New Season New Schedule

Navigating organisation at different periods of life

What got you here won’t get you there - you may have heard this before from motivational TikTok videos. You might think that you have cracked the code on how to stay motivated, how to stay disciplined, how to stay organised… then in 2 months it doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean your plan was bad, it simply means you have entered a new season of life that requires some readjustments. The seasons in your life present themselves in different stages and can be as drastic as starting a family, or as literal as the change from winter to spring. This blog post will discuss how I am navigating these changes and include the framework that is currently working for me in my season.

Why I stay organised

I guess this subheading should really be called why I like to stay organised, or even why I try to stay organised. It’s quite simple really. If you don’t organise family time, you won’t get family time. If you don’t organise chill time, you won’t get chill time. There is so much I want to do in life, in a year, in a day and none of that is possible without structure. Albeit, the definition of structure changes every season for me too. One thing you must realise is that you have time for what you make time for. You do not need more hours in the day, you just need to make the most of each hour in the day. Right now for me, that means waking up a bit earlier, but also going to sleep earlier, whereas a couple of months ago, I would have to go to bed way later and wake up later in order to achieve the goals I had set for myself.

Accepting your season

This is something I used to struggle with a lot. I still have moments when it gets tricky, but I’m getting better at it. My season right now is characterised by my uni assignment. The only issue is, we are having an early summer. There is a tension between what I want to be doing and what I have to do. As much as I want to spend all my days in a park and evenings having a movie night, they aren’t worth it right now. What is helping me get through that is first changing my language. I don’t have to do this assignment, I get to. Summer comes every year, but I will never get the chance to be 21 years old studying Fashion Journalism and Content Creation again.

The tricky part is when you are around others in opposite seasons. I am 2 weeks away from a deadline, but I have friends who have already submitted, some who aren’t studying, some who are working and others on holiday. Do. Not. Get. Distracted. You will get there, but you are not there. You are not behind, you are not missing out. Similarly, when it is finally time for you to be vacationing in the Bahamas, don’t distract your resting period by looking at others who are working and think you should be doing the same. We all have our own seasons and it won’t always match up.

Prioritising

One thing that stays key in every season is prioritising. What do you want. What is important to you. What gets your 80% or your 20% in this season. If you are like me, 2 weeks away from a deadline, the 80% can’t be for socialising. Just because something is important, doesn’t mean it has to be prioritised right now. When I make my daily to-do lists, I usually have two lists. One is the master to-do list where I list every single thing I have to do – the big stuff. Then I would pick about five things from that list and put it in my daily to-do list. From that second list, I would put three things in bold – those are the non-negotiable things that have to get done that day. Those two extra things are what I will do if I have extra time. I try not to overfill my to-do lists because I could end up doing a lot that day, but if I don’t finish the list, it feels like I didn’t do anything. Prioritising is the action that comes with acknowledging what is important right now.

Observe yourself

Figure out things about yourself. Are you someone who has a short attention span? If so, try organising your schedule in increments. Or if you are good with just getting things done, do you have the discipline to block out big time periods in your day to create space for you to work? Do you need 8 hours of sleep flat, or can you function on 6 hours with a nap mid-day? Sleep is important, I 100% agree, but again, it looks different in different seasons. For me right now, regardless of the time I go to sleep, I wake up at 7:30, but once I submit my assignment I am looking forward to a bit of a lie-in!

Are you a morning or evening person? But don’t leave it at that. I know I am a night owl, but I have recently made myself an early bird to make more time for resting. No behaviour is permanent, you can change.

My current framework

I have gone through many different frameworks since secondary school that have helped me stay as organised as possible. From to-do lists to spreadsheets, I’ve tried it all. Here is what I am doing right now with a deadline round the corner – it’s crunch time.

Yesterday, as I was falling asleep in front of my laptop while editing, I decided I needed to change things up. The first thing I did was ask ChatGPT to tell me something to encourage me to keep going with my assignment. This sounds silly and simple, but sometimes you might be sitting alone and still need a kick up your behind to continue. I could’ve called it a day, but the season I am in means I can’t stop when I get tired – I stop when I’m done.

After that encouragement, I wrote all the tasks I had left to do into ChatGPT and asked it to come up with a schedule for me for the next two weeks. I put that schedule into my planning app and got to work. Breaking down my day to the minute shows me how much time I have in the day and helps me to use every second wisely. For example, I am going out in the evening at the time I would usually be writing this blog, so instead, I am writing this as I eat my breakfast before I start my uni work.

Doing my blog every single day may seem like an unnecessary extra task when considering all the uni work I have to do, but since it is important to me, I am making time for it.

According to my schedule, I now have three minutes to finish this blog and start my uni work - it’s only 9:57! Gotta go now and so do you, get organised and make the days count. Make sure to subscribe below via email for updates on new blog posts!