 Trying to manage your time as a busy student can be overwhelming, but it's super critical to nail down. And trying to find time to fit in tests, quizzes, meetings, CV, building activities, plus your own personal life, if you don't have a system is very tricky. But if you have something that is reliable and predictable, it can make the process a lot smoother. So today I'm going to break down the exact system that I used in medical school to do well while still being efficient, and I actually still use it this day as a full time doctor where my life and career obligations are all taken care of without getting overwhelming. Let's break it down. If you have an effective time management system, there's four essential phases. Phase one is a collection system. Essentially you have to have a system where you can collect due dates and deadlines and different tasks and activities you have to do, and then come back to it later. Phase two and three are your monthly as well as your daily and weekly planning sessions. And then finally, phase four is what we call a win the hour, which will break down on what type of things you can do effectively to make sure that the tasks you want to get done now, it's actually done and completed. So getting into phase one, which is your collection system, it doesn't really matter how you do this, but the most stressful part of any planning system is where you just have too many obligations coming your way and no real way to sort it. And before I share with you my system, understand that all systems are effective. If it works for you, keep going. Some people like to use physical modalities. So maybe a bunch of sticky notes, which I actually am a big fan of. I just have tons of sticky notes on my desk of different things that I want to get done on a weekly or a daily basis. Some people like to have a daily planner and some people like to use digital modalities, whether it's Google Calendar or having a different to-do list on their phone. My personal favorite is using a Notion system. So let's dive into my computer so I can show you exactly how it breaks down. Okay, so now we're in our Notion dashboard and in case you are new to Notion, I will be making a step-by-step video on how to use Notion as a student. So make sure you hit that subscribe button if you haven't to make sure that we know that video goes live. But right now we're inside of our medical journey dashboard. This is a Notion template that should be live as a making of this video for all of our students who are part of our Domination Bundle. If you guys are interested, I'll be linked down below. But just one of the many parts of this template is a task database. And this is essentially the collection system that I use in my own personal workspace in Notion. And the way it works is any time you have an activity that comes to you, regardless of significance, even if it's a small thing like you need a call to make an appointment, to do your oil change, or something big like you need to pay your bills, you need to work on a research project where you need to submit an abstract as a student. You can go ahead and just add it down in here. So let's say for example on a personal level that I want to go ahead and make sure that I buy Christmas presents for my family. So Christmas shopping. I'm just going to put this down and I'm going to say since right now we are at the end of November, I'm going to say that this is going to be an urgent task and I want to get sure that I give myself a due date. So we are going to say that it is the 23rd right now. I want to get all of this done maybe ideally a week before Christmas shopping is done. And then finally, I always like to group everything in the category of importance. So if I don't get Christmas presents, I'm going to look like a terrible husband, terrible son. So I'm going to get this at four or five, excuse me. And at least for this template to see this better, we can actually go into our task dashboard and essentially see this same table that we want to use and be able to see the rest of our system kind of built out here. And the nice thing about this specific collection system is that notion allows me to sort it based off of both deadlines as well as importance. And so it's going to show me things that are coming up first. And then it's also going to show me things that are in level of importance. So my threes and my twos are going to be at the bottom of the list. So if I have something like a dentist appointment, which is important, but I could do in the next two or three months, it's going to go much further down. So let's just go ahead and add that in because actually you do that. And we'll call it routine. And I just want to make sure that I've seen a dentist by the end of the first month of next year. But I'm going to make this a two on my list. And you can see that this will go down. But if I chose to make this a five, now it automatically starts to go up. And even though the deadline is much later than something that's coming up and make sure is that I understand, hey, you need to get this done. And the beauty of notion is that I don't have to have multiple different lists for things that I need to do for work or for school. Or for my personal life, I can just put them all in here and then sort them, saying these are my wellness project. This is work related. This is for