First of all, welcome to my new blog! 'The Optimistic Minimalist' will be a lifestyle, productivity and student life blog. For some context, I'm a first year Marketing student at university, and thought it would be a great idea to start a blog to gain some experience. I really hope you enjoy my first post :)

We've all been there, especially if you're a student like me, when you wake up late, and then before you know it it's the evening and you haven't done a single productive thing all day, except scroll endlessly on your phone (I don't dare check my screen time). This has been basically my entire Winter break so far, but during exam season, I was great at time management and was getting so much done in a day. I thought I'd share how I planned my time effectively when I had a lot to do.

1. Plan your day the night before
You can do this anyway you prefer. Personally, writing a schedule works best for me rather than a to-do list, because I can dedicate different tasks to specific times to ensure I get everything done that I need to, whereas a to-do list can make you feel unorganised as it seems there's so much to do and too little time. If you set aside a certain amount of time for all your tasks, it will get done much quicker, and will motivate you to get it done within that time.

2. Plan time for yourself
This is important, as if your schedule just consists of non-stop work, you're never going to follow it. Be realistic and think about how much work you're realistically going to be able to do in a set amount of time. I found that as soon as I ran off schedule, I become demotivated to follow through with the schedule, and just end up abandoning it all together sometimes, so it's important that you plan breaks and give yourself enough time to finish all your tasks.

3. Wake up earlier
This is definitely something I want to do better, as if you wake up earlier, you get more done, and you can get out of the way some of the tasks you don't particularly want to do, and then have the evening for yourself. A lot of people work better in the morning, and it's worth a try to see if this is the case for you. As a night owl who does most of her work at night, this is always difficult for me, because I am not a morning person in the slightest.

4. Set yourself goals
These can be daily, weekly or as long as you feel necessary depending on how big the task is. You'll feel like your making progress if you can see yourself getting closer to your goal, whatever it might be. I like to set daily goals so if I don't meet every single goal I can carry it over to the next day, or make it a weekly goal instead. The key is to always be realistic, and I'll keep reinforcing this, because I made the mistake of being unrealistic a lot by setting myself too many tasks to do, and it made my time a lot less productive. Even if you only have one goal, you can relax after you've ticked it off.

5. Give yourself an incentive
Maybe its treating yourself to a takeout at the end of the day, or watching an episode of your favourite TV series, it's a good idea to have something to look forward to after you've finished everything you need to do that day. Otherwise, you'll keep putting off your tasks to do later, and you'll be stuck with a never ending list of things to do, with no time to relax! There should be a balance between tasks you need to do and time to yourself, or else you'll get overwhelmed with things to do. If possible, spread your tasks over multiple days so that there isn't so much to do in one day.

Are you a morning person or a night owl? Let me know in the comments!