How to make your life a little less disastrous

What do you mean by "this is no way of starting an article" ?!

Dear Charlie,

Since I have been away for a few days and missed my only chance of putting this article in the right time, I decided to put post it anyway. And yes, I had this silly intro prepared for a long time and I only use it now.

If you think all of this is unbelievably sad and that's it's no way to work, then you'll be surprised to know what this article is about.

Yep. That's it. The person that is in litteraly no position to give advices about how to be organized is about to do just that.

In the OIB, and in life in general, it's crucial to know how to be organized, it helps you be more effective in what you do, even if it's something you don't really want to do. And let's be honest, there is a ton of things that we are not necessarily interested in that we'll have to work on. And unless you want to just avoid responsabilities and accumulate consequences by procrastinating all the time until you can't handle anything anymore, you're gonna try to be a little more organized.

So I'm making this article to give a few tips I've learned and share them with you guys, so that we can all be a little less desperate. (Yay!) There's also another article about advices on how to not be stressed that Beverly wrote and that is pretty useful, you might want to check it out here. And there's also Judy's artcile about making sacrifices to be able to focus on working. Woah is that a trend or what. Anyway, I guess this article is going to be some kind of big mash-up of all those things,
Let's go!

Time managing:

Woah I can't stop looking at it this was a bad idea.

Of course we're going to talk about time. When you have a bunch of homework and other things you have to deal with, you have to be able to fit them all in the limited time that you have. And that's why you'll want to prepare things in advance!

There are a lot of ways to do that, but if you work on the computer, there's a funny app that one of my favourite musicians made to help with that. You can download it here (don't mind the fancy background and the fact that it's on tumblr).

But of course you don't always work on a computer, so you'll have to stay focused on your own by following these steps ( I guess) :

-Make your priorities clear. If you can't figure out what's the most important to do at the time, you won't be able to work efficiently and your focus will be dispersed all over the place. So settle down for a minute and list down what you have to do and in a reasonable order.

There's many ways to do that, from agendas to post-its surrounding you everywhere. You need something to remind you of what you have to do, and when to do it in order to not be late for it. I thought of having a giant calendar to put important dates on it (mostly deadlines). But I'm still messing around with post-its for now. Someday calendar... Someday...

-Stop wasting time thinking too much about how you're going to do things. I know this sounds contradictory, but believe me, if you take too much time hesitating on what you should do, you're just going to end up late and then regret it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take a bunch of minutes to make a plan for an essay though, it's really important!


And if after all of this you still can't manage to get yourself to work, then let's take it to the next step:

Motivation:

Yeah, all of these advices won't work if you're not motivated at all, so you'll have to put some effort into it! If it's something you're really not interested in, something that you find boring, or just too hard, make it your own thing! You'll have to find a way to actually enjoy doing it, by making it personal, or just by not turning into a robot when you're working. Make things fun!

I'm not saying you should force yourself to like subjects you clearly are not fond of though. Let's just say that you have to stay open-minded. And be creative! (that sounds familiar...)

You'll also have to make it less painful by actually resting and eating like a normal person. (I know that sounds dumb but sometimes I get absorbed into what I'm doing so much that I forget to eat.)Take some breaks, give yourself a bit of freedom, so then you can come back with a fresh mind to look back at your work and make it better. Even in exams you'll have to do that.

But hey, don't take too much freedom though. Ot else you'll slip back into procrastination. And that's definitively something you want to avoid! (I won't get fooled this time!)

Anyway, I hope that was useful and not totally boring for all of you people. Take care of yourselves and see you in a few months when I have to do an article again next time! Now if you excuse me I'm going to try applying all those advices ( I just made this article even less convincing by saying that haha).
Bye!

-Dipper (Massinissa)