#overplanning

why i do i make to do lists that long? i really need to work on prioritization, but oh well. any who, i hope you have an amazing three day weekend if you have one! :)

Platforms to Use

A great online option is Google Calendar -- you can add in repeating events so each week is the same, and make different events in different colours!

If you just want to print it and use as a reference, I recommend using Excel (or another spreadsheet program, like on Google Docs)! -- just put the days of the week across the top, and the time intervals of your choice down the side! 

You can also do it by hand by using printables like these. There are lots more out there, these are just some favourites!!

@emmastudies​ -- printable here

@theorganisedstudent​ -- printable here

What to Include

Start with your classes, labs, tutorials, etc. These are obviously the core of your weekly schedule, and you won’t be able to do anything else during those times.

Next, add in times that you will be at work, volunteering, at club meetings, etc. These should be times that remain the same every week.

Tip: If you don’t have a set schedule at your job, just put your availability at work into your weekly schedule

Then, add in things you do weekly that could be subject to change if needed. For me, this is going to the gym (and also showering, lmao). But things like a regular weekly movie night with friends, doing laundry and cleaning, or a study group would also apply.

The leftover space represents your study or leisure time! You should have quite a bit leftover in a day, because that is your only time to study.  I prefer to stop there with my weekly schedule, so I have some blank space to visualize my study time.

I have a post here with more detail on how to prioritize commitments to make sure you have enough time in a day to study and sleep. 

This is what my weekly schedule looks like, made in Excel: 

Overscheduling

Some people prefer to schedule exactly when they will study for each class on an hourly basis, but I don’t recommend that unless you know it works for you! 

I have two reasons for not liking to schedule my studying hour by hour: 

I find that having my days scheduled from morning to night stresses me out a lot. It makes me feel like I don’t have control over what I get to do in a day and makes me feel like my life is super monotonous.

I am a perfectionist, and if I schedule something to be done from 10:30 to 11:30 and don’t get it done in time, I end up feeling really bad about myself for not “sticking to the schedule.” In reality, the schedule might just be too demanding!

Instead, I recommend making a to-do list for each day and fitting the tasks in the time you know you have leftover.

I have a more detailed post about how overplanning leads to procrastination here.

Schedule without Overdoing It

If you aren’t adding in every daily task on your schedule, what was the point of making it??

I have my weekly schedule at my desk to look at when I am doing the rest of my weekly planning in my planner.

It helps you visualize which days you have a lot going on, vs. when you have a lot of free time to study.

It also helps me when making appointments or plans with friends because I can glance up and know exactly when I am automatically busy. 

Overplanning Your Novel

I got stuck in a rut like that myself last year. See, my problem has always been that I didn’t plan enough, and I’d get halfway through my draft and have no idea where I was going. So I started planning, and I kept planning, and planning, terrified that if I didn’t have a solid plan before I started writing, I would wind up in the same boat I was before. But it was getting more difficult to visualize the complete story with nothing but detailed scene notes and fantasies of what crucial plot points would look like. I was lamenting my frustrations to a writing friend one day, and she offered me a wise suggestion. Why don’t you just start writing it anyway?

This can be overwhelming advice. Especially when we writers have a penchant for ignoring one of the most crucial parts of the outline - the beginning. Where does the story start? What is my character doing? Is the villain already after her, and if so, how do I show that? How much do I explain? How can I “start writing,” if I don’t even know how or where to start?

Not to mention, that first scene in some ways is supporting the entire story. Because without a good first scene, the rest doesn’t really matter. That first scene leaves an impression, and it’s often the reason some readers stop or continue a book. 

I don’t say all this to put extra pressure on anyone. I’m just saying that we’ve all been there with that first scene, and it can often stop us from ever moving forward. 

So when she told me I should just start writing anyway, I looked at my outline. And yes, it had holes, and yes the climax was kind of fuzzy, and hell yes the backstory wasn’t completely clear. But when I read through what I had, I realized I actually did have several consecutive scenes that made up a fairly big chunk of the novel. I may not have known exactly what led to this chunk of scenes, or even what came after, but I estimated that I probably had a month’s worth of writing material to keep me occupied. 

I picked a scene in the middle of my outline, and I wrote it. When that scene was finished, I continued to the next scene, and so on. If I had no idea what the next scene would be, or if I was simply frustrated with it, I’d consult my outline, find a new scene, and jump to it. 

That’s the beauty of having any kind of outline - you no longer have to write in order. The outline helps your brain understand approximately where these scenes will go in the finished product, and, when applicable, what scenes will come in between two scenes that you’re currently writing.  

And somehow it kind of worked, which surprised me. I spent the entirety of NaNoWriMo writing random scenes from my novel, completely out of order, and those written scenes acted like magical story cement, filling in many of the cracks and holes in my plot. The backstory tightened up to accommodate plot twists I hadn’t planned until I was writing them, and as I spent more time with the characters, my excitement for the climax grew, and I felt more invested in working it out. And most importantly, that opening scene started to become clearer.

In conclusion…

After that self indulgent speech, let me bring it all together for you. Planning is great. Planning helps our project grow and evolve. It helps us understand where it’s going and why we’re writing it. Without a good plan in place, our writing can be aimless and wandering, and the story might never reach a logical and cohesive conclusion. And yet..

Writing is also great. Writing helps our project grow and evolve. It helps us understand where it’s going and why we’re writing it. Without writing, our plan is just a plan, and it will never become a story. 

If you’re concerned that you’re over planning, stop yourself. Right now. Look at what you have. Count how many detailed scenes you have figured out, and then estimate how long it might take you to write them all. A week? A month? Two months? Give yourself a deadline, and then work on writing those scenes before your deadline. I promise you, you will end up with at least one scene that wasn’t in the outline. And sometimes one scene is enough to completely change your thinking and affect the way you move forward with your planning. 

And of course, once you hit that deadline, take a moment to refresh. Update your outline, tidy it up, delete scenes, add scenes, and then go from there. Hopefully the time you spent writing will leave you in a much more optimistic place than you are right now. 

Good luck!

-Rebekah

I choose to do this,

Choose what to do,

What to take on.

Still I struggle,

Forget my limits,

Forget time to breathe.

Life gets busy

I forget it was my choice,

My decisions in planning.

Too busy to relax.

But I chose this.

Being busy was my choice,

Excitement, interest,

Curiousity to experience