residency. This is for my significant other. And then if I wanted to sort saying, OK, this time is only going to be dedicated for doing things for work, then I can look at all my work related tasks and I can just filter out the rest of them. But this is a nice collection system because notion is on my phone. If somebody gives me a task, I can just put it in there. I don't even need to come up with a due date or a deadline. But then I can say every Sunday, I'm going to come back to my collection system and sort them and now we can get it into phase two, which is having a monthly system. Our next phase is their monthly planning system. This is essentially where you go to your collection system and once a month, at least, ask yourself, OK, what do I need to put onto my calendar? I love using notion, but I usually combine notion with Google Calendar, which I'll show you guys in a second. And just to be a little bit complete, I've added more things to this template of things that actually happen this month. So for example, tomorrow's Thanksgiving, I have a marathon that I'm running in about two or three weeks, and we are going to release this notion template to all of our followers. And so that is going to come out. So if I actually use this calendar section, I can use notion to actually see what I have specific deadline. So if I go ahead and actually click this calendar, I can use notion to actually visually see what I have on my calendar. If things are too close, if I need to move the deadline of something like starting my application two days later, it's helpful. But it's also helpful to say, if I wanted to start my work application here, one thing I need to make sure to add to my monthly list is when I want to complete it. So maybe I can say, you know, finish your work app on this day. And then I can go ahead and come back and sort it if I wanted to later. Again, by no means do you have to use notion. It happens to be the tool of choice for me. But if you're using another collection system, just make sure that on a monthly basis, you're coming at least once, not twice and ask yourself, what tasks do I need to get done? When will they be started? And ideally, when will they be completed? So then you can visually come back and say, OK, on a weekly basis. Now I can see that the two main things for this week is to work on my personal statement and start my job application. Make sure I show up to Thanksgiving dinner. Why would you miss that? Anyways, and try to finish that work app and then make sure that I'm releasing this notion project and then doing some financial stuff. If I was about to start the month of December, then I can already start to see that, OK, you have a few things happening at the one time. You're likely not going to get your work module done the day before your marathon. So maybe let's make the deadline for this up here so that what you get it done and you have the rest of this week to prep and train for your marathon may not want to pay your bills today before, because if you forget, you're screwed. So let's also go ahead and move that to the weekend before. So again, I'm taking my collection system, saying practicality, where things should be moved around that each week has very specific goals, but it's not too overwhelming, not too overburdened. And now we can go ahead and get to the next phase. And the last thing for this phase that I would recommend, especially if your student who has finals or lots of quizzes and tests is to use your monthly system to also go ahead and look at your syllabi and just plug in all your quiz dates, all your test dates, as well as when you want to start reviewing for them. So, for example, if I was a student and I had three exams on this week, I won't practically be able to study all of them at the same time. So I may want to study for the first one a little bit sooner. It's that way when it's time to study for the second and third one. I'm pretty far ahead on my first exam. You can do this again, visually be able to see when should I start doing stuff or a task that I may have in two or three weeks. So as part of both your collection system and your monthly system, go ahead and look visually when your deadlines, when your quizzes and tests are coming and then work backwards and saying, OK, when do I want to go ahead and start the review for that test? And so use your collection system and your monthly planning session to not only plug in when your quizzes and tests will be, but also when you'll begin and ideally be done with the review for that specific material. And once you have these two phases mastered, now you can really have some fun in phase three, which is your weekly and daily planning. So phase three is all about using what you did in the first two phases to really come to an idea of what goals you want to accomplish and how you're going to be able to do that practically. So if you're a student, maybe, you know, you have an upcoming test and quiz. You want to make sure that you spread your lectures around during your review so that we're not just back loading everything to the weekend. If I'm training for my marathon, I want to make sure that I'm going ahead and periodically doing the runs. That way I'm not multiple runs behind and I'm still able to show up on race day. And as I mentioned before, my personal system to do this is to take my notion system