The most PRODUCTIVE study days in my life 📚 | 6:00am days, weekly calendar, cafe studying, meal prep

Here is my Ouija planner for the week. It is so early and so cold outside. It is like negative 10 degrees. It is the first day of school today. This is my really desperate attempt to reset my sleep schedule. My skin is so dry because I'm going back to visit my family over the holidays. So I literally just brought like one moisturizer with me as my skincare. I feel like I've been so sluggish over the holidays because I've been waking up at like 10 a.m every single day and then sleeping at 2 or 3 in the morning which has destroyed my sleep schedule. So first day back at school, I definitely need to fix up my sleep schedule. I woke up extra early this morning as well because I've been putting off work for so long. I've been like neglecting my emails. I haven't been checking my work status on anything, which is healthy like mentally it's fine. But that also means that I have things to catch up on that I didn't get to do last year. I guess it's been one of the differences between undergrad and PhD that I've discovered. It's that work at the end of the semester carries over to the next semester. So I feel like in undergrad, once you're done your final exams, you're like done for good, right? Versus in grad school because your work is continuous. Whatever I was working on last year, I'm still working on this year. So that's why I was under a lot of pressure to do my work in December last year so that I can feel better coming into January. I guess some of the good things about my particular PhD thesis is that most of it is computational. So I do a lot of biostats, lots of coding, which means I work wherever my laptop is. So I was really fortunate to be able to bring my laptop home to my family home and then work while I was spending time with family and friends. It's the new year and one of the things I'm trying to get really really good at is to plan out my life. I feel like the weekly monthly Muji planner is like my savior. Every time I fall off the wagon and I don't use this, my life goes to chaos. So I'm gonna spend about five to ten minutes just looking at all of my calendars, writing everything down that I need to do, and then also writing down my to-do list for today. Okay, so here's my Muji planner for the week. So for today, I actually have class at 11 and then a couple of meetings in the afternoon as well, which is also why I woke up early. And then also I have my to-do list written on the right hand side. The reason why I love this Muji planner so much is because even though it is quite structured, you have like your weekly planner on your left. There's also a lot of free form space. I like planners that are flexible and adaptable. So I like to see my entire week in review and I usually do this weekly planning sometime around Sunday afternoon so that I know exactly what my entire week looks like. So I'm constantly corroborating with my calendar on my computer as well. I feel like a lot of the items on my computer calendar are often like reoccurring or I've put them in like months ahead of time. So I'll usually forget what I have for the week unless I write it down as well and like look at my week in review. So that is going to be my day for today. I have this every single day and I never get tired of it. It kind of like satisfies both my savory craving with the bread, but then the sweet tooth in me also really appreciates the Greek yogurt bowl. I have to leave in 25 minutes to be on time for our PhD seminars and my friends are presenting so I don't want to be late for this. I want a cuter headband. I just came home from the gym. It is so late right now. It's almost 11 p.m. I'm not really even that hungry. So I'm gonna make a really simple miso soup with some tofu. It's so cold outside tonight. With the windchill, it's like negative 17 degrees Celsius. So I just want a warm bowl of soup tonight to cuddle up with. We have miso paste, leftover onions, tofu, and some kimchi. Okay, it's now so so late. It's almost 4 p.m. I'm so hungry. I stayed at the cafe today and I was so locked in. I kind of went really early just before the cafe crowd actually started and because it's the beginning of the semester, there was really not a lot of people there compared to like midterm or exam seasons. So I was so focused. I got a lot of work done, but I'm not done on my work. So I have to get back to it. I'm gonna cook a very late lunch right now, but I'm also gonna do some meal prepping. One of the ways I try to stay fairly healthy, not eat out, and also really organize and on task is to meal prep. The best system that works for me when it comes to meal prepping is whenever I cook a meal, I'll just cook a really big batch of it. I don't usually like to meal prep on like a dedicated day, like reserving Sundays for meal prepping because most of the time I'm busy on Sundays. I just meal prep when I can, when I'm cooking a meal. I have all my ingredients set out here already and I think it's gonna be a really quick meal prep. The longest part will just be chopping everything up. The carbs will be roasted sweet potato. I have ground turkey here that I'm going to fry off and then I'm gonna chop up some onions, cucumbers, and peppers. Tomatoes are also in the fridge. Hello, everyone. It is now a whopping 6 p.m and I'm on my second, no, third cup of coffee of the day. It's a bit late to be drinking coffee, but I have a feeling tonight's gonna be a very late and long night. It was only yesterday that I realized one of the applications for some of the upcoming conferences I wanted to go to is tonight. So I literally started working on that application yesterday at like 4 p.m and I'm still scrambling to finish. I worked so hard and I was so locked in at the cafe today. I actually did get a lot of work done, but it was just not enough. I still have two application sections to write. Both of them are paragraph based and then I have to work on my CV and then I will be able to submit that. The deadline is tonight at 11 59 p.m. So I have exactly six hours to get this done. I'm pretty confident I'll get it done. I was hoping to catch a break being that this is the first week of the semester so I wouldn't have too much work to do, but I was mistaken. So I've been working on this application since yesterday. I was rushing it all day today and I just missed the deadline. This is like the most upsetting thing ever. I could cry, but I won't. This is like the Canadian Health Research Application Portal and I've applied to awards through their portal so many times and every single award they have, it's 12 a.m. Like 11 59 p.m is the deadline. As I was attaching my last document, the website suddenly blanked out and said that it's going under schedule maintenance. So I'm like, what the heck? And I text my colleagues who are also applying to the application and they were like, the deadline's at 8 p.m. And it's 8 45. Oh my god. I have no words about how I feel about this. I don't make mistakes like this very often, but when I do make mistakes, it's like missing a whole deadline. I don't even know what to do with myself. Like I put aside work all of yesterday and today to write this application just to miss it by half an hour. I don't know what to do. So 2025 is off to a great start as you can see. I'm just gonna go be sad for a little while. I don't want to do anything. I'm gonna go rot in bed. I've been ranting for six minutes on the camera. I feel so stupid. Okay, bye. It's actually getting pretty late now. It's almost 2 a.m. Korean cold noodles remains one of my favorite comfort foods of all time, even if it's super cold outside. I think after having a few hours to just calm down from the whole situation and really think about it, in the grand scheme of things, missing that deadline is not that big of a deal. I mean in hindsight, I only knew about this award yesterday, so I wasn't even gonna apply. It's not gonna make a huge deal. I'm also just trying to be really optimistic because one of my new year's goals is to just be a little nicer to myself, a little less harsh. Just take things a little bit more chill, more relaxed. I feel like things like this happen and then I get really tough on myself and I like mope about it for days when it's like not that big a deal. You know, I'm disappointed but not because I didn't win the award. It was just merely like I spent a lot of time on it and for that work to go to waste. Whatever. I'll live and I'll learn. Overall though, I did still get a ton of work done. Not all of the work that I did went to waste. Most of it is actually salvageable for future applications because different scholarship applications are actually pretty similar to each other in terms of what documents you have to submit. So I'll look at this as a head start for the other applications that are coming up in a couple weeks rather than a setback. I know that after I go to bed and I wake up tomorrow, I'll feel better. So that's what I'm gonna do. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope everyone has had a great semester so far. Better than mine. Thank you so much for watching, liking, and subscribing and I will see you guys next time. Bye.