A Quest of a busy student

For the past five years, I have been trying to find the ultimate way to  plan and manage my day that can achieve maximum results with minimum resources. In another word “How to be productive”. Good news is think I’m finally there, or at least I've found the best solution for my current situation. Hopefully, this article will give you some insights into my journey and what I believe is the perfect tools for having a productive and meaningful life that isn’t full of worry and stress. As a student. 

For a very long time, I was obsessed with how I spent my time and my days. I always tried to make each day meaningful by doing at least one good thing that would leave me satisfied by the end of it. I didn’t really know what this was called back then; I just knew that I didn’t want to waste my days doing nothing that matter and wanted to accomplish as much as possible without feeling exhausted. This first changed when I read my first non-fiction book, The Miracle Morning, which introduced me to the concept of productivity. From then on, I started reading more books on the topic and watching YouTube videos about how to be productive and how to structure your days to make the best use of them. As a newly YouTube student I began implementing everything I learned without giving it a second thought. 

One of the first things I learned was time-blocking, and the longest time i stuck with the same concept of life. The idea is to block out all the tasks, places, and everything I need or have to do during the day on a calendar, ensuring that they must be done. At first, it was a very helpful tool because I didn’t use it to plan my day in advance; rather, I used it to track my day in real-time. So, I would block time as I went along—for instance, if I was studying, I would block out two hours for study time or suddenly decided to hang out with friends so i would block that time. I even blocked out prayer times so I could really see everything. This approach was great because it showed me what my normal days looked like, and of course, they had a lot of wasted time. I even used to block out  activities with different colors and the wasted time was in orange so that I would feel frustrated when I saw my day filled with orange. This motivated me to make up for lost time the next day.  Time blocking was really helpful; it taught me discipline and made me more aware of my time, which was a great start.

After that, I started building a routine. I began to block out the times when I usually performed my routine tasks. Initially, I made the blocks very general—like "morning routine" or "school stuff"—but then I started to be more specific. I blocked time for specific activities every day and created a different schedule for weekends. At first, this method was great, and it felt good to see everything planned out. I used to make minor adjustments throughout the day, which didn’t really affect the overall layout. However, some tasks took more time than expected, so I would increase the time blocked for those tasks, i was flexible so it was not that bad. Unto I started my first year in engineering school, which turned this out to be a nightmare. I couldn’t keep up with my usual schedule because school was too demanding. Everything was new, and I couldn’t balance my personal schedule with my school schedule and the unexpected tasks that suddenly came up. This imbalance ruined everything. Throughout this time, I continued consuming productivity content and trying to implement new ideas, but nothing made me feel confident enough to replace time-blocking and i was too stubborn to change until the next best idea came along.

Daily to-do lists (writing tasks). I'm not just talking about school tasks or a project tasks; I am talking about writing out my entire day in a to-do list format instead of time-blocking tasks. I transferred everything from my calendar to the Reminders (tasks and reminders app), assigning specific times for each task. Essentially, I was doing the same thing with a different tool, maybe thats how i could convince myself to switch ways, which wasn't successful either. I would write daily tasks along with recurring ones, and by morning, I would feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks I needed to accomplish. Of course like anything new it worked for a while until it became impossible to complete even half of the tasks by the end of the day. This was super frustrating. I started falling behind—Sunday's tasks were moved to Monday, Monday's to Tuesday, and so on. I was constantly behind schedule, so I dropped out stopped using any method all together. I relied on my memory for important things, and my friends to college to keep me on track. That obviously led to missing important meetings and learning about quizzes or assignment just a day or two before the deadline. Although this didn’t severely affect my academic performance, it did impact my mental and physical health and my relationships with others. 

After that, I started using small to-do lists for tasks that felt manageable, and I didn’t miss anything. Eventually, I returned to using daily tasks in the Reminders app. I used to jot down my to-dos on sticky notes whenever something came up, but sometimes I would forget or not have the note with me. So, I created a new reminder list that I could access across all my devices and add tasks to immediately. This new routine suited me best and lasted until school ended last year. With a lot of unplanned time, I still had responsibilities, so I reintroduced time-blocking. I blocked time for commitments that required others’ time, as these didn't solely depend on me, so I had to respect other people's time. This approach lasted all summer.

When school started, I began making weekend to-do lists for tasks related to studying or other things I needed to finish from my general to-do list by the end of the week. To conclude, I believe I've reached a solid system for productivity and time management as a student, which includes:

- Time-blocking for school time and meetings.

- A general to-do list that I have access to most of the time.

- Three to five daily tasks to accomplish.

- A weekend to-do list to wrap up the week and tie up loose ends.

My Take on this journey, That I am grateful for the experiences that led me to develop my perfect schedule and for all the information I’ve learned along the way. Your journey doesn't need to be similar to mine, and my perfect schedule doesn't have to be perfect for you. However, it is a journey worth taking—explore, learn more and more, and be open to new ideas and methods. I used to think time-blocking was the only way to avoid wasting time, but now I believe it’s the exact opposite, at least for me. If I had been more open-minded about trying new ideas, perhaps I wouldn’t have taken so long to find what works. Either way, I’m glad I did. 

And THANKS.