Managing Time 101

 

Hello Hello everyone I hope you are all feeling the festive cheer, happy holidays to one and all, only one more blog post to go before Christmas. So, I must apologise if these are a bit shorter than some of my others, as everyone else is relaxing on holiday I'm working solidly so most of my spare time I'm spending with my family. Anyway, on with the show, so this week I was kind of stumped for ideas because last week I did my Christmas issues post which thinking about it now I should’ve saved for next week but oh well c’est la vie. So, I'm proposing that this week I just do a short blog about how I plan out my time. Sorry it’s not directly to do with veterinary I’ll do a little paragraph at the bottom of the news headlines from this week. I hope you enjoy this and find it useful I think it’s a majorly important skill to have when working in a time pressure job and with a lot of long hours at work.

 

The first and most important thing I must stress is that you must find balance. No one no matter how much of a machine you are you must remember that you are only human, and everyone needs a break at some point. Please take the advice from me, I have first hand experience of a burnout and they aren’t good I ended up getting peritonitis because of it.

To create balance, I like to write out quite a few lists and plans to ensure that everything gets done and no time is wasted. I’m now going to suggest the three plans you make to ensure that you are using your time wisely and still allowing yourself time to relax and find some quiet in your life. I start by writing out a month plan, this is the most basic overview of what my month has in store, for example I’ll write in all the days I'm working and when I'm going rowing or have and side jobs. This just helps me to plan things more in depth later and is useful as a reference point when trying to organise things in advance.

Next is the week plan now I write out one of these every Sunday night and I do it on an A4 piece of paper, I write each day of the week and leave about 7 lines for each day, onto this I add when I’m working like on the other one, but I also add and workout or exercise I'm going to do that day, this helps me plan into my day the balanced aspect of my life. I find it very had to completely switch off and do nothing so exercising at least my brain can relax while my body works. Onto this plan I also write every day tasks like walk the dog or feed the chickens or have a shower, all of this is written on the left-hand side of the page with little tick boxes next to them, so I can check things off once I’ve completed them. I use this plan as well to say what days I’ll study which subjects on. On the Right had side of the page I plan out my meals for the week. Now this isn’t a necessary thing to do however I find that if I plan my breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, and dinner then I stick to it and end up eating healthy things throughout the day that will help my brain and body work properly. Also, this really helps for food shopping so if you write this and plan the meals of Sunday morning then you can go and buy the food and maybe meal prep the lunches for during the week, I do this because then during the week I have more free time to get things done and all I have to do is reheat the food. So this is the plan I do every week, I like this plan because it lets me see what I have coming up in more detail and all of the little jobs I have to fit into the next plan which I'm going to explain to you now.

 

This plan is one I write every night before I go to bed for the next day. This probably won’t be for everyone however it really works for me. So the night before I plan the next day in 30 min slots, I don’t make one of these plans every single day but when I have a day off work I definitely do because it allows me to make the most of my day. I plan when I’ll get up, then what academic work I'm going to do and in this I write down exactly what I'm going to cover and aim to complete in the time. I always ensure that if I’m revising I take a break every hour or two, I know this is quite a long time for some people however I think everyone should learn how much they are able to do before starting to flag. I find that planning the day out down to this kind of detail allows me to get the most out of the day because I'm not sat wasting time on my phone because I have to be down in the kitchen doing chemistry say or a workout. I normally end this plan at around 8pm which allows me to have the evening off.

That’s my three plans that I always have with me, I find them so useful and comforting to be able to see everything written out, so I know I'm not missing anything. I have a few other tips to help you stay to these schedules.

 

1.        Lay your clothes out the night before and leave your towel by the shower, I’m not sure why this helps but whenever I lay my clothes out the night before as soon as my alarm goes off I'm up and ready to start the day, maybe its from my days of morning training and getting up at 4:30am, no one wants to be searching for clothes at that time of the morning.

2.       When you are studying set your phone on a timer and leave in somewhere on aeroplane mode so that you have no distractions and you know that when your times up them your phone will tell you and you can go on it during your break.

3.        Always have water next to you when you are studying or just doing anything really, dehydration has such a major affect of the brain and staying hydrated just allows you to concentrate for longer and to be more productive.

4.       Get the app, so I have an app called Productive, what this app does is it sets me reminders for example, check my posture, drink water. I really like this app because you can set things to remind you three times a day or just to do once a week or three times a week on certain days. Once you’ve completed the task you swipe across to mark as done and it logs all your stats, so completed days where you do everything and on days where you don’t. I don’t really follow the stats, but I do find it useful as a reminder to do certain things that I may forget about during a busy day be it at work or at home.

5.       Sleep, I'm not great with this but I do understand how important sleep is, for everyone it is slightly different and I think that everyone needs to work this out for themselves but getting the sleep you need is so vital, it can mean that when your alarm goes off you feel refreshed and ready to start the day, and that during the day you are awake and being the most effective you can be. I’m not saying I'm good at this one I'm still working this one out but I'm getting there slowly, and I think that once I’ve found that balance that it will be much easier for me to fit in all of my 2 jobs and academics and daily jobs into my life.

 

I hope you’ve all enjoy enjoyed this and find it useful I was slightly longer than I had originally planned for but oh well if you are still here well done I’m pretty sure you deserve a medal that must have been painful. I said I was going to comment some of the news stories and one of the major ones this week was the fact that Alabama rot which I have done a previous blog post on have risen up again in the UK in 2017 there have now been 29 cases and since 2012 there have been 112 cases across 31 counties. So I hope you enjoyed reading this remember to stay smiling and always think of the positives, what will be will be, till next week.