Small Stress Relievers For When Life Feels Messy

small stress relievers for when life feels messy

swiffer your bedroom floor or vacuum your bedroom rug

wipe down your desk with a cloth or clorox wipe

clean off your computer screen

clear out your emails

do a load of your laundry

wash your bedding

maybe delete photos or apps on your phone that you don’t need

go through a drawer and get rid of things you don’t need

fold some clothes

organize your stationery or desk

Hello, lovelies! I’ve gotten a couple of asks about studying so I decided to condense them into one post for you guys! I’m trying to hit a bunch of different topics so if you need an even more specific post you can send an ask! Without any further ado, have some tips! My studyblr is @spacey-scholar​

Prep

First, you always need a good base for your day! Especially if you’re studying a lot.

Make a good full breakfast! Ex. Eggs and Toast, Smoothie and fruit, Pancakes and a cup of juice. 

How’s your hygiene? Do you need to shower, brush your teeth, wash your face, condition your hair? Do it! You’ll be distracted if you feel messy!

Get dressed like it’s a normal day. Staying in PJ’s is okay! But being ready for the day seriously helps focus!

Likewise, your space should be clean. A clean space is a clean mind! Remove dishes, trash, scrap paper, and extra items. Wide down your desk, organize your pens and books. Your space should feel like your space!

Now make a list of what you need to get done! What needs to be done Now, what needs to be done Soon, and what needs to be done Later? 

Order your list how you want your day to go, and don’t put super-tough subjects back to back, or subjects that are similar exercises i.e. reading thirty pages of two different books back to back is no fun.

The Studying

It’s important to buckle down with No Distractions! If you find yourself distracted put your phone away! If you need your phone, put it on Do Not Disturb until you’re done. I also do this at night for better sleep. 

Pick the best technique for you, Pomodoro, reward-based, group studying, etc.

Play music but only if it will not distract you! If you sing along or daydream it’s the wrong music! Classical, Lo-fi, and White noise are all good! My Spotify Here has some good ones.

Use a nice journal (I don’t mean expensive!) and pens/pencils you enjoy using. I like to have a specific journal and color dedicated to each subject. 

Take notes on recorded lectures and classes, if you’re doing online classes right now try to screen record or record the audio! That way if you space out you can play it later and take notes, and you can absorb the lesson better instead of being distracted.

Don’t worry about your notes, stationary, pictures, being beautiful and your grades being perfect. Life doesn’t always look the way it does on Instagram. And the people who spend hours trying to get a good photo of their coffee are not studying! 

Use flashcards! Quizlet is good if you need premade ones! If you can save up and buy them, Barrons AP Flash Cards are the best in my opinion. Very clean, not too long, very durable, and cover all subjects.

Feeling Distracted 

If you catch yourself drifting off and getting into your head, get up and take a quick walk, stretch, or energizer. 

It’s okay if this happens, don’t guilt yourself! practice affirmation. The best and smartest still get distracted. 

If you are drifting, why? Are you hungry? Tired? Thirsty? Bored? Get a snack and some water, take a break and rest, find a way to make your studying more enjoyable. 

Remember that Motivation and Discipline are different things. Sometimes we just won’t be motivated, we won’t want to do it and it will be rather frustrating. But the cure to this is not shaming its discipline. Remind yourself “This may be hard, and I may not want to do this, but I want to reach my goals and If this is what It takes I will make it happen. 

Always do just one more page of you’re tired. One at a time and oh you did it! Maybe just one more? One more? Eh, one more just to finish the train of thought, Oh just- I’m done? Nice!

If you really can’t focus just move on and come back to this subject, you can always ask for help.

Supplementary Things

There are so many apps you can use to study, for free! My favorites are Tide, Quizlet, Focus Keeper, Forest, Flora, Egenda, SpanishDict, Photomath, and Kahn Academy. 

You can also join a study group! You may know one, but if you don’t, there are a lot of online ones! I’m in a study Discord and have been for a while! it helps a lot and motivates me to finish my work!

You can make a studyblr, but don’t do it just for the aesthetics! It’s about studying, and sometimes that gets messy! Sometimes we fail a test, we spill our tea on our notes, we cry because we don’t understand the formula. That’s the part you don’t see!

Having cute stationery can really help, as well as nice organizers and decorations for your space! I don’t have much money so I get a lot of stuff on Amazon or FB Marketplace.

Health

Remember that no matter what you are good enough. It’s okay if you fail, it’s okay if you struggle.

It’s also okay if your path doesn’t go the way you expected! Maybe you go to a different school than expected! Or choose a trade instead! Maybe you take a gap year! Maybe your passion changes! Maybe it changes six times!

Your health is always more important than your school. If you are in pain, mentally or physically, if you are anxious, exhausted, burnt out, talk to your teachers about it! You matter more than a grade.

Your best is good enough! And your best doesn’t look the same as someone else’s best! Don’t compare!

Now go get out there and study!

my masterpost | my studygram | ask me anything

[click images for high quality]

Other advice posts that may be of interest:

How To Stop Procrastinating

How To Study When You Really Don’t Want To

Unusual Study Tips

How To Do Uni Readings

Active Revision Tips

study less study smart

I decided to share my notes taken from this amazing 1 hour Youtube lecture by Marty Lobdell. i really liked him and his tips, i think they are super effective and cover a lot of situations! i highly recommend it!!!!! wow

but here are the tips and examples Marty mentions, so if you don’t have the time to go through the full hour, you can just scroll down. hope this helps somebody!

Break your study time in chunks with breaks

most students lose focus at 25 minutes

it’s a mistake to keep going once you do, since you won’t actually learn anything and you’ll hate every minute of it

so when you start losing focus take a 5 minute break

do something nice like talking to someone or listening to music

it’s something you practice so with time you’ll be able to work for more time without losing focus

in the end of the study session have a big reward you look forward to

Create a study area

environment highly affects the way you act. Bedrooms are for sleeping, kitchens for eating: you’ll feel sleepy in your bedroom and hungry in the kitchen. So if you have a study area, it’ll be easier to start studying and staying focused.

study in a specific room like an office or school library if you can

if you have to study in your bedroom use a specific object you only use for studying: a lamp/desk. Make it a no-distraction, away from your bed, blank walls area.

 The more active the learning, the better

80% active learning 20% passive

ask yourself: is it a concept or a fact?

learning a concept: understand/grasp/know it

put it into your own words

really think about the meaning of it

relate it with something you already know

teach somebody else. Recapitulate what you’ve learned. Talk out loud even if you don’t have anyone to teach - talk alone. Or at anyone that listens.

learning a fact: memorize it

use mnemonics

Acronyms (e.g. colours of the rainbow RoyGBiv – red orange yellow green blue indigo violet)

 Coined sayings - anything popular or sayings you’ve heard since you were a child.

Interacting images – work even better if they’re weird. Creative associations make you never forget specific details. (e.g. 1 gram of fat has 9 calories: picture a fat cat – each cat has 9 lives)

any time 2 things are highly similar but not the same you will get maximal interference!! USE mnemonics!! (e.g. afferent vs efferent neurons: SAME - Sensory Afferent Motor Efferent)

Be a part of  study groups

others can help you in ways you never thought before

Recognizing VS remembering

never confuse the two

while reviewing a chapter you may recognize concepts but not actually know them

and when you get to the test you won’t be able to remember any of it

so quiz yourself without looking at it

or stop in a page of your notes/textbook and ask yourself what is the concept immediately after and before it

Get your REM Sleep 

get ~8 hours so you don’t undo your studying

this is how your brain stores permanent memories

without it you’re ability to remember seriously decreases

most people don’t even begin to take the advice but it’s simple: sleep better. Do better.

There’s 162 hours in a week. There is time.

reflect on what you are doing with your time and what activities you have to prioritize to succed as a student

Taking notes is vital.

right after the class take 5 minutes to expand everything you’ve jotted down, give it depth.

NOT hours later. You won’t remember half the things you wrote down.

Ask your questions to class mates and teachers.

teachers want you to succeed and it’s more than ok to ask your question in the teacher’s office or in the next class

How to use a textbook: SQ3R technique

Survey Question Read Recite Review

Survey: skim through the entire chapter in a couple of minutes.

Raise questions: e.g. what is osmosis? What is this graphic about? What is a prototype?

it causes you to look for answers and you’ll find the information better once you actually study it after. If you intend to find something you learn it better.

Start studying for tests early.

don’t undo yourself. You should only be reviewing the days before the test. don’t leave it till the last minute!

(don’t just scroll through this!!!! really think about these methods and how you can actually implement them so you can benefit from them!!! these actually work but only if you put them into practice boo good luck!)

