How to plan your week as a student
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
WHY YOU SHOULD PLAN YOUR WEEK
HOW TO PREPARE FOR WEEKLY PLANNING
HOW TO PLAN YOUR WEEK
SOME TIPS FOR WEEKLY PLANNING
FINAL THOUGHTS
INTRODUCTION
To illustrate why weekly planning as a student is very important, let me start by asking you a simple question:
How many times has it happened that you really wanted to accomplish a lot in the week, you feel stressed during the week trying to complete all these things but by the end of the week, you still feel frustrated and stressed out?
We’ve all been there. You feel unprepared when Monday begins and by the weekend you feel guilty because you didn’t use your time in the most productive way. In this post, I’ll show you how to plan your week as a student and the strategies that have helped me during weekly planning.
WHY YOU SHOULD PLAN YOUR WEEK
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Well, you might not fail, but planning your week in advance does have many advantages. It can help you a lot if you’re a student. This is because, as a student, it’s important to explore things as much as possible. You don’t want to just concentrate on your studies and forget about everything else, nor do you want to be so tied up in your extracurriculars and other things that your grades take a hit.
This is where weekly planning can help you. By creating weekly plans, you can make optimum utilization of your time and limit your stress levels. Here are some advantages of planning for the week ahead:
- Increases your productivity
- Lowers your stress levels
- Helps you be more mindful and study or work with concentration
- Helps plan your studies more effectively based on your top priorities for the week
- Ensures that you’re making progress towards your goals
- You don’t waste your time in deciding what to do next
- Helps you maintain a healthy work-life balance
- You don’t get stressed and burnt out at the end of the week
- Helps you stay healthy
- You feel satisfied and content at the end of the week
HOW TO PREPARE FOR WEEKLY PLANNING
You don’t need any special things for planning. I maintain a bullet journal so I usually plan for my week there. But I also know people who prefer to have a separate journal just for weekly planning.
You can just use any lined or blank notebook and write in that. You’ll need a few pages for every week, so if you’re just starting out and plan to actually stick to it, you might want to buy a new journal or planner. If you prefer, you can also maintain a digital journal or diary. There are various apps like Notion, Asana, Trello – and even the Notes app on your phone works.
What you’re writing matters way more than the medium, so just go ahead and start with whatever you have right now. And you can always change it later of you want to!
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CREATE A ROUTINE FOR PLANNING
Why does this help? Creating a routine or a planning ritual will help you stick to it and create the habit of planning every week. Forming habits is crucial to being successful at anything.
Because you might be very motivated now, but that motivation isn’t going to last forever. And when new assignments or tests pop up, you’ll think you get around to planning whenever you get time; but that might never happen. This is where your habits will help you.
You don’t need to spend a lot of time on this. Just set aside 30 minutes every week, where you can plan for the next week.
HOW TO PLAN YOUR WEEK
1. Block out the time when you're busy
Time blocking is a very effective method when it comes to planning. Start with your fixed time commitments like class timings, exams, extracurricular activities, etc.
Some will stay the same every week, but sometimes your week will be more packed, perhaps when you have exams or any events or fests in college. Since these timings are inflexible, there’s no way around it and you won’t be able to do anything else during this.
Time blocking will help you visualize the remaining time available and therefore you’ll be able to make the best use of it
2. Plan your eating and sleeping time
Your eating and sleeping habits play an important role in maintaining good health. And with the busy and fast-paced life that students lead, it’s easy to eat whatever junk food comes your way and sleep at odd times.
What you eat affects your brain- eating fatty, high-caloric foods robs the body of much-needed nutrition. On the other hand, a healthy meal that is rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants can lead to a healthier mind and body, Similarly, getting sufficient sleep helps you stay focused, improves concentration, and boosts your academic performance.
It’s always better to stick to a regular eating and sleeping schedule, instead of doing these things at a different time each day. You need to set aside at least an hour for lunch and dinner and eight hours for sleep. Block this time out in your weekly schedule so that you won’t be tempted to overlook or skip these important things when things get super hectic or busy.
