This guide aims to enable you to fulfill your duties and to plan ahead, so that you can own the remaining time, and use it as meaningfully and enjoyably as possible. The guide also aims to help you realise your goals, dreams and potential. It is easier to get organised in this way than it seems.
This system provides a relatively comprehensive overview of one's plans and schedule, and may serve with insights into habits, whilst supporting shaping them.
Offline:
A folder on your computer named 'Life', or whatever title you prefer to give, to indicate the importance and central role of that folder.
MS Word and MS Excel (or similar)
Online:
a notes app (available from your computer as well, like Google Keep)
some cloud space (like Google Drive or Dropbox)
a browser where you can bookmark pages
(All these are quite basic.)
As for the files, bookmarks, etc. that you work with – you can give then any title, in any language, it is just recommended to reflect its function.
The ’Life’ folder should contain three core documents (tables in MS Word) and at least one (excel) table.
The three documents are:
goals and rules
regular schedule
calendar
Excel tables are needed to track health related activities and processes:
It is recommended to track your sports activities (even if you have days or weeks when you don’t get to do too much sports).
A further recommendation (for women) would be an excel (or an additional excel tab) to track your period.
Let’s look into the functions and uses of these documents and tables.
This is a table in MS Word, with 2 columns, and as many rows as you may need (can be adjusted later as well).
In each cell if the first column, you will have categories of goals and rules. In the cells of the second column, you can enlist concrete goals and rules for yourself, which you wish to keep being reminded of, when you open this document. This doc is your compass, in a way.
I recommend some categories, but feel free to change the list according your goals and rules:
„Ground rules and advice”
„Studies related”
„Everday rules”
(I also used to have an extensive category for „Looks” (with hairstyle and fitness goals), but after my twenties, my value-system has changed, and I realised that there are limits to one's looks.)
Concrete goals and rules (in the cells of the second column) can range from the most mundane (e.g. „Don’t drink coffee.”), through relevant advice from others (e.g. „Step by step.”), to your own moral principles (e.g. „Do not abuse power.”), no matter how general.
You don’t need to be comprehensive right from the start, and rules may slowly come and go, you can always adjust your list.
This document should contain three main tables beneath one another: your regular schedule for the week, your regular schedule for the month, and your regular schedule for the year; with two columns each.
Week
In the first column of the regular schedule for the week, you should have 8 rows: one for the tasks (with bullet-points) which you will need to do each week, or multiple days the week, but cannot be sure on which day you will do it. These are such as washing your hair, cutting your nails, plucking your eyebrows, and doing (your part of) the weekly grocery shopping.
From the second to the eighth rows, you will have the days of the week, from Monday to Sunday. In each cell of the second column, write next to the weekdays the tasks you need to do that day. There are some – like taking daily meds – which have to be noted in each of these cells. You can also add „1h sports” each day, maybe with a question mark, plus your time to wake up to each day (and later set your alarms accordingly). Similarly, you can plan a healthy bedtime.
If you have a task that you need to do on just one specific day of the week, like ordering food for next week, or checking your bank account, you can highlight these bullet-points with bold. The most important task of this individual type is to organise/schedule your next week (in the Calendar document, see below) each Friday (just in case - but it can happen Saturday or Sunday too).
Month
For this table, you may need 3 or more rows. In the cell of the first column you will note the regularity (e.g. „monthly tasks”), in the second, the tasks themselves with bullet-points,and with the date of the month specified, if possible. There is one particular monthly task that should be done, on the last or one-before-last week (maybe also on a Friday) of the month, and that is organising your next month (in the Calendar document).
As for further rows in this table, you can add a „whenever I feel I need to do this task” section, for things you don’t always do on a strictly regular and frequent basis, such as „going to the hairdresser” (hairstyle dependent), „using hand cream” (temperature and moisture dependent), etc.
If you have bi-monthly tasks, or tasks for every 6 months (such as going to the dentist for a check-up), note these in additional rows of this table, and schedule them in your Calendar document once the next occasion is due.
Year
Some tasks/celebrations fall on specific months or days of the year. In the table for the year, you only need to mark these special dates / months, one row each.
These are the birthdays of the people who are important to you, maybe even their name days, as well as mothers’ day and fathers’ day. Mark Christmas (if applicable) and New Year's Eve too. If you want, you can mark further country-specific holidays (to know that you won’t have to go to school or work that day). If there’s some special, nice content released each year (as for me, this is the emotional „Year in Search” video by Google), you can mark that in the yearly table as well.
The most important „reminder” in this table is to – optimally at the beginning of December – organise your next year, in the Calendar document.
In addition, it is practical to store useful information in bullet-points in this document (whatever info you want to be able reach regularly, just not very sensitive pieces of information).
This is the „timeline of your life”. You should have a table with two columns, again – on the left, the dates, on the right, the tasks or programs in bullet-points.
The good news is, that you don’t need to have any superfluous rows, just the days when concrete tasks are known already.
Start by organising the current week, according to the regular schedule document. You don’t need to organise the next week yet (unless it is Friday), for that you can do each week, as a scheduled weekly task.
Same for the current month. Import (copy-paste) the current month’s tasks, plus those with other regularities, and don’t worry about the subsequent months, because you are scheduled to organise them towards the end of the current month anyway.
Same for the current year.
Important! In this calendar, you can have rows indicating whole months, if you are not specific on a future date yet. Also, I recommend separating the weeks for the current month by 1 row each, titled in the left cell „this week”. Some tasks may pile up, and in this way, you get a better overview.
Once you have "imported" your current week, month and year, you can add special plans to the calendar, like meeting with a friend next week, or going on a vacation in three months. No need to organise those weeks and months very much in advance in this file, just note the activity with the date.
Sports
This is simple: Two columns, the first for the dates (every day, excel can fill it out automatically after adding the 1st in a proper date format), the second for the activities and/or duration, so you can track it on a longer term.
Periods
Simple again: Column 1 – dates. Column 2 – period day types (nothing, slight bleeding, normal bleeding).
Most people nowadays work and study at their computer, but if you leave the laptop, the quickest and best editable place to reach your daily plan at, is in your notes. Before you leave your laptop, or in the morning, save your plan for the day in a note – accessible from your phone. Make sure it is the note on top in the app, so that you can constantly follow (and/or adjust) your plan. (Afterwards, you can just archive that note.)
I wouldn’t recommend editing all your files online, just to save them from the ’Life’ folder on a regular basis (say, each Friday, after organising the subsequent week), by adding them to a similarly titled cloud folder. Make sure your passwords and accounts are secure.
There are about 2 main lists I recommend to have in your cloud, at least:
Finances: You may add regular incomes (even pocket money), as well as your material plans or wish-list to this file.
Free time: Plan what you can and like to do in your free time, in different sections. I have one for sports, one for studies, one for arts, one for non-urgent health check-ups, and one housing/renovation related section. I also have a section separate for plans after the next big milestones in my life.
Additionally, I recommend to store as many of your plans and ideas in such lists, as possible. You can have a comprehensive „Reading List”, as well as a „Watch List” – this latter makes movie and series choices more conscious. Keep your movie wishes and the movies watched by year, in the same list. You’ll see how many (and which ones) you have watched that year already, and hopefully be able to prioritise other activities, if needed.
Later you can also add your weekly shopping list, as well as a list of the foods and other consumer goods that you think you should always have some of at home.
Enjoy + wishing you success ♥
by: Zsófia Hajnal