It's May. Tied with early December, it is the most stressful time of the year for college and high school students. Finals threaten to bury us alive. We succumb to terrible feelings of discouragement and, "oh why didn't i do this earlier" procrastination. Stress dominates our brains, and it just hurts. Even worse, it can be detrimental to our health, causing tension, headaches, bad eating habits, and the increased risk of diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

When we face stress, it is important that we reduce it in order to perform better during exams, projects, and essays. An effective way to do this is to find what triggers stress for you. And during the last weeks of school, figuring out how to get through a mountain of homework is often the first trigger for stress.

In order to stay positive during finals, a game-plan must be created. Find a way to study for those exams and complete those assignments. To-do lists can be the best tool to organize the mind. However, very few people can stick to a "1-2-3-4-5-6" to-do list. This past year, all I've done is create to-do list after to-do list, only to not follow through with any of them. However, this is how you write a to-do list that actually works and makes you feel productive.

Your list should only consist of 3 tasks.

List 3 tasks as your priorities. Only focus on these, so when it's time to start working on these tasks, you do not feel overwhelmed. And when you finish, you feel like the most productive being on the planet! If you have trouble with only focusing on your 3-task list, grab a sheet of paper and write every single task that you need to get done at some point. Put that sheet away. Go back to it when you have finished your top three tasks.

The problem with most to-do lists is that we write so many things on it, we don't know where to start. Therefore, it becomes useless. We end up doing nothing we set out to do in the first place, which is a lot worse than completing three major tasks with a shortened to-do list.

I have used this technique only three times. A 3-task to-do list has definitely made a difference in how I work and how I feel about work.