Today I got asked how it could be that I don’t have stress even when I do more subjects at university than she does.

Well, I don’t know exactly how I’m doing it.

Sometimes I have stress but not the whole time. My body wouldn’t even let me do that because I have a sensitive stomach.

So how could it be that I’m getting more done for the university with less time?

I put together a list of things that help me:

• Meditate in the morning instead of pressing the snooze button.
• Do sports every two days, even when it is just walking to the university instead of taking public transportation or the car (depending on how far away it is, mine is around 50 minute walk).
• Watch your favorite series while eating. Even though it is always said that you should focus on your food, I save a lot of time by watching my series while eating because I want to watch those series and I like to do something while eating because if I don’t while eating I’m getting more stressed.
• Start earlier with homework and stuff. Start when you don’t have stress yet like in the vacations.
• Try to study during the semester with lectures. Just sit down after a lecture and repeat everything or repeat everything before the next lecture. I don’t do that regularly but it sometimes helps me to learn less in the end.
• Go to the lectures and take notes even when there are documents for the lecture. You will remember more from the lecture.
• Study with other people. It helps to have a different view on something and you can ask each other if you don’t know something. You can save a lot of time by that. I’m not studying every day with somebody because sometimes I’m faster alone.
• Buy a calendar or use your calendar on the phone to write down what you have to do every day and when the homework needs to be done. It helps you to have an overview of everything you need to do and you can decide faster what you have to do and when.
• Go grocery shopping when not many other people do because you have to wait for less. Or buy them online and let them ship to you.
• Take a break every now and then to get something to drink or to eat or just to talk to your flatmate, friends, or family. Relationships are important for being happy and they are glad to help if you need some.
• Find documents and help online for your lectures, for example, solutions for previous exams or summaries of lectures.
• Put away all the distractions and study in a quiet room. When you get distracted it’s really hard for your mind to get back to work. So focus on the work you have to and you will be finished faster. (Listen to relaxing music if your mind is wandering.)
• Don’t waste so much time with social media like Facebook or Instagram. If there is something interesting that you’re missing, you will hear it anyway from somebody talking about it. The rest is not important. (Except when you’re making money with social media.)
• Write down every day what you have achieved today or what you were thinking about (less than 5 minutes a day). Just write down what you’re thinking about like a diary, so that you can let go and focus on your studies again.

So those are the things that I can think of that I do to have more time for my studies. This is my secret recipe for less stress.

Maybe those aren’t right for everybody because everyone is different. But they can help you to take a look at how you are spending your time.

If you are still not sure how you’re spending your time then you should try some program which measures the time you’re spending on the internet and for what. I used RescueTime for a while to track it. It’s great because you can add it to your browser, your phone, and your laptop. But after a while, I deleted it again because I was spending a lot of time checking the statistics.

But it was shocking to me to see all the wasted time I spent on Social Media a week or a month. Each day a little bit didn’t sound like much but the sum at the end of the week or month was really high.

Conclusion

So if you would like to have less stress, pick one or two points from my list and try to implement them in your daily routine. You don’t have to and you shouldn’t try to implement all at once because then it’s more likely that you fail because you get stressed by implementing all of them. Stay calm. Try to implement one or two and if that worked then try the next ones.

I hope I could help you with my list of things I’m doing to have less stress.