How Should Students Approach Weekend Planning?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - All right, what do we have next?

00:00:10.240 | - Okay, our next question is about weekend planning.

00:00:13.840 | - Weekend planning, okay.

00:00:16.040 | - Hi, Cal, my name is Lucia.

00:00:20.520 | I'm a law student from Spain.

00:00:22.480 | Thank you for your writing on your student advice.

00:00:25.000 | It has helped me a lot.

00:00:26.640 | My question is this,

00:00:28.040 | you recommend that people don't time block their weekends

00:00:30.520 | because it may lead to burnout.

00:00:32.360 | However, we students often need to work on weekends

00:00:35.080 | in order to live up to the study load.

00:00:37.360 | How do you recommend that we approach weekend planning?

00:00:40.720 | Thank you so much.

00:00:41.820 | - For a student, what I would rely on

00:00:46.720 | is my autopilot schedule philosophy,

00:00:51.320 | which is where you figure out all the work

00:00:54.580 | that regularly needs to be done,

00:00:57.100 | and you get the days and times

00:00:59.160 | in which that work is actually accomplished.

00:01:01.840 | So I always use whatever Thursday mornings

00:01:04.960 | is when I do the problem set that's due on Friday,

00:01:08.080 | and I do my lab write-up right after my lab on Monday.

00:01:11.080 | I have a two-hour window

00:01:12.120 | where I just stay in the science library right there,

00:01:13.960 | and I do the lab write-up that's due every week.

00:01:16.280 | And so you just have fixed on your schedule,

00:01:18.040 | here's the times when this work gets done,

00:01:19.760 | this work I know that always has to happen.

00:01:22.600 | So that gives you a realistic vision

00:01:24.180 | of how much do I really have to do,

00:01:27.640 | and where does it fit?

00:01:30.000 | And now if you're already filling that up,

00:01:32.280 | autopilot the weekends.

00:01:34.000 | So you might have autopilot things scheduled

00:01:35.840 | on the weekends, right?

00:01:36.880 | So I don't have to think about it,

00:01:38.320 | I'm working on the weekend,

00:01:40.440 | but I don't have to think about when or how I do it,

00:01:42.440 | this is just what I do on Sunday afternoon,

00:01:44.040 | this is what I do on Saturday morning.

00:01:45.440 | So when you're building your autopilot schedule as a student,

00:01:48.600 | feel free to just use the weekends as well.

00:01:51.480 | And this is different than time blocking.

00:01:53.200 | Autopilot scheduling is different than time blocking

00:01:55.100 | because you just get used to,

00:01:56.000 | I always do this work on this point.

00:01:57.540 | And that's very different than I'm wrangling a whole day,

00:02:01.020 | beat by beat what I'm doing,

00:02:02.460 | I have to keep turning my attention

00:02:03.500 | from one thing to another,

00:02:04.340 | a complicated intricate schedule

00:02:05.740 | where you're locked in until you're done.

00:02:07.940 | Now on the weekend, it's like, look,

00:02:09.040 | I do Sunday mornings and Saturday afternoons,

00:02:11.020 | I just always do that, I go to the library,

00:02:12.580 | I don't have to think about it,

00:02:13.700 | it's not gonna burn you out the same way.

00:02:15.060 | So you're right to note that students often

00:02:16.840 | do make use of the weekends,

00:02:18.300 | but let your autopilot schedule do a lot of that work.

00:02:22.660 | Now, what about the one-time things, papers and exams,

00:02:25.200 | studying for exams, writing papers?

00:02:27.680 | For that, what I used to recommend in my books on this,

00:02:31.240 | and also my writing on the Study Hacks blog,

00:02:33.880 | is that you are going to create a plan for prep

00:02:38.760 | and execution for these one-time big things

00:02:42.200 | at least a month in advance.

00:02:44.020 | And you figure out what really needs to be done

00:02:47.640 | to study for an exam,

00:02:49.040 | what is gonna be involved in writing this paper?

00:02:51.900 | And you get that work onto your calendar far in advance.

00:02:56.160 | And I would even suggest,

00:02:58.280 | when I used to talk about this to students,

00:02:59.600 | I would say at the beginning of every semester,

00:03:01.720 | go through your syllabus for each class,

00:03:03.460 | find a major one-time things,

00:03:05.040 | find the exams, find the papers,

00:03:08.160 | go back one month from each

00:03:09.760 | and put a note on your calendar that says,

00:03:11.240 | make a plan for this.

00:03:12.720 | So you do that at the beginning of the semester.

