Before this semester started, I was a little nervous to see how it would go. I could imagine and plan as much as I wanted but I wouldn't know what it would actually look like until I got into it. However, my plan has pretty much panned out completely so far.
There are 168 hours in a week.
This is what mine looks like.
I am taking 19 credit hours in school, I work 15-20 hours a week, I practice 4 hours a week, I walk someone's dog twice a week for a little extra cash, I volunteer 4+ hours a week, and then whatever homework/studying and working out that I can get in. On top of that, I try to get about 8 hours of sleep a night. That's 106 hours a week that I have blocked off.
As intimidating as this sounds, I was ready for it. I spent July in Nevada, which, if you haven't read my blog post on that I recommend it. It's one of my favorites. Anyway, that whole month I was busy all day everyday, and I loved it. So, when I was getting ready for this semester to begin I was excited about having a plan for every day. However, the one thing I was afraid of was burning out. Because everything is repetitive and the same every week, I knew there would come a time when I would get tired of doing the same thing every week. I knew I was going to have to change things up every now and then.
My variation comes when I workout and when I do my homework or study. I try to change the place that I do my work. I'll either go downstairs and hang out with my neighbors and do it, get together at a friend's house, go to work and just hang out, stay in my room, or go out in my living room. I find that this helps trick my brain into thinking that I'm not doing the same thing I just did the other day.
As for working out, I try to switch between running and lifting. I usually go lift with one of my friends at the gym about three times a week. We switch between arm and leg days, as well as try to switch up what kind of exercises we're doing. And then on days that I'm not going to lift, weather permitting, I will go for a run. When I go for a run, I try to change my course. I'll either go on campus, around my apartment complex, or go to the track in the rec center.
Burnout is something that can be easily brought on by a repetitive schedule that hardly changes. It's important to change things up where you can so that you don't reach burnout quite as fast. I could already tell by the second or third week of school that I was going to burnout very quickly if I did not find something to switch up every now and then. My variables were studying and working out. Yours could be when you work, how many hours you work, when or where you do homework, etc. You just have to find your variables and find a way to switch them up.
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