You feel lazy. You know you need to change, but you can’t seem to alter your habits. You sleep in too late on the weekends. You stay up too late during the week. You nap too long in the middle of the day. You put off big projects until the day before. And the list could go on and on.

Changing bad habits takes time and lots of work. Consider how hard you’ve had to work in the past to change small habits, like wearing a face mask to classes. 

If I asked you one year ago if you would wear a face mask to help mitigate the spread of a deadly virus, my guess is you wouldn’t even have hesitated to say yes. Now, however, living your life in a face mask you might feel differently. This seemingly small habit has taken months to get to used to (and you might still not feel used to it).

Conquering bad habits requires you to get to the root of the problem. If you’re struggling with laziness, the real problem probably isn’t simply laziness. You may be struggling with motivation. (Something I talked about in another post.) Or you may be struggling with another key area.

Freshman, if you’re feeling lazy (but not due to being unmotivated), you’re likely struggling with getting organized. This post includes 3 simple tips that can help you get back on track!

Put all of your assignments in one place.

A colleague who has both taught and instructed college students for 15+ years shared this with me. Years ago, this teacher decided to track the grades of students who regularly used a planner with the grades of students who did not. The grades between these two groups differed by approximately 2 letter grades.

As a college instructor myself, I’ve had countless conversations with students who repeatedly claim that they’ve found a better system than a paper or digital planner. Their grades, however, don’t prove their other methods work. 

If you don’t like planners, I want to challenge you personally: give a planner a real try. I mean it. You can protest all you want, but until you actually try using a planner for a month to a semester, you won’t really know if it works. 

Here are a few keys to making a planner actually work for you:

• Be sure your planner has room to enter each assignment. Some planners don’t really give you enough space to type or write in more text than a few lines. These kinds of planners likely will make it harder to keep track of assignments.

• Be sure your planner has a weekly and a monthly overview. Being able to see what’s due in the next few days is important, but probably even more helpful is the ability to see what’s due in the next several weeks. A monthly overview allows you to be able to look ahead and plan accordingly.

• Be sure your planner is easy to reference. Both digital and paper planners are not much of a help if you can’t quickly find the information you need. Be sure the planner you choose is easy to use.

• Be sure your planner fits you. This is key! Knowing how you learn best, you need to pick a planner that will help you be a success. If you know that writing really helps you learn, get a planner that allows you to write by hand. If you know that order and formatting helps you focus, get a planner that is easy to keep neat and orderly. “Know thyself,” then choose a planner accordingly.

Create an overview of a typical week.

I sat down with a student this week who told me, “I’m struggling with motivation. Do you have any advice for me?” I responded with a question: how do you keep track of your assignments? 

This student did use some sort of planner, so then I added this question: do you have a picture/idea of what a typical week looks like for you? The student wasn’t sure what I was asking but replied with a hesitant no. 

I’ll tell you what I told this student. This method was the only reason I survived 6 years of undergraduate and graduate college. So let me explain what getting a picture of a typical week looks like:

1. Download or copy your class schedule. Create a table in Word or Excel. Make a column for each day of the week. Make rows that correspond with every hour of the day you are awake (e.g. start at 6 a.m. and end at 1 a.m.).

2. Enter in all your required activities. Block out the parts of the table that you are required to be in classes, in other required activities, or at work. Label them. Even color code them. Do whatever it takes to indicate that these aren’t flexible parts of your day, because you are required to be somewhere.

3. Enter in your meal and sleeping schedule. You need to eat and sleep every day. Make this a priority. Put it in your schedule. 

4. Look at all the hours left open. You probably have more time in your schedule than you feel like you do. By seeing all of the open spots on this schedule, you can see how getting all your coursework done is possible. 

5. Block out time for homework in specific classes. If you know that your English class homework takes around three hours every week, find three hours in your weekly schedule to work on English. (Don’t schedule three hours of English homework in a row as that will not help you get good work done—read this post for why this is true.) Do this with every class. (You can always adjust later if you find you need more or less time for classes.)

6. Plan for social time. You read that correctly. Relationships are important, but you can’t build relationships if you aren’t spending any time with people. Plan to spend time with people throughout your day. If your schedule is particularly tight, plan to grab lunch or study with a friend.

**For an example of how chart this could look like, see the chart included in this post.

Having a picture of a typical week helps you think ahead. If a friend texts you and asks if you want to hang out, you can look at your chart and see that you planned to spend time with friends later in the day. If you move your current task to later in the day, you can substitute the two tasks and still get everything done.

Plan for downtime.

You can’t keep pushing with no breaks. Your body wasn’t made to work 24/7. If you want good grades and good health, you need to make plans for having downtime.

How does planning for downtime look like? On a daily basis, it means incorporating the Pomodoro technique. So what is the Pomodoro technique? As explained in a past post…

This “technique [starts by making] a list of the tasks you need to accomplish. [Then] set a timer, giving yourself only 25 minutes to accomplish each task. During this time, do not allow anything to interrupt your work. After the timer rings, put a checkmark next to that task on your to-do list. Then take a short break, lasting 5 minutes or less. You can repeat this process up to 4 times, but after the fourth time take a longer break (20-30 minutes).”

This simple practice helps you add small breaks to your schedule. As a great side benefit, you will probably find yourself feeling more focused and less stressed.

Planning for downtime though needs to also happen on a bigger scale (not just during your day-to-day schedule). On a weekly basis, you need to plan for longer breaks. This means setting aside a few hours to do something that helps you relax and recharge. These activities could include:

• Taking a nap

• Going on a hike

• Eating a meal off-campus with friends

• Going to a coffeeshop with a journal or sketchbook

• Watching a movie

The key to taking good breaks is setting good boundaries. Determine when you are on a break, you are on a break. This means you don’t do schoolwork. This means you unplug from your student email. This means you say no to good college opportunities (e.g. study sessions). 

Once your break is over, get back into school mode. Be strict about keeping your breaks to their allotted amount of time. Don’t let yourself slack off the rest of the day.

Your laziness isn’t probably laziness but rather lack of organization in disguise. You can get caught up. You can fix bad habits. But none of these things will happen without commitment to changing your behavior. Determine you’re going to get organized. You can get back on track!