Planning your week ahead

Have you ever wondered how disciplined people get to be so disciplined? How they are able to keep themselves focused and working diligently whenever they need to?

The answer isn’t that they have some super human ability to control themselves, they have implemented a structure to their days, a plan, that they follow.

Your issue is not lack of discipline, it’s that your days lack structure.

If you wake up in the morning and have no idea what you are going to do that day, odds are that you will get very little accomplished.

If you wake up in the morning and have a list of things you want to accomplish you will likely find that you are fairly busy, but that you also waste a fair amount of time procrastinating or doing useless tasks.

But if you wake up and have scheduled times for when you will accomplish each task that day, then you will find that you are able to complete significantly more each day while wasting very little time. You will also complete your work earlier, allowing you to spend more of your afternoons enjoying yourself and doing the things you want to do.

Why do schedules help?

Schedules and structure help us for a couple of reasons:

Firstly,

it forces us to think about everything we want to accomplish, and consider how long that task should really take. This awareness alone will go a long way towards being more productive because there may be something you hate doing, but when you realize it only takes 15 minutes to complete you can power through. Or if it will take a long time then you will be able to plan accordingly.

Secondly,

by implementing a schedule and sticking to it you will greatly reduce your procrastination. When you go into a day with 5 things you want to get done, but you have no schedule, there is a reasonable chance you will slack off in the morning, or in the afternoon, and then have to rush in the evening to get everything done.

But with a schedule you have allotted a certain amount of time to complete the task, and because of Parkinson’s Law (work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion) you will find a way to finish the task in that allotted time.

Structure also gives us piece of mind and a sense of control. There is something about looking at a well-organized and thought through schedule that makes us feel like we can accomplish everything we need to, and that confidence will help us to go out and get the work done.

What should your schedule look like?

I write out a full week’s schedule in advance. The first thing I add in is leisure time, time with friends and family, and time for fun. The idea behind this is again based on Parkinson’s law. If we plan out our days by first putting down the work we have to do, then we won’t have any time left for fun at the end of the day.

After scheduling the fun activities, I schedule in anything that already has a specified time, such as meetings or classes.

Then I typically break down my day into 1 to 2 hour increments that are associated with a type of work (homework, meeting preparation, studying, etc.), and then I will write down the specific tasks I want to address in that time period.

So for example, if I have a couple of HW assignments due for one class, and another class where I have to study for an exam, I would have a separate time block for each class, and in one time block I would write down all of the HW assignments, and in the other I would write down what exactly I would be studying.

Don’t become a robot

While it is important to schedule out your days, it is also important to maintain flexibility.

If an assignment takes half as much time as you expected then shift up your schedule, or reallocate that time somewhere else. Don’t sit down and waste that time on social media.

If a task is going to take longer than you anticipated then look at your schedule, find something that is a lower priority, and take time away from the lower priority task to address the more important issue.

A schedule is a tool to help increase your productivity, discipline, and self-awareness, it’s not the law.

Deviate when necessary.

Now it is time to take action, write out a schedule for the rest of the week. It will take a couple of weeks to get good, gain an understanding of how long things actually take, and actually recognize all of the things you have to do each day so that you can include them in the schedule. But if you stick with it you will see massive increases in your productivity. Good luck.