Third message in a row… There is this amazing movie at the cinemas, on for the third week and your best friend is just begging you to go tonight! It is 19:00 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and you have just opened your French books in front of you, trying to do your homework.. “Ok, I won’t be studying by midnight, I suppose!” so you answer the message and arrange to go. That leaves you with just two exercises that you managed to complete.
It’s a beautiful Saturday morning and you are sitting at your desk. Your phone hasn’t stopped ringing by friends who want to go out for a coffee or shopping with you. You put it in silent mode, try to concentrate and move on with your left homework. The buzzing does not go off. You look at the sun outside your window. The streets are flooding with people enjoying this wonderful day. “How much will it harm if I go out for just a little bit?” and of course, coffee turns into lunch out, followed by another coffee that leaves you free to return home in the afternoon. And actually, too tired to study.
Sunday is finally here. Between all mundane chores, the sound of the washing machine and between stacks of clothes to be ironed, you open your books ready to continue. Of course you are once again interrupted by the bitter smell of the burning cake inside your oven. “How can I concentrate between all this?” This is virtually impossible, of course!
Monday morning welcomes the new week and your French lesson is this afternoon. You are half-prepared, in a blur of the things you have managed to study and those you haven’t, and stressed.
Does all that sound familiar?
Maybe it’s time you created a unique studying weekly plan that won’t stop you from missing out either on a well-rounded preparation for your foreign language or your entertainment activities.
There are just three small tips you can follow not to lose control again!
- Divide and Conquer
Run a small calculation of how many days you have ahead of you in order to get yourself perfectly prepared for your lesson. Then take a close look at the educational material that you need to covet until then. Take a pencil and a piece of paper and delegate which chapters or which pages you need to study per day so that when that date comes, you will have finished everything. The same goes, in the rare cases that you have just a few hours ahead of you to cover everything. In that situation, you divide pages of material per hour.
This mild organization will provide you with the control you need over planning your studying and with a clear idea of where you are at any given moment. You will not wonder how much more there is to go or feel overwhelmed when you realize how much more there is to study.
- Study the worst at the beginning.
Usually, most of us, leave the most difficult task at hand for the very end of our studying. We believe that we will dedicate all our focus on it, if we leave it for last and that we will remember it sharply the next day. Unfortunately, this technique hasn’t proven to be that efficient.
When we do that, we are already a bit tired of the studying we have done the previous days so our attention span is relatively shorter. Also, we feel far more stressed when we know that the worst part of our studying is about to come and that is a pessimistic thought that reduces our motivation.
So, start from the worst part and study your way to the easier ones. Also, this way, you will probably have the opportunity to revise the most difficult part once again before your lesson.
- Leave one day free.
Here is a rule I painfully learned to abide by. During the last few years, motivated by my desire to achieve all my goals, driven by success thirst, I never took a day off. Either from studying or from work. Of course that led to an amazingly unforgettable burnout that took me almost a month to recover from. So, what is your safety shield? Taking a day off! Yeap! That’s right!
The most ideal scenario would be to have an entire day off just to yourselves, because that would give you the necessary space to get back on your wider perspective, see where you are with your goals, go out and enjoy invaluable time with friends and family. However, if this is not the case, instead of a day, claim a complete, free afternoon to yourselves. It will work the same way.