How to Create a Schedule for Yourself and Organize Your Life
How to Create a Schedule for Yourself and Organize Your Life
It is never too early to start learning how to create a schedule for yourself. In just a few short years, your parents will not be the ones creating your schedule. You will be off in college with several classes a week with lots of homework, projects, readings, hanging out with friends, and joining extracurricular activities.
However...your parents won’t be there to remind you to do your homework, do your laundry, clean your bathroom, get ready for practice, or wake up for school. This responsibility will eventually fall to you. Before you panic and plan on living at home forever, take a deep breath! There is a simple solution. Create a schedule for yourself.
Monthly
Starting from the big picture, look at your entire month as a whole. What do you need to accomplish this month? What assignments do you already have the deadline on? What events do you have this month that you need to be aware of?
If you don’t have one already, purchase a planner or download an online planning or calendar app that you can use for free. Now fill in your month:
All of your homework deadlines
School events
Extracurricular activities
Friend or family activities
Days you are working an after school job
College application deadlines, scholarship deadlines, internship deadlines, etc.
Filling in your monthly commitments will help you visualize everything you have going this month and help prevent you from overcommitting yourself or missing a deadline.
Weekly
Once you have your monthly schedule written out, this helps you figure out what you need to get done each week. If you have a paper due in the third week of this month, schedule out a few times during the week to work on it to slowly get it done rather than waiting till the last minute.
Look around at your life at what needs to be done this week. For example, if you are running low on socks, plan a time to do laundry. Create a list of things that must get done this week and then figure out what day and time you can get it done based on your activities that are already scheduled.
Your weekly schedule helps you stay on track for your monthly schedule. Once you know what needs to be done that week, it’s time to figure out what you need to do each day to get your weekly goals done.
Daily
Once you have all of your weekly goals laid out, it’s time to organize them and distribute them throughout each day. Maybe you dedicate one day a week to getting your chores done: doing laundry, cleaning your bathroom, and straightening up your room. Or maybe you decide to spend 30 minutes each day cleaning and straightening up so you don’t have to take up your weekend cleaning.
How will you distribute your homework? Piling it all up for one day seems overwhelming, so consider taking a few hours every night to work on your homework and readings so you don’t fall behind. If you have soccer practice Thursday night and an assignment due Friday, how will you plan accordingly to get your homework done? Dedicate Tuesday and Wednesday on your homework, to keep Thursday free for practice.
Tools to use
A few great tools to use to help you create a schedule and stay organized are:
A planner
Email Calendar
Phone Calendar
Setting alarms on your phone to remind you to complete certain tasks
Time to get organized!
Creating good time management habits will help you tremendously going into college and your first job out of school. The best part? It will probably even help you to reduce stress! If you know everything you need to get done and when you need to do it, there isn’t the lingering anxiety of “am I forgetting something?” Organizing your life will help you visualize everything you need to get done and hopefully help you complete projects, chores, and homework in a timely manner.