1) Write a to-do list for everything you have to do.

Start off by writing everything from your head in a piece of paper. From watching Season 6 of your favorite show to revising for that exam to doing all your chores, just write whatever worry or task you have to accomplish. Do not worry about how it looks or whichever order it is in.

    2) Make a key with highlighters or colored pens.

Take four different colored pens or highlighters and make a small key. For example, I can take a pink, yellow, orange and a green highlighter. Then you assign each color to a specific deadline. For instance, I make pink the deadline for ‘today’, yellow for ‘tomorrow/within a few days’, orange for ‘by end of this week’, and green for ‘2 weeks or more’. This will allow you to have a visual outline of each task deadline.

    3)    Highlight/underline each task according to its due date.

This is the most important part. You have to now prioritize and see every single task, check its deadline, and continue along the list. For me, if I have homework due tomorrow, that is definitely more important than going out shopping to buy some new pair of trainers. Go through and highlight, and you shall see everything come into place.

    4)    Write the to-do list for today.

After you have highlighted, see which are due today and tomorrow. Take a separate piece of paper and write down your to-do list for today. By your visual outline, you should easily be able to spot which tasks you have to do today and by tomorrow. This will allow you to not be overwhelmed.

   5)   Set the other tasks for future dates on a calendar.

All the other tasks should be put on a monthly calendar or a weekly calendar. This will allow you to visualize your upcoming tasks and you will feel like you have dealt with every task. You can then bin the piece of paper with all the tasks you had to do or simply keep it somewhere.

I hope this article helps you to feel a bit more organized and productive. It’s important to deal with this and know exactly what you will do before starting. Check out my other articles too:

Why You Must Journal Everyday

9 Tips For Everlasting Motivation

Thank you for reading, and have a lovely day.

• It gives you a moment to reflect on what you did on a day.

Sometimes stress can be overloaded, when we think that we have not done enough in a day or if we are not grateful enough for what we have done. Therefore, taking the time to reflect on all the amazing people we have met, things that we have accomplished and experiences that we have experienced can help us to feel grateful for all that we have and realise our own purposes in life. It has also been proven to help people with depression, anxiety and stress.

• It helps you to be consistent.

One of the habits that many people lack is consistency. Whether it’s packing your backpack the night before or making a to-do list, we all slack off sometimes or are not bothered to do it. Therefore, we fail to be consistent at that particular task. Journaling can teach you to be consistent because it compels you to spend at least 5 minutes everyday to open up that journal and write down your thoughts and key events of that day. Therefore, it teaches you the fundamental skill of consistency and can help you to be consistent at other aspects of your life.

• It teaches you the skill of summarisation.

In some days, you may not have enough time to write down all your thoughts. On those specific days, you would have to summarise. It can be in a few lines and you can use this skill in many other places such as writing or telling your thoughts in a recent movie or book that you have watched in a few sentences. This is because journaling is your choice and you can write as much as you want.

• It compels you to accomplish many tasks in a day.

We all feel good when we accomplish many tasks and writing it down or telling someone makes us feel even better. When we make to-do lists, we tick off every task we complete and it makes us feel happy and fulfilled. Consequently, you want to accomplish more when you start journaling so you have more to write down, more to reflect on and more to feel proud on.

• It will help to bring back old memories.

If you keep this journal for the next few years, you will one day find it and start reading it. It will bring back old memories just like it did to me when I was 8 years old. Whether it’s happy, sad or embarrasing moments back then, you will be able to laugh and relive those moments again.

I hope this article has inspired or motivated you to start journaling. If this article has helped you, please share it with your family and friends. If you are also new here, follow my Instagram account valuable.seconds for amazing poetry and photography content. Stay tuned for more articles.