A student's view of planning
Why should we plan?
Students know all too well the phrase," If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,". The core idea behind this quote is the concept of implementation intentions, which was introduced in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. Put simply, instead of mentally knowing what to do and generalizing on when to do it ("I'll do my math assignment tomorrow, should be fine,"), specifically stating when, where, how and why you are doing it will greatly boost your chances of actually doing it. Not planning will create a lack of direction in your daily mini objectives, and this will lead you to procrastinate or waste time figuring out what to do. You will also be conflicted on which assignment to start on, since you don't know which is due when, or how important it is, or why should you even do it the first place.
Implementation Intentions
Remember your new year resolutions? Well, have you made any progress on it? By specifying the circumstances of our task, we subconsciously create external/internal cues we can react to for getting started. Example, " Tomorrow, at 9 am, I will get started on my History Essay, by reading up on the necessary sources that will allow me to have contextual knowledge about the essay, on my laptop,". We have established WHEN to do it, then WHAT to do, HOW to do it, and finally the WHY. Instead of generalizing the task as "finishing the essay", I broke it down into smaller doable tasks, "reading up on the necessary contexts,".
HOW to plan
Now that you understand the need to plan, let's look at some ways to execute it. I will be sharing personal experiences and other sources.
Tip #1) Write down all the tasks you have to complete within the week, be it academic or personal, onto a sheet of paper or a document. This removes the mental strain of having to remember them, which can cause confusion.
Tip #2) Classify the tasks. The two most important factors to classify your tasks are importance and urgency. The Eisenhower Matrix explains this quite well.
I think you should have gotten the gist from the diagram, not much for me to explain. Another tip to increase your chances of doing the task is to optimize the environment for your task. E.g. If you wish to read your textbook, simply placing it on your table the night before will trigger you to act on it the next day subconsciously.
Tip #3) Decide the format of keeping a record of your tasks. How are you going to consistently plan? Will you use a notebook? Or a digital app? That is entirely up to you. The aim here is to establish a firm planning system, a template of sorts, that is ready for you to use every time a new task pops up. Personally, I prefer digital platforms, and I will share my experience on using them.
Click Up (not sponsored)
I have been using this app for about a year, and the basic version is completely free, but packs a bunch.
You can clearly see that I have the functionality of listing down the tasks I have to do, but that is not what makes it good. Firstly, my home page shows me what I have to do on that day. Secondly, all the tasks you enter here will sync to google clan. Having my tasks stored digitally is much more visually appealing and offers flexibility, like changing the deadline dates etc.
Not only that, the flags to the right of each task highlight their priority. Red is URGENT, yellow is HIGH, blue is NORMAL. All these features have been extremely effective in allowing me to schedule my tasks with long term decisions in mind. Another benefit is that I can attach documents to each task, for example I can attach my History essay Word document directly to the task, so when the notification pops up each day reminding me to do it, I can just click on the notification, taking me to the document. This app also allows you to connect with your friends who have an click Up account, and this is extremely useful for group projects, where tasks can be delegated to each person.
There are a few other applications like Notion and Todoist. Experiment with them and find which best suits you. I will strongly advise you to have a calendar at least, be it Google or Apple. Having an organized overview of each day's tasks is a must for students to stay on track with all their work.
Conclusion
Remember, failure to plan results in lack of clarity , which can lead to procrastination. By using implementation intentions and specifying our execution of a task, we are more likely to do it. To have a good planning system, reduce cognitive strain by listing down your tasks, classifying them according to urgency and importance, setting proper deadlines, and finally establish your format of consistent planning. Please leave any opinions you have about this article below, or any improvements you would like to see on Student's Spot. Help a buddy out by subscribing, and sharing this to those who need this, if you think this is helpful.
Signing out, Arshath.