The Weekly Grind

It’s useful. It’s beautiful. It’s magical.

If your personality is anything like my overachieving self, you’re most likely scrambling (like I always am) to meet deadlines, go to meetings, email people, do homework, prepare for exams, attend rehearsals, make time for concerts, and plan to take on more things, while attempting to remember meals and sleep.

Well, my fellow Mount Holyoke women, there exists this one sheet of paper that miraculously saves you from mental implosions! While handy-dandy planners are always a must, there’s always something that goes wrong in the tiny space allotted for each day, because let’s face it: you’re most likely doing more things in a day than those measly eight lines!

Ladies (and however otherwise you choose to identify yourself), I present to you the Weekly Grind.

I’ve had numerous people come up to me and ask me how I manage my involvement in my extra-curriculars, and every single time I pull out this sheet of paper (which is essentially my life) and offer to send them the link to print some for themselves.

Courtesy of Katherine Wasserman, a graduate student at Mount Holyoke who led a Time Management 101 workshop at the beginning of the semester, the Weekly Grind (as you most likely can see) plans out your days of the week by the hour, starting at the ungodly hour of 7am. My darling own schedule doesn’t begin its color-coded events until 11am (see below for my example of a filled-in schedule), but if you’re an early riser that seems pretty reasonable. You can put in your courses (try highlighting in assignments due in class or upcoming quizzes), your rehearsals, your work, your professors’ office hours that you plan on attending, those deadlines, org meetings, special talks by various visitors, as well as some fun events such as a trip to Northampton or that upcoming Sakhioba concert.

Now that your page is relatively colorful (and colorcoding saves lives!) you realize that the clutter in your mind is really not that bad. You’ve got some little blocks of time in between your commitments (I never realized how free my Mondays actually were until I started making these!) to grab food and complete a couple pages of that reading, and it’s easier to prioritize now that deadlines are staring back at you.

If I could draw your attention to the bottom of the spreadsheet, you can see the little to-do section that runs throughout the week. Personally, I put down my to-do list for the week in the first box in order of importance, and move what I don’t finish down the week. This way you can see your productivity in comparison to how much you need to do. If you’re not a nighttime person like I am, put down the tasks in the free spaces in your schedule so you don’t panic when you finally get to the bottom of your day and see that you forgot to do this at this time. Errands, emails to send, laundry – it can all go into one place!

For such simple little boxes, the Weekly Grind performs extraordinarily well for me in sorting out my life. I can tackle three to four articles a week, countless hours in Pratt Hall, dining services, and homework assignments without skipping any meals or pulling all-nighters (well, until exam time I presume). The best part is that you can do this while you procrastinate that essay, without being completely unproductive!

So, Mount Holyoke women. Go forth. Push yourselves. Do everything.

Happy planning!