🌱 Prioritizing the Things that Matter Most

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Reflection on how I’ve lost my routine

For the last few months I’ve gone from being dual-focused between side hustles and college, to being fully focused on college.

It’s kind of the opposite that I wanted to happen, since I’m planning on graduating in March. I was thinking that I could focus less on college as the days got closer to graduation so that the reality of not having college in my routine wouldn’t hit me with brute force.

Yet, having planned out ahead of time what courses to get done at what time and then actually doing it, I felt myself rushing more than usual.

Suddenly I was taking from 1–5 PM to do college exams instead of time blocking every hour for a different task, only to find myself a whole month ahead of schedule when I realized that my college didn’t do proctored exams anymore (which takes 2 weeks each just to process in their system, leading me to plan those 4 weeks for free time).

From rushed to suddenly excited, thinking, Wow I’m ahead of schedule! I decided to push myself to finish the rest of my 3rd semester instead of re-planning how to fill the next month.

Even though everything else slid on the sidelines (is that the phrase?), I don’t regret it.

Why?

Not only am I ahead of schedule, but rushing now helps me to get done my college studies by March, not my original plan of finishing by June.

So what ended up mattering most?

Well, despite:

• Having tasks to do on my side-hustles
• Not posting on Medium as regularly
• Being fully-focused on one thing

I’m feeling pretty good.

Even though I love to do different tasks during the day, setting myself up to finish early feels more productive… at least during this time frame in college.

Have you planned something ahead only to have it change for the better? Or if you had a bad experience in planning ahead, what strategies helped you do better?