Try to prepare, or at least plan your meals for the entire week on the weekends so it’s easier for you to grab healthy snacks and meals throughout the week. In order to get sufficient sound sleep, avoid using gadgets for at least an hour before sleeping.
You can read more about why students should make these their health goals here.
block out time for exercise and self-care
Just like healthy eating and sleeping, regular exercise is necessary if you want to stay healthy: physically and mentally. No matter how busy you are, it’s important to take some time out for exercising and self-care. In order to make it an essential part of your daily life, it’s best that you block this time in your weekly plan. You don’t need to do intense work out every day. Even blocking out 30 minutes for stretching or taking a walk will help you a lot.
If you’re skeptical about missing out on your studies at this time, here’s some pretty amazing info for you: Exercising regularly will make studies easier for you! That’s right- scientific studies have shown that regular exercise provides students with important cognitive benefits that have positive effects on their scholarly efforts.
This is because cardiovascular exercises increase the amount of oxygen that reaches your brain. As a result, the brain works better. This means you can reduce your learning time by just exercising every day.
You can read more about why students should make this their health goal in this post.
Make time for your side hustles or hobbies
When you’re a student, you have the perfect opportunity to try out new things. You can test out different career paths and job positions, you can actively pursue your interests, you can travel the world and explore new opportunities.
Most people aren’t completely sure of what they should do in the future. And you’ll know this only by trying out different things. This is the perfect time to actively start pursuing things that align with your interests or simply which bring you joy
Get involved in different activities or start side hustles and ask yourself questions like:
Is this something that excites and interests you? Is this something you’ll want to do in the long run?
This is how you’ll come closer to making an informed decision for your future, So make sure that you set aside some time in your weekly plan for the things that interest you. It doesn’t have to be a lot of your time; as long as it’s not nothing, you’ll be making progress!
SOME TIPS FOR WEEKLY PLANNING
1. Set actionable goals
Set goals that are SMART. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based. SMART goals are carefully planned and clear goals, whose progress can be quantified and tracked. They help you achieve your goals efficiently and effectively. Don’t write general tasks and try to get into as much detail as possible about your goals.
Make sure that while setting these goals, you take into account long-term goals as well as short-term goals. Long term goals might seem far off in the future but if you don’t work on them regularly and consistently, you won’t be able to achieve them.
2. don't overcommit
Don’t plan too many things at once. There are always going to be some unforeseen situations and events, and you need to leave some wiggle room in your weekly schedule for these things. If you overcommit, you’ll likely get stressed and burnt out when you can’t meet your own goals. So avoid overscheduling and set realistic goals.
3. Plan for breaks and other fun activities
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” This saying holds just as true today as it did when it was first coined.
No matter how much you have on your plate, try to take out at least 15-20 minutes for the things you enjoy doing. It can be reading a book, listening to music, or just hanging out with friends – anything that is unrelated to work and being productive,
This will help you relax and allow you to be more productive afterward.
4. Distribute things throughout the week
Don’t try to do everything at once. It might be tempting to schedule very busy days so that you get a lot of free time on your other days but that won’t be very helpful. It’s better to spread out different activities throughout the week. Try to plan your week so that you’re not doing too much of one thing on any given day. That is; try to mix up studies, sports and different types of activities whenever possible, so that you won’t get bored of doing the same thing for long hours. This will also help maintain your efficiency.
5. Reflect on your week before planning for the next week
This is a very important tip when it comes to weekly planning for students. Look back on what all you did and didn’t do. This will give you some insights about your week and will help you plan better the next time.
Make sure that you give yourself credit for everything that you did. Yes, you might not have gotten everything done, but learn to appreciate the things you did!
FINAL THOUGHTS
In this post, you saw why planning for the week is very important for students and some tips for planning.
With so much going on in your life as a student, weekly planning will definitely help reduce your stress and leave you with more free time. But just make sure you don’t over do it and plan to the last second! The planning tips should help prevent that and help you come up with an effective and efficient plan.
If you’ve never tried it before, I urge you to make a plan for the next week. And see for yourself if you experience any of the benefits listed above 😀 (spoiler alert: I did!)
Let me know your experience in the comments below!
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Hi! Thanks; glad you found it helpful 😀 Have a great day!