Scheduling Your Day

Scheduling can be tough to do in high school. Trying to balance schoolwork, clubs, sports/music, work, and still have some free time and family time gets difficult. Today, I want to share how I schedule my week as a classically homeschooled high schooler.  

First, a planner 

Planners are super helpful in organizing your life. I’ve used a variety of different ones since fourth grade. Currently, I’m using one from Happy Planner, which I have really enjoyed. Every day has three boxes, so I use one for personal life (Bible study, email reminders, blogging reminders, etc.), one for schoolwork, and one for extracurriculars. Finding a planner that works for you is a necessary first step in scheduling everything you must do. A Google Calendar is also good for keeping track of class times and extracurriculars, as well as knowing when your family members are going to be busy and where they have to be during the day. 

Example week from my planner

Assignments 

The first thing I usually do when planning my day is to go through the assignments and classes I have. For instance, every Monday, I know I need to complete a math lesson, attend a Latin class, do my biology homework, watch a recorded video for English, read my government homework, and complete a programming lesson (you can read more about my classes for this year here). I write down all of this in the second box of my planner.

I also add additional things as I look through the assignments for that week. Maybe I have an essay for government that I need to write a paragraph for. Or maybe my English lesson was short so I can add an extra assignment now instead of saving it for a later day. Writing my homework down in my planner not only helps me visualize what I need to do, but it also helps me keep track of what I have already done.  

Extracurriculars 

The third box of my planner is for extracurriculars. Here, I write down the times for everything non-school related I have to do that day. For example, on Tuesdays, I have swim practice and work in the afternoon and evening. After work, almost every week I’ll have either a Junior Classical League meeting or an Austen House meeting with Wilson Hill Academy. These are my commitments each day, so it helps me to write them down in the morning so that I know what my day will look like after school. Most of the time, I get reminders for what to write down by looking at my digital family calendar, which has all my extracurriculars on it. 

Miscellaneous 

The top box of my planner is devoted to anything else I want to get done that day. These are usually things that aren’t directly related to school but also don’t have a time constraint. For example, I’ll write reminders to email a teacher here, to write a blog post, or to do my Bible study. This box is basically my to-do list for the day. I also have another to-do list attached to my planner that I use for anything I need to get done that week so that I can schedule it for a day when I have some time.  

To-do list in my planner

Know your priorities 

The reality is, that once you start scheduling, it’s easy to overschedule. You can get halfway through your day and realize you’ve only done a quarter of what you wanted to do. A good way to combat this is to write down everything you’d like to get done in your planner. Then, identify your priorities and do these first. For example, it might be nice to watch that optional video for your biology homework, but if you’re not really struggling with that concept, finishing your first of five math lessons for the week might be more important. So, write them both down, but complete them in order of importance. I tend to overschedule pretty frequently, but it’s less of a cause of stress if I complete the important assignments first and the optional ones later only if I have time.  

Scheduling your day can be tricky but having a strategy, knowing what you need to do and when, and recognizing your priorities can make for a less stressful week and a confident plan.