PLANNING YOUR DAY

"The key is not in spending time, but investing in it."

You as a student may spend a whole day revising and trying to cram Physics, but you end up just reading and skimming through the pages. You as an employee may sit glued to the computer for hours only to realize at the end of the day that you have wasted a good amount of time blinking at the screen and staying unfocused.

And my dear reader, this is precisely where having a timetable becomes essential. Not many of us have created a wholesome timetable which gives equitable shares of time towards various activities of the day. in my opinion, each and every activity of your day decides your future, so it is always better to stick to a timetable which improves your skills, relaxes your mind and brings out the best in you.

Sometimes, even a to-do list works wonders in your life. Set deadlines on when you want to finish a task. Keep a clock and a calendar in your working space. This helps in channelizing your energy into useful thinking and utilizing your time in a fruitful manner. Break your tasks into smaller chunks wherever possible, and concentrate on finishing the larger tasks first. Tick off as you finish doing each of them. You may as well begin with an easier task - now that depends on your style of working.

Putting up colourful sticky notes on the wall facing my desk is a wonderful practice that I've been doing since time immemorial. Sticky notes may be used for a variety of purposes - some of them are:

1. jotting down important points from the textbook such as formulae, equations, theorems, conversions and mnemonics

2. creating a to-do list of tasks that you aim to complete that day

3. putting down motivational quotes so that when you feel low, energy courses in your veins the moment you look up and read the words

I think I can't thank sticky notes enough. The advantage of sticky notes is that the glue doesn't affect the paint on your wall and you may remove it at any given time.

Tracking your daily achievements in the form of a journal is much needed, because that will sum up the strides you took and the efforts you made. It also moves to a deeper level, more like a self-congratulation.

So what are you waiting for?