and transfer my tasks into Google Calendar. So let me show you what that looks like. So here's my actual personal calendar for the rest of November as well as getting into the early few weeks of December. And it looks busy, but it's actually using my notion system for my personal workspace and taking those individual tasks, both big and small and just plug them in. So for example, I know I have a Thanksgiving dinner. So I plugged it in with the time that I have with my family. It's plugged in. I'm not going to do anything at that time. Study, train for my marathon, et cetera. And in addition, as I mentioned earlier, myself and the team are going to be releasing that notion template on Sunday. And now I have a visual reminder when I transferred it over to Notion. I can also do the same thing for things outside of school. So again, I'm training for a marathon and my marathon is going to be on the 11th. So I have a race day and I'm going to work backwards on all of my runs. Now, because I work as a hospital seven days on, seven days off, again, if you guys are interested, I'll link below a video on what a hospital says and what my job means and the beauty of using a visual calendar is because I know I work seven days in a row. I'm not going to be able to do as much running or as much studying, whatever it may be, but I am going to be able to do that much more on my time off. And so, for example, these upcoming days, I actually have my shifts off and then I work on Thanksgiving. So this week where I had much more time off, I'm able to do 40 plus miles. And next week where I'm working a majority of the week, the mileage is going to go significantly down, which is OK. I counted for that. The phase three is all about having a visualization from your monthly planning system and then scheduling them in on a weekly basis and then working backwards to daily. So for example, if I know I need to release this notion project on Sunday with my team, I need to be able to ask myself what is left to do. And then based off of that, I can say, OK, you need to work a little bit on it on this day. And then as you can see, on these upcoming weeks and days, I have the notion project included for a few hour sessions, which I'll get into in a second. And so in the same light, if you had a deadline like a quiz, you can ask yourself, OK, how many lectures do I need to cover and when do I want to have them reviewed by? Let's say you had 10 lectures for that quiz over the span of seven days. Maybe you just do two lectures per day, giving yourself a little bit of a buffer. So you can put on your weekly calendar. I want to be lecture one and two on this day, lecture three and four and etc. Then you can do this for each one of your goals for the week. So by the time that the week comes to an end, those two to three goals that you prioritize for that month for that specific week are now completed. So that's how I break down my weekly planning in phase three. But let's work backwards even more and get into my daily planning. And I'll show you an example from today. Now, this may look busy, but understand that all of this is just working backwards from the activities and the goals that I set for myself. So again, I knew that I needed to run a five mile run today. I had already told myself. And so I needed to make sure that the most important thing to do was to show up and have a schedule for my run. So I had a calendar event to show up for that five to six mile run here. And because I happened to wake up early, I had a good session in the morning where I could do things like work on that notion project, again, important thing or work on video projects for you guys. And now as I'm doing, I have a session here to record the videos that I have already have scripted and templated and go ahead and create that YouTube content and podcast for you all. And as a student, while you may not be recording YouTube videos, you may want to fit in your setting, your gym workouts and you can do the same thing here. You know, this is going to be a backer bicep day that you can plug that into your calendar of saying, at this time, I'm going to go to the gym. I already know what I'm working out today. So ideally by now you can see when you'll be covering those lectures for the end goal of that quiz or test you're studying for. You'll be able to show up for your gym workouts, but you also be able to find what open slots you have in your schedule. Maybe you just have to do personal chores. For example, my living room and my laundry was an absolute mess today just because my wife and I had gone out of town. So it made sure that I had an hour, hour and a half after my run that I need to recover anyways to do just small chores around the house. And by doing this, I managed to use that time very proactively. I knew it was open. I didn't want to just waste it on social media or watching TV. I knew it was going to recover, but I got small pits of activities that were on my Notion database to get done anyways. And now they're done at those times. And the second part of daily planning system is to understand where it's OK not to plug something in. So for example, tomorrow's Thanksgiving and I'm also working. So I know I'm not going to give myself a big goal of trying to get through anything. My biggest thing is to show up with my family and enjoy our dinner. That's it. I'm not