How to: Plan Your Work

Hello, Reader!

Consider this a follow up to my “How to: Organise Your Life” post-- a few weeks ago I shared all I know about how to begin a planner or journal. I’ve said it then and I’ll say it again: organisation is self-love and our culture of glorifying being a mess is toxic. Planning out your work is a form of self-care and nobody can convince me otherwise: it makes both big projects and everyday tasks more manageable and less overwhelming and, often, not knowing where to start is the biggest obstacle to starting something. That’s why I’m back to expand on to-do lists to make the planning and organisation process this much easier to begin.

At the beginning of each month, it’s good to set goals that will guide your weekly to-do lists. These can be general ones (eg. read more, make progress in Spanish) but it can be more motivating for them to be very specific tasks (eg. revise x chapters, create x paintings). These tasks can be anything that you need to do in that specific month; assignments, personal projects, or steps towards long term goals. By using this as a guide for your weekly to-do lists, you can make sure to be on track towards your goals and make each week count. Of course, your weekly to-dos aren’t just steps towards completing your monthly goals. Write down everything that needs to be done that week - Do laundry? Pay bills? Meal prep? Remember that your work is not everything and taking care of yourself and other life-things is just as important. 

Creating master to-do lists of everything that needs to be done in a specific week allows you to effectively divide the tasks between the days of the week. As I wrote in my previous post on this topic: plan your tasks around your events, not the other way around. If there’s a really cool event you want to go to, but you have an essay to write, write the essay before or after the event! Don’t miss out on fun opportunities and memories - writing that essay won’t take you the entire day and it might even motivate you to complete it quicker (read: without procrastinating) if you have a specific time-slot for it in your day. There’s no shame in splitting tasks in half or into parts if you find yourself overwhelmed or short on time. There were a few months this year when I really struggled with writing blog posts so I’d split it into three separate tasks; planning, writing half and finishing it because it made the task of writing so much more manageable. If there’s a party you really want to go to, but you know that there’s an assignment waiting for you - go to the party, but plan to wake up at a reasonable time and complete that assignment. This is the beauty of planning ahead; you won’t find yourself starting your assignment a few hours before its due and staying up late trying to complete it because, if you’d planned well, you’ve finished it already. So you’re free to go out and socialise.

Lastly - and, again, I’ve said this before - follow through. There’s no point writing to-do lists and planning your work if you don’t actually follow through with it. There’s no shame in migrating tasks - not everything always goes to plan - but try to stick to it as much as possible. That’s what it’s there for! You’re the one who benefits from organising your tasks so try to make sure to keep yourself accountable to the work you set yourself. 

Happy planning!

Love,

Agnes xo