The driving question of the project was “What strategies can I use to maintain balance in my life and support my own well-being?”

There are many strategies that I can and do use to balance my life between school assignments, extracurricular activities and leisure time. The first strategy I use is to create a to do list  in things, instead of just writing the task down, I split it into several steps that make it easier to complete over a period of time. For example, if I had an essay and it was due in 6 days, I dedicate 1 day for each paragraph of the essay and on the last day I would edit it all. This has proven very helpful for completing my homework to the best of my abilities because I give myself more time to complete work to perfection or as close to it as I can. Things is another app that has proven to be one of my favourite apps time and time again. It helps me remember assignments and makes it easier to plan out my time well. This project we focused on clearing our backlog, and we learned how to be more organized in our lives and we became our new selves for the start of the school year . 

The first thing we did was reflect on Grade 9. We reflected on the good, bad, shrug and ugly. In the black I have all the educational/school things that happened and in the red I have all the stuff from my personal life. I felt that a lot of things actually went well last year and reflecting on it made that feeling tangible.

During this project we researched on how to increase happiness in our life, we watched a Ted Talk called “The Happiness Advantage” I will link the video Here. This video taught me about how Happiness is internal and not the product of external gratification. You need to be able to be proud of your accomplishments to truly be happy, instead of constantly pushing yourself and forgetting how much you have already accomplished. Being truly happy and content with your life helps you focus better while working and it allows for you to create your best work. 

The main part of this project was about organizing both our, real life and our digital life. The first thing I did was organize my calendar. I created time blocks for all my classes, and I added upcoming events, I also colour coordinated the events, purple for school, blue for extracurricular activities and pink for specific assignments. 

 I reorganized my things app and worked on getting into a habit of always updating my things when I got new assignments. In my things app I added different sections, Homelife, Maker, Humanities, Art and Spanish. In each of sections I can put my to-dos for that subject and then quickly be able to access them. 

My next task was to organize my iPad files. I organized all my documents into different folders. I made folders for many of my app documents like pages, numbers and keynote. I also made folders for my old projects, personal photos and important documents. 

I had noticed that a lot of my notifications had been building up, especially in my Mail app. I went through all my notifications and cleared out all my junk mail.

I realized that my problem with all the notifications is that I get a lot of junk mail, so to solve this problem I used the V.I.P option that the mail offers. Now I can check all my important mail as soon as possible and when I have extra time I can go through the rest. 

I also needed to clear my mental backlog. This basically means that I need to clear my mental stress from work, life and school. Some tactics I came up with were…

1. Before I go to sleep, I’m going to write my goals for tomorrow in a note pad.

2.Before I leave to go to school, I’m going to take five minutes to meditate/relax to help   my brain focus when in class.

3.Plan for every Sunday night to have a period of time in the evening for “Self-Care”. In this period. I can do whatever I want without being stressed. Some examples of self-care are having a bath, exercise, meditate or watch a movie.

4.Ask for help when I need it. Sometimes we can’t handle everything ourselves and that can be stressful, so it is important to have a back-up plan and be willing to ask for help.  So, if I need more time for school, I may need to ask for help in other areas of my life.

All these systems are good for a temporary fix, but I wanted these systems to be something permanent. So, I came up with multiple ideas on how I could continue these habits for the rest of my high-school career. Every night at from 6:15-6:30, I’m going to take time to organize my things, emails and messages, and I’m going to make sure I’m up to date on all my assignments.I also have a plan of continuing my progress growth by journaling on Mondays,Wednesday and Fridays throughout the year so when it’s time to reflect on the year I have detailed journal entires of my growth. This will make projects like the Mpols and Tpols significantly easier.

You might be wondering what “Progress growth journaling” is. Well for the entirety of this project we have been keeping a journal, each day of the week is a different topic. 

Mondays- Meditation (We would do class meditation and then write our thoughts about it)

Tuesdays- Act of Kindness (We would have a task every Tuesday to do something kind in our neighbourhood, after we completed it we would reflect on how it made us feel)

Wednesdays- Exercise (We would do a class workout/walk and we would reflect on how it changed our emotions and affected our day)

Thursday- Journaling (We were given a random topic every Thursday and we would have to write about it)

Friday- Acts of gratitude (We would reflect on our days; I would write about what made me thankful and what made me happy that day) 

After this entire project I have decided that there are certain systems that I want to keep using and some that I do not. I want to keep using the things app because that worked extremely well for me, it helped me remember my assignments and I felt way more organized. Another tactic that I want to keep is updating my calendar. This helped me stay on top of events especially when I had a busy week. The one tactic that I want to get rid of is journaling every weekday, I still want to keep a journal that I write in once or twice a week but not every single day. 

This project has helped me with my organization and agency. I have been able to take better care into my learning and have been better at not procrastinating my work. I do struggle with remembering my work and I want to work on my time management, this project has given me a start on this journey and hopeful if I can keep these habits up I will be able to prosper.