How to Stick to a Schedule

Hi everyone! In today's video I am going to talk to you about how to stick to a schedule. I know making one and coloring your agenda or whatnot can be quite fun, however actually sticking to what you said you were going to do and going according to plan is a whole another level, let's be honest here. So without further ado, here are my tips and tricks on how I personally stick to a schedule and I'm really hoping that this can help you out or at least inspire you to try some of these things. So my first tip to you is to when you pick a notebook or a piece of paper or an agenda that you like and you start filling it in with your schedule, with your daily planner, with your mini goals, make it aesthetically pleasing. Make it pretty. I know I keep repeating myself but it has a lot to do with do you want to open it or not. If it's ugly, if it's in like a doctor's handwriting, you know, it looks messy, it looks all over the place, you don't want to open it, it looks like work, it looks like a big chunk of textbook and you will not want to open it for the life of you. Whereas if you make it pretty, if you take time and do it nicely with a black pen or with a blue pen or whatnot, if you want to put stickers, put stickers, use color, just make it visually appealing. That way when you see it on your nightstand or on your desk, you will want to open it up and this is part of motivating yourself to open your planner, to open your agenda. It should be like the first thing you want to do in the morning because you just like looking at it. My second advice to you is to set weekly goals, not daily goals. Because daily goals can be easily... how should I say this? A lot of things happen in a day and it's kind of too precise. So what I personally do is I give myself weekly goals. So let's say read a 60 page book by Sunday, that's my weekly goal. Now every single day you need to do small activities to reach that goal. And when I'm saying small activities I'm talking about an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours max every day. You need to do small little somethings around the day so that at the end of the week you achieve your goal. It's all about tiny activities that lead to a big goal. If you set, let's say a goal like read 2 chapters today, a lot can happen in a day, even if you binge do it, it's just, it's a lot and you won't get much out of it and you'll rush and it's gonna feel so heavy and you just don't want to do it because it's too much. The trick here is to do small steps each day to achieve your goal. I find that this is more effective, you actually want to do it, the likelihood of you actually doing it increases like tenfold, trust me, personal experience. And it feels like nothing, it really feels like nothing. So another example, if you have to read a 60 page book, if you read 30 pages a day you're gonna be like I just don't want to read 30 pages today, I really don't want to, I just don't want to. Well then, how does it feel to read, I don't know, 5 pages a day, 10 pages a day? Feels less, like oh I just have to read 5 pages, okay done. Just little things like that will lead you to accomplishing your goal. So definitely, weekly goals, small activities each day to achieving that goal. When you are actually planning these mini activities or daily little tasks you need to do to achieve your end goal is to not make the daily planner or the daily timetable too precise. So if you do like from 9 to 9.20, read page 1 to 3, from 9.20 to 9.36 it's way, way, way too precise, way too much opportunity for you to like not respect the time because yes you can estimate, it's good to have a general idea of how long it will take you, but going that detail, it just doesn't give you enough leeway. So my goal here is to make you not feel like you failed. This is the worst thing that can happen. When you set yourself a goal, so like from 9 to 9.30 I'm gonna read a chapter and you don't read a chapter from 9 to 9.30, it takes you more time. You feel like, oh my god, oh my god, I went over my time, what's happening, this is taking me too long, I don't know, I don't know, I'm panicking, this is too much, I don't feel like doing it, meh. That's what's gonna happen. So definitely give yourselves mini boosts of self-esteem like I've accomplished this, it took me right, actually less than the time I planned. So instead of planning it from 9 to 9.30, give it from 9 to 11 or something more flexible because if you're too detailed, it increases the opportunity of you messing up or of you not, you know, you get distracted and stuff and maybe you go overboard and then your whole schedule is messed up and then you just give up and you don't feel like doing it because hey, I can't stick to a schedule for the life of me because I can't even do the first task in the time I allocated myself to do it. So definitely don't be too detailed, give yourself more of a general time to accomplish each task. Moving on, I highly, highly suggest that you give yourself mini breaks and big breaks, I've talked about this in many of my videos on what type of break you should give yourself and what to do during those breaks but I just highly recommend that you, you know what, know yourself. So know that you're a person that needs an hour break in between each like insane task or with 15 minutes you'll be fine. It's really a question of knowing how you're comfortable, knowing your limits and don't push yourself definitely, I always encourage you to push yourself, to do more if you can but if you can't, if you're like tired or if you just can't do it anymore, give yourself a break. It's not that you failed, it's not that you can't do it, it's that you need to recharge your batteries and that's perfectly fine. So know yourself and give yourself mini breaks, be realistic when you plan these things, don't go overboard, don't copy someone else's schedule because it's their schedule, do your own thing. Another step which is kind of repetitive to what I just blabbed on about for the past 10 minutes is definitely take tiny steps, so no big giant effort. I am honestly very opposed to binge studying, to binge efforts because it takes so much of you to motivate yourself to do them, they just appear so big and so overwhelming and towards the end your energy is low, you rush, you don't retain information and it doesn't help you out in the long run. So I am all for 100% small steps but constant, every day you do something towards that goal, every single day, 10 minutes, an hour, but every day you do something small to achieve that big goal, because together all those small steps that seem like nothing is gonna mold and create a big beautiful flower. And finally, my last advice to you is to always, always remember to reward yourself after every small activity, after every goal achieved, if you want to reward yourself weekly or daily, but definitely have some form of patting yourself on the back and saying, look, you achieved this, congratulations, it's amazing, you did it, good for you, and just something, like I'm not saying to buy yourself a new car every time you read two pages, but definitely pamper yourself after, after you've achieved a goal, say, okay, now I can actually relax, I'm gonna go out with my friends and just not think about it, boost yourself up a bit, you've achieved something, it's something, so pat yourself on the back for it, cause then every time you have a goal, you're like, no, I can do this, look at all these times I did it, and you're gonna boost yourself up, and it's gonna motivate you, the key is being motivated, so make it positive, make it enjoyable, reward yourself, and hey, you did it! With that being said, I really hope you enjoyed this video, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up if you liked it, and subscribe to me, if you like what you see.