Looking back on my senior year of college, I had a full schedule. I was taking classes full-time, volunteering, working, managed to exercise, and still had somewhat of a social life. If you are a fellow Bio major, I'm sure you're wondering how I achieved the impossible. So, for this post, I want to share my tips to creating a balanced life and getting things done.
Step One: Organization
In order to get things done efficiently, you'll have to have a plan. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am a total planner. I can probably take it a little too far at times, but it works well for me. So, I do what I know. For me, my planner was set up in two major sections, the monthly view and then the weekly view. For the monthly view, I wrote down all of my major events (ex: birthdays, exams, due dates for papers/projects, meetings, and work hours). This way, I could look at my monthly view and then assess which weeks would be busier than others. For my weekly view, I would break down what was going on for that particular week. Here, I would write down smaller assignments as well as the major events that were going on. Another feature for my weekly view was my weekly post-it ( I'll talk more about my weekly post-it in a later section). My week view was pretty much my reference point for when I needed to get things done and it helped me to keep things moving along. If I was having a particularly busy week, I would sometimes break down my days into hourly sections, so I could visualize how much time I had and how I could use it. Now, you don't have to go into that much detail, but I would suggest having a general framework for your time. Knowing what you need to do and when you need to do it, will help you be more efficient.
Step Two: Prioritize
So now that you have an idea of what needs to get done, you need to decide what is most important. On my weekly post-it, I would write down my tasks for the week in order of importance. This would help keep me from wasting my time on the paper that was due next week when I still had an exam to study for this Friday. There were some exceptions to the post-it, but in general, I tried to stick to it. Also, when glancing at my monthly view, If I saw that my week was manageable, I'd accept invites to social things. If I knew I had two quizzes, a meeting, a test, and a paper due the following week, I would stay in that weekend. There were occasions that I had to break this rule (i.e. it was my bestie's birthday), and during those weeks I tried to get as much as I could possibly get done Monday-Thursday. This wasn't always smooth sailing, but hey, that's life.
Step Three: Use Your Time Wisely
In general, I had a pretty good layout of what needed to get done when, but sometimes I'd randomly have little pockets of time and I'd use these to work on my post-it list. Even if I couldn't finish an entire task, I would at least try to do the ground work, so that when I went to do the actual work, it would be easier. Another thing that I would do was to make use of travel time. For my school, I was fortunate that I could rely on public transportation to get to places ( for me that meant getting from campus to my workplace), so I would make use of my travel time by going through flashcards or through some of my notes.
Step Four: Know When To Deviate
I am all for being organized, but for me it is also super important to be able to live a balanced life, and a major part of that is knowing when it's okay not to stick to a schedule and go with the flow. Sometimes, I'd have a pretty set schedule, but something would come up and I would deviate from what I planned. Something that comes to mind when I think of this is a time that I had planned to go home after work on a Saturday so that I could work on some homework but instead, I took up a last minute invite to go see a movie I had wanted to see. When my friend asked me earlier in the week, going out on Saturday seemed like it would hinder my academic goals. But when she asked again on Saturday, it was totally doable. Also, there were certain days that I would just use my work commute to de-stress. Realize that in order to work like a well-oiled machine, you need to be human. If you're having a rough day, take a break to just breathe. As you get to know how you work, you'll know how to do this while still achieving your goals.
Step Five: Accept Imperfection
I like to think of myself as an imperfect perfectionist because on some things I settle for good enough instead of obsessing over every detail. Working in this manner has helped to keep me sane and from stressing over things that I shouldn't. Of course, take things seriously, but realize that it won't be the end of the world if something doesn't get done exactly the way that you wish you would've. Were there times that I wish I would've done things differently? Yes, but I also tried to balance things the best that I could at the moment, and that was good enough for me.
To all my pre-meds (and also non-premeds), I hope this post helps to guide you along a bit and also gives you some motivation to push through whatever you need to get done. I hope you have a fabulous weekend and I shall be talking to you soon!
~Genesis<3
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