Always too busy? Read this

Do you ever feel like you don’t have time to do anything? I used to feel that way. I felt like I was so weighed down with work and had no time to do anything else. As per usual I was complaining about "how exhausted I am," to a friend. He asked, “What do you do all day?” I began to complain, “Oh I wake up early to do chores and I make my breakfast and by the time I’m out of the shower I only have 5 minutes till school. In school, it’s just studying and running around for duties and extracurriculars. I rest for an hour when I come home and then I’ve got my classes and homework and duties and all of a sudden it’s 11 and I have to sleep!” 

The devil indeed lies in the details because from that description do you have any idea what I actually do in a day? The dude looked at me and with the fakest tone of ‘sympathy’ in his voice, I’d ever heard said ‘Sounds rough’. It really stung. But he was right, what was I actually doing? Duties? What duties? What level of responsibility do I have in these ‘duties’ that I’m so devoted to them? 

So, I did a Time Audit. I looked at the screen time reports on my phone, laptop, and iPad. Most of my time was spent on Instagram, Netflix and YouTube. The only thing I can justify here is YouTube because I often use it to study. I got over my ‘I’m so busy attitude’ and started listing down what responsibilities I actually had. For example, I have a photography club. What work does that actually entail? (You can do this too)

Every week:

• Assigning duties to photographers for the weekly events

• Make sure they show up and are ready to handle technical difficulties (corrupted SD cards, broken tripods, forgotten cameras, and such)

• Uploading the photos to the digital archive for social media use

Daily:

• Charging the school camera every morning 

• Keeping an inventory of the SD cards

This isn’t much work unless I make it too much work. 80% of the job is just upkeep. The 80-20 rule applies here, 80% of your results are seen due to 20% of your efforts. If I prioritized the basic upkeep work and got it over with every day, it wouldn’t pile up. I'd be in a lot less hot water!

Now this is a very specialized example and there is a chance that your life might be busy because of responsibilities I could never handle, but it never hurts to look over them. The path from realization to change is not easy, but it’s the pathworth taking.

Paper or iPad - the best planner for you

my not very aesthetic but effective notes

Long story short - no. You will need both digital and paper organizers to efficiently manage your time. Never underestimate the power of external tools for productivity.

When I talk about external tools I mean planners, binders/folders, and tracking templates. We’ll keep this one short and to the point.

1. Planner: The perfect planner for you is the one that’s always accessible. Bringing a phone to my school is basicallya felony so a fully digital planner isn’t possible but carrying a pocketbook is encouraged. And that’s how I keep track of my assignments, tasks and thoughts. I have a small spiral notepad that isn’t very pretty or expensive so I have no hesitations to rip pages out when needed. Unlike some people I know (direct quote from an ex-friend: "don’t need a notepad sugar, all is up there"), I cannot hold onto thoughts because of how fast I think. A notepad helps. This is where the integration comes in. If one of my tasks is packing a book I need for my next lesson, it’s not making it to the digital calendar. But if I get an assignment due after 5 days, it’s going on the calendar. I use Apple Reminders and Apple Calendar to keep track. I have weekly reminders for deep cleaning my room and daily habit reminders that I can access after school. I’m not big on handwriting anything so I do not use iPad planners (like this one) but people love this way of planning and it's a viable option!

2. Binders/Folders: I use binders/folders to organize my papers and notes. I tried for years to get myself used to iPad note taking and it just wasn’t working. I started making Feynman sheets, condensed notes, and flashcards on plain a4 sheets. To sort them I use big cheap binders with binder dividers for the following sections:

- Notes

- Flashcards

- Formula Sheets

- Diagrams

- Important numerical

- Previous Year Questions

Other than studying I keep all of my medical records in physical folders for easy access, as well as certificates. Now how do I integrate this with digital organization? I keep scans of the papers on my Apple Notes on my phone so I always have what I need.

3. Tracking Templates: I have been trying to make a habit out of measuring the ‘analytics’ of my habits. This is a great way to see how you’re progressing what habits you effortlessly implement and the ones that don’t seem to stick. To start off you might just get a simple printable like this one. A very simple monthly habit tracker can give you a great overview of your life.

It’s really hard to stick to one way especially if you live in a environment where you don’t always have access to a phone or the time to make a physical note. And that sums up how to organize your life with paper and without it.

Yours lovingly,

Vanta <3

Why Pinterest vision boards are ruining your future.

Girls, the aesthetic collages are definitely NOT working. No, they don’t help you set goals. No, they don’t form your future. It actually ruins your chances of achieving everything you want to achieve, and here’s why (and it's based on science)

Dreaming about being a doctor with the perfect body and an amazing house is definitely not how you get any of those things. A study had participants just envision achievements. Envision what they wanted to be, and guess what? Just imagining reduced their energy levels and made them way too comfortable because they had an idea of where they wanted to be and they thought it was enough. They weren’t able to achieve their goals. Yikes. (This energy reduction was measured through both subjective self-reports and objective physiological indicators.)

