complete, with a task of most importance. This important task is there just in case everything else wasn’t finished, you can still call your day productive.
Artifical Deadlines
Throughout your workload, it is very important to setup artificial deadlines so to speak. You are more likely to finish a task quicker if the due date is nearer. For example, if I have an essay due in a week I will take a week to do it. However, I know I could easily finish that essay in a day if the due date was sooner. As a result, I will create an artificial deadline for myself to get stuff done quicker. This way I do not believe my time is unlimited and will stop procrastinating, for the most part.
According to the Harvard Business Review: