{"id":27484,"date":"2016-02-16T12:35:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=27484"},"modified":"2016-02-16T08:38:32","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T13:38:32","slug":"reading-during-reading-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2016\/02\/16\/reading-during-reading-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading… During Reading Week?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It might not be an official government-sanctioned holiday but for us U of T students, as soon as classes ended for the day on Friday-<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"via<\/a>
via giphy.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

a much-needed week off began.<\/p>\r\n

Which naturally meant taking in some well-deserved R&R, especially since the weather this weekend was something straight out of Antarctica.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"via<\/a>
via http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/toronto\/extreme-cold-weather-toronto-1.3446601<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

With temperatures plummeting to -30 degrees outside, it made the most sense to curl up in bed with Netflix and snacks and forget about the howling wind and snow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"my<\/a>
my life in a photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Three continuous days of this followed and with the weekend behind me, I find myself having achieved nothing other than breaking my own record of how many episodes of New Girl I can watch in a day. I\u2019m done with the lazy life.<\/p>\r\n

I realized I needed a little bit of structure to my Reading Week.<\/p>\r\n

An entire week off class means a week of possibility. A week that I want to make the most of. Some people I\u2019ve spoken to are ten steps ahead of me- there are trips being taken, outings planned, days allotted to particular tasks, and generally, far more sophisticated-sounding plans than just \u2018r&r\u2019.<\/p>\r\n

In fact, while we\u2019re on the subject of good organization, good ol\u2019 Google seems to agree that there are certain things a lot of successful people have in common when it comes to spending their leisure time because it pulled up this interesting article for me called \"12 Weekend Habits of Highly Successful People<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

(successful being the key buzzword here)<\/p>\r\n

I had a look through the article and found several points that made a lot of sense. (not to mention, it talked about the weekend habits of people like Bill Gates, Oprah and even Jay Z, which, of course, means I am learning from the<\/i> stars<\/i>. It just adds a whole different dimension to my week.)<\/p>\r\n

So if you\u2019re looking to restructure your time off or just generally, restructure your time, here\u2019s a few things I\u2019m planning on doing over the next couple of days:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

    \r\n\t
  1. Maintain an early waking hour<\/strong>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    I\u2019ve already chronicled my morningtime struggles in a previous blog post<\/a> and thanks to that little experiment, have found myself tuned to wake up at a decent hour every morning\u00a0(8:30 AM is decent, right?!). Though that\u2019s nothing on Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney, who reportedly rises at 4:30 AM\u00a0every<\/i>\u00a0morning.<\/p>\r\n

    Studies show that we\u2019re most alert two to four hours after we wake up and I\u2019ve found that to be the best time to ease myself into the productive mood to get things done. (which include two essays and upcoming tests to study for. Woe is me.)<\/p>\r\n

    \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 2. Whittle down my to-do list<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n

    While this may seem like the exact opposite of being productive, I\u2019ve noticed that the longer my (often-extensive) lists are, the less likely I am to get things done. Allotting two big tasks to an entire day instead of a dozen small ones keeps me focused and feeling more accomplished when I can draw big ticks next to what I\u2019ve completed. Thanks for the tip, Timothy Ferriss<\/a>!<\/p>\r\n

    \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>3.\u00a0\u00a0Minimize my social media time.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

    I took a bit of a break from social media by removing a few non-essential apps from my phone. (here\u2019s looking at you, Snapchat.)<\/p>\r\n

    Weekends are when \u201cwe\u2019re even more prone to FOMO\u201d, the fear of missing out. Which, according to CEO Randi Zuckerberg<\/a>, we should be turning into JOMO (the joy of missing out) and remember the saying that goes,\u00a0\u201cthere is nowhere I\u2019d rather be than exactly where I am<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

    Taking a bit of a breather from knowing\u00a0exactly what the rest of the world is doing gave me more room to focus on myself and be happy with how I was spending my time.<\/p>\r\n

    \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 4. Scare myself into getting work done.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

    \u00a0Which may or may not consist of pinning the April exam schedule to my bedside, looking at other peoples LinkedIn profiles and reevaluating all my professional experiences (or lack thereof).<\/p>\r\n

    There\u2019s nothing like fear of the future to get you motivated.<\/p>\r\n

    (just kidding!)<\/p>\r\n

    \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a05. Actually read.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\r\n

    And I don\u2019t mean just course readings. I\u2019ve almost forgotten how much I love reading novels and poetry because I usually get my fill of words from hundreds of pages of required readings. This week, I\u2019m going to crack open a new novel, inhale some of that beautiful fresh-book smell and lose myself in another world among the pages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

    \"this<\/a>
    this week's reads!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

    \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a06. Make sure I get out of the house.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

    What better time to keep up my resolution to explore the city more than during my week off?<\/p>\r\n

    I\u2019ve already gotten started on this one-<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

    \"Cloud<\/a>
    Cloud Gardens!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

    I visited a beautiful conservatory<\/a>, checked out some street art and paid a visit to the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

    \"IMG_9247\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

    \"an<\/a>
    an exhibit at the Gallery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

    How are you spending (or planning on spending) your time off? <\/em><\/p>\r\n

    Let us know in the comments below!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \n
    \nIt might not be an official government-sanctioned holiday but for us U of T students, as soon as classes ended for the day on Friday- a much-needed week off began. Which naturally meant taking in some well-deserved R&R, especially since…\n<\/div>
    Continue reading “Reading… During Reading Week?”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
    Continue reading “Reading… During Reading Week?”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":256,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758,7204,62,1,58,67],"tags":[476,477],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27511,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27484\/revisions\/27511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}