If you already made a vision board, don’t throw it out. You can actually use it to figure out what you want in life!  I have made vision boards before too and it went wrong because I didn't imagine the actual details. Let's take an example of how you can structure your thoughts to get what you want out of your vision board:

If my long-term goal for the distant future is to ‘get good grades’ and it’s a picture of someone else’s A, I’m never getting there. I’m 1/10th of the way there because I have a vision in my head of what good grades are. But what if I refined that thought and wrote it down instead?

Half of the battles in your head would be resolved if you put pen to paper! If I say ‘I want good grades’ I need to define what good grades mean TO ME. What would Vanta want you to do if you were in this position?

We’d want you to think in the present, not the future.

The college you want to get into requires an overall 85% in your senior year to even get CONSIDERED for admission. If right now you’re at 72-75% you need to aim to up your grades by at least 15% (to fall into the safe range). 

Check your academic record for the past 3 - 4 months. Where did you lose the MOST marks? Did you not turn in your work on time leading to 2 -3 mark deductions on every assignment? Did you not study for the weekly tests that accounted for 30% of your final grade? (been there). Did you not even attempt to study a month before your final exams and barely pass? I know you know what you’re lacking, it could be one of these things or even them all! Don’t worry though, the more you have to fix the more you’ll improve. 

If you had put in even 20% more effort, you would have increased your average to at least 80%. And if you did more, imagine how far you could get. This effort would have been dedicated to building routines that made studying easier and more efficient! (blog post on that soon as well!)

Just reading blog posts isn’t going to change anything but your attitude can.

Envision the lifestyle:

Think about where you’ll be living, the kind of people you will be surrounded with, whether you start a family or not, and how you imagine it all ending. Sorry, it is a bit grim but what you leave behind becomes your legacy, and you kind of have to die to do that.

Break the goal down into short-term goals: 

Now that you know what is in the distant, distant future you have to break it down into small actionable steps. “I want good grades” has to be a daily easy-to-do effort. Habits only stick if they’re easy to do. The 20% effort you need to up your grade lies in consistency. Missing assignments won't be an issue if you do them within 2 days of getting them. Summer vacation projects can be finished within 2 weeks if you give it 2 hours a day. Attending study groups or getting a personal tutor (if this is accessible) will force you to study every day. 

It’s easier said than done because you’ll lose steam within 3 days. It is because you’re going out of your way to implement these habits into your life. You need to automate them through habit stacking. It’s a popular technique and if you frequent productivity blogs you know this and if you haven't tried it yet you might be giving up on a life-changing idea!

Like most people, I have coffee every morning. Every morning I get up, I make my bed, I do my prayer and I go to the kitchen to cook breakfast and make a cup of coffee. Before I tried habit stacking, that was it. I’d just sit and eat at my desk, shower, and get out of the house for school. I used habit stacking to make my routine work for the goals I wanted. I wanted to be more informed. I was somehow always out of the loop because I didn’t watch the news or read a newspaper (ew). I’m kidding I love journalism!

So I added something to my preexisting routine. Before I could sit down and sip my coffee, I had to turn on my podcast. I’ll listen to the headlines from BBC, and these two podcasts on an alternate basis: Daybreak and Top of the Morning (these are perfect for Indian audiences). I used them as a compulsion before I had my coffee and I just ended up LOVING these podcasts. I always felt stupid because I didn’t get finance and e-commerce but 10 minutes of these podcasts made it so easy for me to keep up (and the BBC headlines were good too). I feel incomplete if I don't do these now.

For studying I did implement the doing assignments within 2 days technique. At 4pm every day, I get really really really sleepy but I can’t fall asleep because it’s too close to bedtime and had an extra class at 5pm most days so I had to stay awake. I used the compulsion of going to my extra class and the hour before to train my brain to use that hour to finish assignments. I would study for an hour and a half in class and come back and revise everything we did. I increased my grades in physics and chemistry. I did not do this for biology and I suffered, so take from that what you will.

Sticking to it:

Other than automating these habits into pre-existing routines a great way to really establish them is to track them. You can use an app but I’m heavily against those because they make you be on your phone more. So I’d recommend a PHYSICAL TRACKER. I have one here. I just ticked the dates when I did something or not and the visual representation of my habits being carried out (or not) motivated me.

Yes, I know you’re thinking “But what I don’t get the chance to do a habit because of some emergency? “It’s totally fine. If you are physically incapable of doing something (like not being at home with your books or extremely sick) you can skip it. It’s a slippery slope so only skip for one day. If you usually study for 2 hours a day and you’re sick you can still maintain your habit by just reading your notes or doing one set of flashcards. You can go back to watching TV right after, just don’t give up.

And that basically wraps up how to actually achieve your goals. James Clear in his amazing book Atomic Habits stated how important it is to just try every day. Even if you progress at 1% every day; it’s about a 38% improvement EVERY year. You can check my math.

So girls it is time to actually start progressing towards your goals, not just thinking about them

Much love, 

Vanta <3