Eating Your Break Week Cake and Having it Too

One glorious week–no classes! No labs! No seminars! No papers due! No quizzes! 

Last week was your week for setting up to get the most from this week before the final crunch to the end of term. What’s left to do now is to confirm how you’re going to put your plan in place.

What works for most students is pretty straightforward:

• Starting tonight, each night this week review your schedule and name the next day’s single top priority to get done in each category (academic, social/family, work, physical/mental).
• Each day, tackle the academic priority first while you are fresh. (Hint: Start with a small academic task that you look forward to doing before tackling your challenge priority.)
• Check it off when it’s done. Take a reward break, even if it’s only a five-minute stretch.
• Then one by one, check off the other priorities as you get them done. Phone home? Check! Go for a run? Check! ZOOM buddies? Check! Lazy-massage partner? Check! Binge watch old animated series? Check! Unscheduled lazy couch time? Check!
• At the end of each day, endorse yourself with positive self-talk for all the checks.
• Reprioritize what didn’t get done–if it didn’t really need to get done, let it go. If it needs to get done, reschedule it, and endorse yourself for letting go and for rescheduling. Got the day review done? Check!

Repeat five to seven times? Check!  That gets you through a guilt-free, ahead-of-the-game, properly self-indulgent break week!

Let me know how it’s going, how you got creative, what worked and what didn’t work! See you next week, [email protected]