Stop trying to pack every minute of your day full!

The old advice of “do things faster so you can do more” is a big thumbs down. You weren’t born so you could pack your days full of work and chores!

Instead, when you focus on doing less of what doesn’t bring you value, and yes, making work and chores more efficient, you free up time to do all the things. All what things? The things you love. The things you want!

If you need permission to give yourself some free time, here it is.

* insert permission here *

Give yourself the space to schedule free time for whatever you actually want to do. It’s YOUR time. YOU make the rules. Work when you need to, play when you want to, and stop feeling guilty for enjoying your life.

Take control of your time this term:

  August 29th - You don't have to pack your days full

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Striving for high-quality work IS important. BUT…

Spending hours perfecting one section of an assignment while other parts go unpolished, or getting too locked in to one assignment and neglecting another, isn’t productive.

Despite all your hard work, in the end, you don’t win.

A more useful strategy is to understand what is “good enough” and set that as your goal.

Knowing what’s “good enough” lets you:

• meet all the requirements of your assignments, across the board

• keep your work consistent and complete

• finish on time without unnecessary stress

When you strive for “good enough,” you ensure your projects are evenly complete and avoid burning precious time and energy on unrewarded perfectionism.

Not to mention the hits from consistently completing tasks. Ding! Done! Dopamine!

Good enough gets things done:

  August 28th - Decide what's "good enough"

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Being an adult means making decisions. All. The. Time. Including menial things like what to eat, every day, for the rest of your life.

Reduce some of the stress of decision making by deciding things like this in advance.

When you’re right in front of a choice - what to eat, which class to take, which club to join - it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Not only are you feeling the pressure to pick, it’s made worse when you’re tired, hungry, and dwelling on other things.

Whenever possible, make decisions like this in advance.

• taco Tuesday, pizza Friday, oatmeal for breakfast until it runs out

• next semester, I’ll pick available classes in this order _____

• I’ll say no if I can’t make the meetings or it’s unrelated to my major

If the circumstances change, you can, of course, change your mind. But by making decisions when you’re not in-the-moment and emotionally invested, you will learn to trust your choices and move forward confidently.

Learn to make stress-free decisions quickly:

  August 27th - Reduce decision fatigue

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School can feel like a constant rush — assignments, exams, club meetings, and social events all competing for your attention.

But not everything that feels urgent is actually important. Not everything with an impending deadline has high value in your life.

Urgent tasks demand immediate attention (like a paper due tomorrow).
Important tasks move you closer to your long-term goals (like prepping for next week’s exam or planning your study schedule).

Learning to tell the difference can save you stress, help you focus, and allow you to get more done with less panic.

Do you know the difference?

  August 26th - Urgent vs important

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