How to Fix your Sleep Schedule

We’ve all been there. You’ve been pushing back your bedtime for an entire week and now you feel exhausted and you don’t think you can function as well as you normally could. You just want to get enough sleep again, but how?

Make small changes

It’s a lot easier to push back your bedtime than to push it forward—but it’s not impossible. You just have to take it step by step. Go to sleep 15-30 minutes earlier every night until you reach your desired bedtime. You could try going to sleep much earlier than your regular time, but according that doesn’t usually work out. If you’re waking up later than you want to, you might also want to try waking up 15 minutes earlier each morning until you get up at the desired time.

I remember there was a week this semester when I went to sleep at 1am for several days in a row (I usually sleep at 11). I was sleep deprived and exhausted and I tried to sleep at 8 to catch up on lost sleep, but I couldn’t. I just laid in my bed for an hour until I gave up trying to sleep and decided to work on some homework until I felt sleepy again. What I should’ve done was go to bed 15 minutes earlier each night until I could go to sleep at 11 again.

Adjust exposure to sunlight

Exposure to adequate amounts of sunlight is key to helping our bodies maintain their circadian rhythm, which is the process that regulates our energy levels during the day and tells us when to be awake and when to go to sleep. Sunlight helps our body produce optimal levels of melatonin, a hormone that makes us feel sleepy at night. Studies have shown that people get better quality sleep in the summer because there is a greater exposure to light.

That being said, you should expose yourself to more light during the day to get better sleep at night. This might mean waking up earlier so you don’t miss hours of sunlight in the morning.

At night, you should reduce your exposure to any sort of light - both natural and artificial - so that your body knows it’s time to not be awake. I personally turn down the lights (and only have my fairy lights on) after 10:30 pm. When you’re trying to get back into your desired sleep schedule, you could aim to turn down the lights 30 minutes before your desired bedtime for that day.

Don’t eat too close to bedtime

You should wait 2 - 3 hours between dinner/your last meal and bedtime. I would talk about how studies show that eating too close to bedtime can possibly damage your health, e.g. causing reflux when you’re lying down, but that’s all been said before. The only thing I’d like to reiterate is that you sleep better when you wait after you eat. But as for my own logic on why you shouldn’t go to sleep when you’re full…

When you wait a few hours after you’ve had your last meal, before you go to bed, you won’t go to bed full, meaning that in the morning, you’re likely to be hungry. I don’t know about you, but I can’t go back to sleep when I’m, like, starving, so being hungry when I wake up causes me to resist sleeping in.

Don’t sleep in

You would think that sleeping in is, in fact, good for catching up on sleep. In reality, it doesn’t make you stop sleeping late, since you’d probably still spend the same amount of time awake. Instead, once you wake up, you should stay up, and don’t go back to sleep. You’re likely to get sleepy at an earlier time, and this will help you push forward your bedtime.

Resist napping

Resisting naps also has a similar logic to not sleeping in. If you take a nap, you’ll feel more energetic and night, and you might not be able to fall asleep as soon as you wanted to. If you resist taking a nap, however, you’ll be more tired at night, and you’ll fall asleep more easily.

Be strict with yourself

Finally, the key to having a good, consistent sleep schedule is to be strict with yourself. Don’t let yourself stay up for just 5 more minutes because you still have a ‘small’ task to take care of. When it’s time to end the day, end the day.

Maybe it’s hard for you to be strict with yourself since you can’t justify going to sleep over completing whatever task or responsibility you have left. Well, here’s my logic:

You could stay up 5 more minutes and risk extending that to a few hours or so in attempt to finish something. There’s no guarantee that you’ll finish it, and you might just lose all those precious hours of sleep for nothing, since you’ll wake up in the morning tired and unable to effectively do the task you wanted to do; or

You could stop everything you’re doing and sleep on it. You wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and clear-headed and ready to tackle on your tasks for the day. You find a new way to think about the task you were stuck on, and you finally solve it in less than half an hour.

I do realize that this only applies if the task isn’t super urgent. Let’s say you have a project due 11:59 PM and you’re rushing to finish that. In this case, the core problem is probably something else: an inability to manage your time, or procrastination. If that’s the case, you might want to check out my posts on how to beat procrastination and how to create an efficient (revision) schedule. The latter post is tailored for exam preparation, but the main ideas are the same for general scheduling (there’s a recap at the bottom if you just want to know the main ideas).

Additionally, you might wanna check out my post on my night routine.

And that’s all I have for you today! Hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions, feel free to drop me an ask or message me. Have an awesome day :)