Why do I hardly ever follow through on my plans?
Yes, study planning is necessary! But many of us think that careful study planning makes little sense. No matter how much effort (and minutes) we put in, we rarely move forward as planned. It seems that we waste our time due to unforeseen events.
In addition, we make decisions on the fly that alter our entire purpose, we misjudge the time needed, we underestimate the difficulties, we get tired, we get discouraged or simply reality destroys our plans. On the day we feel that we have enough strength to meet our goals, an unexpected visitor arrives, we get a cold or our boyfriend leaves us. When things are like this, what is the point of planning tasks in a concrete and careful way? Wouldn’t it be better to start studying as soon as possible and progress as we can and as far as we can? If you ask yourself these questions, you probably suffer from frustrated planning syndrome (don’t panic, I just made it up), one of the typical diseases of poor time management.
But study planning is necessary
As each person is different, what we are going to propose may not be the right thing for everyone, but it will be a good guide for the vast majority. Studying must be planned correctly, although it is very frequent that the plan is not carried out exactly, because reality and our expectations are very different. The more we plan, the more we become aware of this difference and work to reduce it (although frequently the plan is not carried out exactly as we had planned).
Planning is done to prepare our actions, focus our efforts, and fix our relationship with time. This activity prevents us from making impulsive decisions on the fly, helps us stay on track, and helps us know when we are straying. Without planning, our awareness of time weakens. Like it or not, time is a limited resource and each task requires adequate time to be completed. The time each task is worth depends not only on the task itself but also on the other tasks with which it competes. Generally, we prefer to dedicate more time to what we most like to do, without attending to the subject that really needs it. For this reason alone, it should be based on a reasoned purpose: this is planning.
Greater efficiency, less stress
When we achieve a good study plan and have established order, we will more than recover the time invested in planning. We will not have to decide on the fly what task to dedicate ourselves to. Deciding our goals in advance is always positive, and allows us to take control of our time as a resource.
When we plan ahead, our stress can be focused on carrying out the plan, which generates efficiency. Instead, without planning, we will advance with uncertainty towards an unknown place that depends on a decision that we will make later. What will I do afterward and for how long? Will I finish all the things that I have to do? This occurs when we give up considering the whole scope of our study plan with care and leave it for the future. Planning involves making decisions, and this can overwhelm the greatest perfectionists, but not making them adds the burden of going at it without a clear perspective.
On the other hand, when we plan we can judge how well we have been advancing and whether we have achieved our goals. Otherwise, this is more difficult to know, but not because things have been done better, but because we deceive ourselves with our ignorance. Order is necessary when you want to be efficient, save time and avoid procrastination. It’s about managing your time better.
An app that helps you plan: Studeam
We can conclude that the effort it takes to plan is profitable and necessary and that the alternative is simply not a good idea. If you are lazy when you plan, or you are one of those who decide to start as soon as possible, try our STUDEAM application. It is designed so that the heaviest and most boring part of planning is automatically solved by an intelligent program. There will no longer be excuses because the time it takes to have an objective planning exercise will be reduced to the time it takes to enter the tasks you have to do. Forget about making several decisions that, deep down, are repetitive and focus on executing the plan.
Personally, I do not like calendars and I am too lazy to organize myself well. Calendars do not seem practical to me because they are designed to record events, rather than to plan. I recognize that impulsivity and my preferences play tricks on me when I calculate the times and decide the plan for each working period. I need to stop procrastination. For this reason, Task & Time has fought to create a calendar that automatically plans study and homework. Studeam is the smart app to plan dynamically and without excuses, and thus improve your time management. You can take a look at it in this tutorial. Technology cannot save us the effort of discipline, but it can facilitate the cure for the “frustrated planning syndrome”.
Luis Javier Álvarez Garrido
CEO en Task & Time