00:03:13.920 | Now, as you're going through your semester,

00:03:15.040 | executing your autopilot schedule, everything's fine,

00:03:18.280 | you're not time blocking every minute of your day,

00:03:19.680 | you're just executing the schedule

00:03:20.760 | that's the same every day, every week.

00:03:23.120 | And when you get to this note that says,

00:03:24.400 | hey, time to start thinking about the midterm,

00:03:27.280 | then you make a plan and you put that work on your calendar

00:03:30.920 | like doctor's appointments or other classes.

00:03:33.980 | And now you're back to just say, I'm executing.

00:03:35.680 | Autopilot schedule, oh, my autopilot schedule plus today,

00:03:38.840 | I have a block of time on my calendar, so let me do that.

00:03:41.360 | Oh, today I only have it Saturday,

00:03:42.920 | I have my Saturday afternoon

00:03:43.800 | where I always work on my CS problem set,

00:03:45.920 | but you know what?

00:03:46.740 | This Saturday I have a study session in the morning

00:03:49.920 | on my calendar because I have a midterm coming up,

00:03:52.320 | so let me just do that too.

00:03:53.680 | And when you're starting a month out

00:03:56.840 | and really spreading this stuff out,

00:03:58.120 | what you avoid is this thing is due on Monday,

00:04:01.040 | it's Saturday morning,

00:04:02.240 | I now have to work all day and all night

00:04:04.060 | and all day the next day and all day the next night

00:04:05.720 | to try to get something done

00:04:06.680 | because you're spreading work out.

00:04:07.720 | So you have plenty of breathing time,

00:04:08.860 | plenty of time to recharge.

00:04:10.260 | And it does not feel the same.

00:04:13.160 | An autopilot schedule augmented

00:04:14.880 | with these pre-planned sessions for papers and exams

00:04:17.000 | does not feel the same as let's say my situation

00:04:19.880 | where I will say, okay, I have eight hours I'm working today

00:04:22.480 | and I need to get everything out of those minutes.

00:04:24.800 | Let's go.

00:04:26.440 | Because as a student,

00:04:27.280 | you do not have that chronic overload issue

00:04:29.120 | of people are just piling work on you,

00:04:31.020 | you have more in your plate

00:04:31.860 | than you could ever imagine actually doing.

00:04:33.240 | No, you can actually wrap your arms

00:04:34.800 | around your work as a student.

00:04:35.800 | You autopilot schedule the regular stuff,

00:04:37.440 | you pre-plan the one-time stuff.

00:04:39.160 | If that's too crowded, get an easier schedule,

00:04:41.600 | make sure you don't have too many extracurriculars,

00:04:43.000 | you can control this.

00:04:44.440 | And it's not gonna be nearly as stressful

00:04:46.120 | as time-block planning,

00:04:47.000 | even if this work is happening on weekdays

00:04:49.500 | and weekends.

00:04:51.500 | The good news about that question,

00:04:56.840 | that caller we should say,

00:04:59.240 | is that she's thinking about this.

00:05:01.640 | That's the biggest issue with college kids in these issues

00:05:04.280 | and with student stress in college

00:05:06.040 | is that most students that are doing the traditional

00:05:09.760 | I'm 19 doing a four-year residential college,

00:05:12.020 | those type of students is they don't wanna hear it.

00:05:14.600 | I don't wanna hear study advice.

00:05:18.160 | It's gonna make me uncool or something like that.

00:05:20.420 | I'm fine, I can just do it.

00:05:22.220 | And it's so needlessly stressful and overwhelming.

00:05:27.220 | College, if you do it right,

00:05:29.260 | if you keep your schedule reasonable

00:05:31.380 | and don't do the 70 extracurricular nonsense

00:05:34.060 | and don't do the triple major nonsense

00:05:35.660 | and you autopilot schedule and pre-plan your exams

00:05:37.580 | and papers, you don't have to work at night.

00:05:40.220 | And you rarely have a busy day.

00:05:42.780 | It's not that much work.

00:05:43.860 | It all changes when you get out there in the real world

00:05:45.820 | if you follow and have an ambitious, difficult job.

00:05:48.800 | So it doesn't have to be that hard.

00:05:49.720 | But the main thing is thinking,

00:05:51.380 | I'm actually going to be systematic

00:05:54.320 | about how I approach my job as a student.

00:05:55.920 | That's the zero to one binary for college life

00:05:57.940 | that makes all the difference.

00:05:59.960 | (upbeat music)

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How Should Students Approach Weekend Planning?

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