How I organise my life: finals
Hi everyone, in today’s blog I’m going to talk about how I organise my life. I’ll give you some tips and tricks that I use on the daily. Let’s get into it.
As you guys know I am still at university, I have a student job, I have a boyfriend and I have a blog. Loads of people ask me: how do you manage to do all of that and still have free time? Well, it’s not easy I’ll tell you that. But it made me think: Why don’t I make a blog series about it? So today is my first post and I’m going to explain how I plan and organise my life during finals. I have finals at the moment, I had to study during the holidays. Here are my tips on how to organize your life during finals!
Priorities
First of all, I want to talk about priorities. If you don’t get your priorities straight, nothing can help you. My priorities are definitely school, money (job) and my boyfriend. I know people that for example complains about not getting ready for all the chapters when they have the study, but then on social media, I see that they went shopping that day. Well, no you ain’t getting finished if your priority is shopping and not studying. Same with getting a job, if you really want money any job would be fine to do. But if your picky or lazy, and you don’t set your priority on getting a job, you won’t get a job.
I am not saying that you should only think about school or a job because it’s very important to have fun but there are times that I do think you have to prioritize what you should do. For me when I have finals, my priority is studying. When I needed money, my priority was finding a job. And if you put your priorities straight, it’s the beginning of you succeeding in what you want.
Planning
The first way to organise my life is of course: planning! I am a real planner, I’m a big fan of having a paper planner but recently I started using a digital planner. I use google agenda wherein I share one planner with my boyfriend, I have one for my school timetable, one for the blog and one for my TO DO’s. I really recommend getting different planners for different purposes.
Back to planning for finals: I plan ahead the days that I want to study and the days that I don’t want to study. During the Christmas break, I decided to start studying in the second week and to just have fun in the de first week. During my study-week, I also planned fun moments like for example a family party, some online shopping, … And even during finals, I go to dance class and I go to work. Because in my opinion, it’s important to stop studying sometimes otherwise you get nuts. I really can’t study 3 full weeks without some breaks.
Which leads me to not studying full days, try and find a good rhythm that suits you. I’ll show you my day planning down below. This rhythm is perfect for me, but it’s really important to find a rhythm or a balance for your own. It’s easier to concentrate during studying and It’s fun to enjoy the breaks. So my 3 main points in planning were:
- Plan ahead which days you study and which days you don’t, organise fun times with your friends or family on the not-study-days! And plan breaks on the day’s you are studying.
- Use a different planner for different purposes
- Find a good rhythm
Study
I have had to study hard since I was 14 so I found a good way to study throughout the years. If you maintain the same way every year it gets easier to study. Obviously, my way of studying doesn’t work for everybody and it’s clearly not perfect but it works for me. Hopefully, you can use this way as well.
What I do when I have to study:
- Print out all the PowerPoint presentations and notes
- Read through and mark/underline the essentials
- Write down your own summary. While writing everything you’re already studying and you’ll see that you remember it easier later. Do this chapter by chapter.
- Read through your summaries
- Take a notebook. And write down essential things like names, dates, definitions, …
- Write down the structure of each chapter. Make your own little table of contents for each chapter.
- Read through your notebook and mark which things are difficult to remember
- Use the table of contents to recreate the chapters by saying them out loud of writing it all down
Daily rhythm
What’s really important to organise your life is to plan out your day. What I do every day when I have to study is waking up at 9 a.m., watching TV or YouTube until 10 a.m., study until lunchtime. Make yourself a delicious lunch and eat it while watching something fun like friends. Afternoon I start studying again at 1 p.m until 3 p.m., I take a little break and explore the internet. At 3:30 I start again until dinner time and then I quit. By maintaining this rhythm, my body and my mind get used to it which means for example that I won’t get tired quickly.
I hope you enjoyed this blog, I hope this will be helpful for you. Thank you for reading and good luck with your exams!
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