Hello, all! I hope each of you are keeping safe and healthy in these trying times. Since all of us are supposed to be at home, I know it can be a little difficult to remain on task and motivated throughout the day when there are so many distractions! I personally find it hard to do school all day when I know I could be writing, reading, doing a Masterclass, binge-watching a tv show, baking…the list could go on for miles.
However, within the past week, I’ve created a daily schedule that has helped me stay on track, motivated, AND allowed me to do the things I want! (And, I did all of this with my three siblings and parents doing school and work from home!). So, here’s some advice for making (and keeping!) a consistent schedule in less-than-consistent times.
- Have a set time to wake up every day. I know this may sound kind of impossible, but it’s more feasible than you realize. If you try to wake up around the same time daily, you’ll be less tired. Your body will most likely adjust to waking up at the same time within a few days to a week of practice, unless it’s a lot earlier or later than you’re used to waking up.
- Schedule in solid break times. If you’re working or doing school from home, I recommend setting times where you do whatever you want. For me, this is lunchtime—I’ll eat lunch anywhere from 11:30am-12pm and then take about an hour to watch tv, call a friend, scroll through Instagram, whatever—it’s my mental break time.
- Have a checklist of things you need to get done either daily or weekly. After I got all the information about my classes, I stuck two post-it notes on my planner with a list of everything I had to do before the end of the week. Every day, I tried to accomplish 2-3+ items on the list so that I could have the weekend off. “Checking the boxes” kept me motivated, and helped me determine how much time I had to “work” each day!
- Know what time you want to write. This I cannot stress enough. On the days when I sit down and specifically plan to take a few minutes out of my morning to write, I get SO much more done than just sitting down to write whenever I have a spare minute (in fact, this is counting as my daily writing for #write2020!). If you’ve got a super busy schedule or are at home with kiddos, I think this might be especially helpful—I know it is for me!
- Give yourself “rewards” for completing your goals. Whether your goal is to finish the housework, get homework done, or push through home-office work, give yourself a reward! This helps me so much, especially right now. I’ve been doing school from around 9-5 every day and it really drains me, but I did it so I would only have one lecture to listen to this weekend. Even though I’ve got stuff to do with my family on Saturday, I plan to give myself a few hours where I can read, write, watch the Jane Eyre 1983 miniseries, or journal. All throughout the week, this was the reward I kept in mind, and it honestly helped me get so much more done!
- Find someone to hold you accountable. Whether it’s a family member or a friend you can Facetime, finding someone to hold you accountable is a really good idea. I tell my mom all of the work I have to get done and keep her updated on how it’s going throughout the week (which is probably really annoying—sorry, mama). I’ve also done a lot of Facetime study sessions with friends, and they’ve been really nice, too!
Here's an example of what my list looked like for this week:
I hope those tips help! If you have any suggestions on making a consistent schedule, feel free to add a comment below.
Much love,
Katie