Living but Not Dying by My Calendar
By Hannah, a Writing Coach
I am entirely dependent on my calendar — and yet, some weeks, I get stressed out every time I look at it.
I love keeping diligent track of my events and obligations in a color-coded, perfectly documented view of my week. I know when I’m free, when I’m not, and what days I’ll be able to make it to Lenoir for Med Deli before the lunch rush. But usually, my calendar shows that I’m far busier than I would like to be, and it often contributes to me feeling overwhelmed, rather than helping to alleviate that feeling. In this blog post, I’m going to explain how I use my calendar to both keep track of my chaotic life and make sure it doesn’t get to be too draining — and, at the end of the day, how I learned to let go of the calendar when it makes sense to.
I 💜 Planning
Maybe it’s just a sign of my perpetual reliance on my calendar, but if I have an event or obligation that doesn’t go in it, I can guarantee that I’m going to forget about it. My chaotic college-student life is too complicated to hold in my brain all at once, and honestly, it’s really satisfying to see my week laid out for me on one page.
The only fault of my Apple calendar as a planning tool is that there’s not a good spot for my to-do list — but I can make do with a scheduled block of time on Wednesday morning, say, to catch up on my reading. That colored calendar block, innocuous as it may seem, makes that reading much more likely to actually occur. (And I’ve also found that bribing myself with caffeine by scheduling study sessions at Panera or Dunkin’ is also an effective motivational tool.)
But like I said, and like most of us on this campus — whether you’re an undergrad, grad, professor or staff member — the calendar usually shows that I’m busy. Too busy.
This isn’t to say that I’m not grateful for all the things I get to do every week. I love working with students at The Writing and Learning Center as a writing coach. I love going to dance rehearsals and learning new routines to perform at the end of the semester. I even (usually) enjoy the writing, reporting and interviewing that I do for my journalism classes and for my internship.
I know that I do too many things, but I genuinely enjoy all of them (or find them necessary) enough to justify keeping them on my schedule. But sometimes, my tendency to schedule my weeks so rigidly means that I feel like I’m just going from obligation to obligation all day long before collapsing into bed the second I get back to my apartment. Just looking at my calendar can feel overwhelming. I can find myself dreading the slog of things I should be looking forward to because it’s just too much all at once. But with a lot on my plate, what’s a girl to do except stay up late finishing homework or skipping lunch with friends because I’m just too busy?
Using my calendar for good
Here are some things I’ve found that help me use my calendar to my advantage, rather than just contributing to my feelings of being overwhelmed.
1. Don’t only schedule the boring stuff.
When I don’t have anything in my week to look forward to, that’s when I really start to feel a sense of burnout creeping in. So, to combat that, I always make sure there’s something fun on my schedule. For me, that usually looks like relaxing in a yoga class or at dance rehearsal, meeting up with a friend for lunch, or cheering on the Tar Heels at a miscellaneous UNC sporting event. Those things go on my calendar — in pink, my favorite color.
But sometimes, especially in my busiest weeks, I don’t want another event to go to, even if it’s a fun one. When I get to that point, it becomes even more important to make sure I get some downtime — ideally, downtime that requires no brainpower, which brings me to my next point:
2. Schedule some rest, too.
Whether it’s scheduling time to catch up on my latest cheesy romance novel, a designated hour to get Chick-Fil-A and mindlessly scroll on Instagram, or just heading home to take a nap, sometimes I need to turn my brain off in the middle of a long day. It was a big moment for me to figure out that being intentional about downtime during the week made me a lot less stressed and a lot more enthusiastic about my life.
When I was intentional about scheduling my rest before I felt like I was drowning in my commitments, I never really got to the point of drowning at all. When I planned to use my couple of hours between classes to relax, or when I assumed I would go straight to sleep after a late meeting — and actually did it — I felt way more capable of taking on my busiest weeks. While it might not have been any easier to pry myself out of the warm blankets when my alarm went off, I didn’t dread my full day ahead. And by including it in the plan, I wasn’t just abandoning the rest of my schedule. I was making rest an important priority and avoiding the burnout that led to my exhaustion in the first place.
3. At the end of the day, the calendar isn’t everything.
For whatever reason, physically scheduling time in my day for Netflix, social media, or just a whole lot of nothing made me feel a little better about taking time for myself when I felt like I couldn’t.
But I’ve also learned that it’s a matter of listening to myself and giving myself the space to breathe when I need it. Although it might feel like it in the moment, my head isn’t going to explode if my midafternoon homework time gets taken up by a last-minute meeting. And the world isn’t going to collapse if I go to my apartment in the middle of the day instead of staying on campus like I planned, especially if I’m exhausted.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m still dependent on my calendar. But learning to take changes as they come was a key part of sitting back, settling down and not getting bogged down by everything on my plate.
Sometimes, I just have to take a breath. No calendar needed.