#more colour/element coding yayyy

[minnaeatsbread]

oh, nothing, I'm just thinking about the fact that Edwin died by demon (commonly associated with fire -> red) and Charles died by hypothermia (commonly associated with water -> blue). which is definitely not a reversal of their associated colours. which definitely doesn't mean anything.

[studythemacrocosm]

Free Printable to do list!!!

Smash it to do list 💫

Hi guys!!! I decided that for my first original post I would try to make it special, (totally inspired by the awesome printables of @emmastudies!!) so I designed this cute a5 to do list (and it took WAY longer than I thought hahahaha but it was honestly so worth it)

i really love the sticky note to-do lists from Knock Knock Stationery, especially the ‘Get Your Shit Together’, ‘Productive AF’, ‘Today’s The Day’ and ‘Today’s Plan Of Attack’ options, but I always thought how helpful it would be if I combined what I liked about each of my favourite to do lists into one.

So for example, what I thought was great about the ‘Get Your Shit Together’ pad was how it compartmentalised tasks into easy and more difficult ones, which was a good way of figuring out what tasks to get done first and which to do later. But the ‘Today’s Plan of Attack’ pad compartmentalised tasks in a different way: based on how important/critical they were: most critical; would be nice; not a chance. I thought that it would be helpful to use both methods of compartmentalisation, because figuring out what was both easy and most critical but also the least important and most difficult would allow me to easily decide which tasks to get done first, based on two criteria. 

The ‘Today’s The Day’ pad was always perfect for me because the separation of tasks into ‘Morning’, ‘Afternoon’, and ‘Evening’ gave me enough structure to keep me focused on tasks, whilst not being too strict and confined for me too follow. Personally, I’ve always found that simply writing a long to-do list for the entire day was way too flexible and quite overwhelming - there wasn’t enough structure and guide in order to motivate me to get everything done. But equally, planning every single hour of my day into sections proved to be way too stifling for me, because I feel like it was unrealistic for me to actually follow the to-do list perfectly. I found that using the ‘morning; afternoon; evening’ method was perfect in giving me the flexibility I wanted but also the structure to organise myself and get stuff done. Additionally, since I am very a much a morning person, using this method was also very helpful in making me plan my day so it could be the most effective - i.e. placing the more difficult tasks in the morning and keeping the easier, shorter tasks in the afternoon and evening worked perfectly for me and enabled me to be my most productive! 

As a result, I decided to incorporate all of these elements into one to-do lists (which was quite a task in itself lol) but I’m quite happy with how it turned out! I wanted to put my own personal spin on the ‘‘Today’s Plan of Attack’ pad from the Knock Kncon Stationery range, so I represented the urgency of a task with the letter ‘U’ and three red exclamation marks for an extremely important task; two organe exclamation marks for an important task; and one green exclamation mark for a less important task. However, I pretty much kept the ‘Easy Shit’ / ‘Tough Shit’ aspect the same (except removing the swear word, trying to keep this PG haha) and the ‘Morning; Afternoon; Evening’ aspect the same too. I was also inspired by Ruby Granger’s Pumpkin Productivity ‘Master To Do List’ with regards to the key, because I absolutely loved the idea of colour coding tasks based on their estimated length of time, as this is another way of compartmentalising tasks based on a set of criteria. (as you can tell I’m all about compartmentalising haha ;) ) I also like the inclusion of a key based on what type of task you’re doing, which can be written in a specific colour, because it encourages you to vary your day and not be stuck on what type of task for too long (i.e. studying) as it’s important to make time to exercise, socialise, and relax!

I tried to organise the printable to be easy to use - choose a different colour pen for each type of task (using the key to distinguish which colour corresponds to which task) and then write them with a particular colour. Also colour code the timings based on your colour preference for short/medium/long tasks, and colour in the adjoining column marked 'L' based on how long each task will be. Then just cross off the tasks as you go along!

I also wanted to colour the background of the three separate times of the day to make the to-do list look a bit more fun, and I chose from my 3 favourite colours! 

So there we have it, my first original post yayyy and a free printable!! I sincerely apologise for how much rambling there is in this post but I’m just so excited that after so many hours I’ve finally finished with the printable to post it here!!! thank you x