The Everygirl Tips To Planning Your Life and Maximizing Your Time

These are all things I learned from my former executive skills coach Jay Bacrania, and they have changed my life. I used to chronically procrastinate on not only my academics, but also mundane tasks like doing my laundry. When my mother came to pick me up at the end of my freshman year of college, I hadn't packed anything, I had piles upon piles of dirty laundry, and there was a paper for my creative writing class that I didn't finish until July (but that's a story for another time...don't worry it all worked out in the end. I graduated from Berklee Magna Cum Laude, so I learned from my mistakes!). This is just the tip of the iceberg. When I transferred colleges, my mother decided I should probably get some help with these issues. The amazing thing is that now organization, life hacking and maximizing my time have inadvertently become passions of mine. Hopefully these tips can help us all remain productive in spite of the challenges we face with this virus. Without further adieu, these are some things he taught me before I went to Williamstown that have been useful to me time and time again:

1) Plan your day. Have a spare notebook. Ask yourself what does planning my day look like? What NEEDS to get accomplished? (Note: this is different than what you WANT to accomplish. I recommend tackling the necessities first and then seeing how much time you have left over).

• For actors, I plan to eventually write a separate blog post on this, but I do have tricks that can help you determine things like which auditions to pursue

2) Where do I need to be? If you have to leave the house, you have to factor in time to get ready for the day, as well as transportation time. For example, if I'm going to a live audition, I'll give myself an hour to get ready, as opposed to my typical fifteen minutes.

3) Ask yourself: what is critical that I accomplish today and what is not critical? Try to keep it to the three critical things/day, particularly if the tasks are lengthy and physically or mentally draining

4) With that being said, you can jot down 2-5 things you'd like to do, but remember that only three should be critical

5) Keep a MASTER TO-DO LIST that includes anything that needs to be done in the long term.

6) Make a fresh page for your DAILY to-do list daily

7) Most importantly, write EVERYTHING down and plan your day DAILY

8) Review your day and move from today to the master to do list to determine what tasks might need to get done tomorrow

Finally, remember that doing these things means swimming against the current to a certain extent. But these things compound over time to result in excellence!