going to be working on videos. There's nothing else I'm going to be doing for my marathon training. It's going to be a rest day to show up for dinner, show up for work, show up for my patients. That's it. And on Friday, where I know I'm going to be working, but just not as long, I just need to show up for a small four mile run. And then after that, I'm going to work on that Notion project, which again, I know I need to get done on Sunday. This is how you work backwards from your monthly, your weekly and now to your daily system to make sure you get those tasks done. You accomplish your goals for the week, most importantly for the month. And to be honest, you can even get more granular than this. So instead of a Notion project, imagine that this time was meant to study for a biochem test or a quiz that was coming up. I can say, OK, review lecture 9 during this time and review lecture 10 during this time. Again, you can get very specific on what you want to do and think of activities as blocks of time than individual tasks as appointments you want to show up with. But I love using Google Calendar because not only is it portable on my phone, but I can visually use it as a tool to really understand how likely is this day to be accomplished? I've achieved every single thing that's on this list. But just in case if I was falling behind schedule, I can just move this workout later, make sure I get everything done, go and join my workout and now my day is done. And to close off this phase of our time management system for students is to definitely consider having a buffer system. So especially if you're somebody who gets like me tired in the afternoons and is much more functional in the mornings than usually in the mornings, I can just go from task to task without any issues. But soon as like one or two o'clock hits, I have that afternoon slump and I really don't want to do any work. So I personally will go ahead and say, you know what? It's probably going to take me a bit longer to actually get into that activity, that task, and then it's probably going to take me longer to move to the next one. So I'm not going to go ahead and stack two activities like this. I'm probably going to give myself 15 to 30 minutes. Just in case one task is bleeding into the next, it won't affect my productivity. Tip two, something we've already talked about is to think of each of these as a personal appointment. Maybe I'm feeling sore from that run that I did this morning. It is OK to say maybe I just don't want to go for a gym workout. I'm going to do that in the morning tomorrow before I go to work. I'm just going to do a stretching session. You can make changes to your appointments. This is just you showing up for you to achieve your weekly and your monthly goals. And then finally, try to make this a system that you do the night before. So before you go to bed, let's say if I'm going to go to bed at 9 30 or 10, I may take 10 minutes and actually put it into my calendar and saying plan the next day. And this way I can say, OK, what did I not get accomplished from today? Maybe I just didn't get to work on the journey. And I want to make sure I give myself two hours. Where can I fit that? I don't have time for tomorrow because I already fit there. I can't do it on Thursday for, you know, because of Thanksgiving. Don't really have time on Friday either. OK, fine. We're just going to have to plug it in on Saturday again. It's a personal appointment that moves around. The only way I can actually move it around is by showing up and thinking about how I'm going to incorporate it throughout my week. Now that we successfully conquered the first three phases, let's get into the final phase four, which is to conquer your hours. Now that you've done the grunt work of actually putting the plan of what should be done at what times, specifically in what order. The biggest thing is that you just have to show up and get to work. There's a big attractiveness to try to continue to plan instead of actually show up and do the work. The biggest thing for me to achieve that Google Calendar that I showed for you throughout the day was that once it was set in stone, I just needed to get to work. I needed to move from one task, whether it was creating and drafting videos to now recording videos for you guys going and getting my running shoes to go for that five to six mile run, returning something just kind of moving from thing to thing instead of thinking about what I needed to do. It was already plugged in there. That's what this entire first three phases are made for. So now when it's actually time for you to show up for that personal point, make sure you show up and get to work. And I know some of you guys may be saying, well, it looks that may be easy for you, but easier said than done. I totally get it. And there's tons of resources to help you overcome procrastination, distractions, and just staying focused. Well, my favorites is using a Pomodoro timer, the tomato timer, just Google this. It'll show you something that looks like this. And you can just go ahead and have this pulled up on your dashboard, your laptop, and let's say you're studying or reading a chapter. Just click hit start. And now it's going to start a time before you know that after 25 minutes of work, you can give yourself a five minute break. That's how this works. If you want to give