Sharing #1: how I manage my time?

Oh hello everyone, I'm going to make some new posts to share with you my ideas and experience regarding some schooling stuff. The following are just my ideas based on the experience I gained after two years studying at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school for the gifted, so I hope you can make good use of my experience and find your way to fit everything into your schedule.

Okay, so first let's go through some background information about me, well, I'm not bragging so don't take me wrong, just for you to know what to expect in this post, and for you to raise suggestions if you want me to make blogs about any other topic regarding school-life. I'm a grade 12 student in 12A2 class (English-majored). I enjoy studying and I try my best to maintain a satisfactory GPA. Besides classwork, I'm a member of the English Merit team (though not a prominent figure), and I am currently enrolling in a NGO (non-governmental organisation) and a club. I also join lectures only, and I have to say I thoroughly love the experience. My relationships with my friends and alike are kinda healthy, and I still working on that aspect.

So, having seen that I have quite a busy schedule, you may wonder how could I manage such things? Well, there are a few tips that i guess may be applicable to you. Ranked first in my list would be making a daily planner. It may be cliché to hear this, but in fact, it is very useful making an agenda for your next day and stick to it. I have been practising planning for my next day since I was in primary school (about grade 4 or grade 5 I don't quite remember). At first, I planned on paper, like making an agenda for an event. It was untidy and sometime I totally broke and ignore my schedule, just did what I felt like doing at that moment. I switched to planning for a whole week and it worked quite well. I don't remember since when that I just planned things on my head. Before go to bed, I would summarise what I need to do the following day and making a quick agenda for that based on the priority. I do not recommend doing this actually since it would be very easy to be messed up and get lost, and I'm thinking about returning to paper planner. Another way to keep organised is to utilise the reminder feature on the phone or laptop, which I am doing. I would separate my tasks into two categories (one for homework and one for ongoing or upcoming projects. Separating into more categories may work but I personally prefer only two, since I'm quite lazy to dividing my work into more categories. I also set the alarm for important and easy to forget tasks, so I will not mercifully forget about them. For meetings, I find Google Calendar to be extremely useful, easy to use, easy to navigate, and easy to keep track of the events. Google Calendar has the feature of reminding users at a given time before the event starts, that's really useful.

Secondly, I would like to emphasise the importance of prioritising. I see prioritising a very helpful way to stay productive. Although I usually get burntout, prioritising always helps me to come back on my track. I usually prioritise my work depending on the importance of it to me, I’m saying to me because some tasks do not need to be put too much energy and effort on, so I try to ave the amount of energy and effort for the others tasks that mean more to me. But this doesn’t mean that I would neglect or abandon the other tasks, just that I spend a little less energy on them. I also prioritise my tasks based on the urgency of the deadlines. I opting for handling my homework right after I receive it from my teachers, since I see it as a very good way to reflect on my knowledge and review the content of the lesson. I usually do my homework or the deadline of my organisation or club in the interval between classes or when there is a free time but more disruptive for creative work. For creative work, I woud try to find around one or two hours in between of my schedule to really focus and get down to work. I don’t want to just anything at any moment because I don’t like being disturbed when I’m working on my projects that ask for deep concentration. I am trying to limit my phone use, since I find it kinda disruptive when messages keep appearing and telling me that there are other tasks needing me to attend to. To do that, I set time for phone checking, like every an hour to make sure I do not miss my team’s progress.

Uhm, so you may ask what do I do to relax? Well, I have to say that I struggle with laying down and relax. I usually take some time off between classes and kick back and relax. I will turn on a podcast or a radio channel, to both relax and train my English listening skills, and learn something new on the way. I am trying to have a decent night sleep, to be honest, since I think I suffer from some degrees of insomnia due to the rumination of my thoughts. That being said, I still managed to sleep for 9 hours a day and some day more if I have less classes on that day. I’m also thinking of trying meditation and hope that will work on my mood.

Above are just few of my tips to stay organised and productive. Hope you find them useful. Have a good day or a good night. ^ ^