yourself 50 minutes of work, because it takes you a while to actually get into it. Now you'll get a 10 minute break. And I used to do this where I take my tasks and actually book them into 25 minute chunks. So they're essentially Pomodoro chunks. And I would use this calendar or this timer to say, OK, at 25 minutes to work on this task, you know, you have a five minute break to do whatever. Social media, just mess around, do nothing, take a nap. But using a timer like this was super effective. Tip three is to have an easy to access study playlist, ideally instrumental. The research does show that listening to the same music, something that is not distracting while you're working, definitely helps with your focus. So if you're somebody who enjoys listening to music while you're working, I personally love listening to instrumentals, either classical or hip hop. I'll just find that Spotify playlist that is my favorite and just link it into my Notion database. So when it's time to work, I have a link to the tomato timer and I have a link to the Spotify playlist. And as soon as I click it, headphones are on. Music starts, time to get to work. Tip four is to use one of my favorite apps, which is called the Stay Focused app. I've made a video about this before. I'll link it down below in case you guys are interested in. But it is very hard to leave our phone away from us. I know the tip is to put it in a different room. Very few people do this. I don't even do this. But Stay Focused works really well, where you can just say from this time to this time where I had the app on, I'm not going to allow myself to access social media, my emails, and you can personally pick which apps, which URLs you don't want to visit while you're working. So if you know you're going to be setting for an important test from 9 a.m. all the way to one, you can just say during that time slot, you are not allowed to use specific apps or give yourself only one chance to use them during your breaks and that's it. Again, very simple tool, but to make sure that you conquer that hour, most importantly, show up for the task you assigned yourself. And finally, tip five is to stack your other life obligations in between. And as an example, as I mentioned earlier, I had tons of things to do around the house. And instead of saying, let's try to get through your main things at the start of the day and then come to your house chores, let's be honest, house chores would never get done. So instead of what I do is I just alternate from a task that requires a lot of my attention, maybe like scripting a video and saying, okay, next spend the next 10 minutes doing the laundry and maybe just putting up the dishes. And I have this in my Google Calendar, so I know that this time it's meant to do a task that is a little bit mundane. It doesn't really require a lot of my energy, but it gets done and I can get away from the task that's at hand. And so this is a very simple way to stack other activities like emails, laundry, dishes, other things around the house, personal obligations, just taking an app if you wanted to give yourself a 20 minute power now. There's a video below on also how to do that effectively. You can do this, but using a time management system of across all four of our phases, you can see how you can start with somebody who has a bunch of obligations and deadlines come your way and you can say, you know what, I got this. I'm gonna sort it how I want, based off its deadlines, based off of importance and now I know how to plug it into my monthly calendar, my weekly calendar, my daily calendar, and most importantly, I know how to show up on a daily basis that way these things will get done. Now, if you found this episode helpful, there are tons of resources linked down below that you may also find useful. For example, that Notion dashboard, if you are on your medical journey and you wanna get access to it, it's part of our Medical School Domination Bundle. I'll link that down below. Or if you look at the links in the description, you may also notice our free Medical School Success Handbook. This is basically a growing library of tips all the way from time management systems like this one, also from study methods and tips to help you on your medical journey or whatever journey you're on, based off of things that I've learned through successes and failures. Again, absolutely free. If you guys are interested, that'll be linked down below. But with that being said, friends, if you found this video helpful, if you made it to the end, you got some value, all I ask is that you hit that like button. Ideally, YouTube will magically show this video to other people in the YouTube ecosystem and hopefully could help them on their journey. So that's all I ask. Drop your comments with any questions, your comments that you may have. Love interacting with you guys down below. And make sure that if you enjoyed this video and you also check out this video right here on how I got a 3.9 GPA in medical school with all the study strategies that I love using, as well as this video right here on how you can study for exam using a very similar step-by-step phase system. So go check these episodes out. And as always, my friends, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully, I was a little helped to you guys on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.