I’ve spent the last two week swamped with school work, clubs, extracurricular activities and life. I’ve had very little time for myself. Here are some of the little things that keep me going every day.

1. Accountability Partner

Ever since I posted about getting some of my followers to hold me accountable, for getting my training in and making sure I hit my macro’s daily, my progress has excelled. Anna has been keeping me accountable almost daily, and it’s helped keep me consistent.

There is a terrific community of fit bloggers on tumblr, these people are amazing. Use that to your advantage, comment on posts, message them, get involved with this incredible community. Your progress will skyrocket, and hey you might meet some very cool people.

Go get yourself an accountability partner.

2. Moleskine Notebook

If I ever have free time between classes, I’ll sit down outside and take a few minutes to jot down ideas in my moleskin while listening to music. While my moleskine is full of ideas for website/products/blog posts they can pretty much be used for anything, even just to jot some thoughts down. Also, while school work and sports are important I think it’s important for everyone to have their own side project to work on. Something you’re interested in, I’m currently working on programming arduino micro controllers and building an alarm clock out of it. Find something you like doing, and go practice it. Write out ideas and thoughts, and then go do it. It’s important to have work to do outside of school work.

3. A Good Pair of Headphones and Turntable.fm

Music is my favorite way to escape from the world. Whether it’s for a quick five minutes commute from class to class, or for two hours spent laying on my bed listening to music. A good pair of headphones makes all the difference, the crispness of the sound, and the rumble of the bass and the complete silencing of any outside noise. I highly recommend making the investment in a good pair of over the ear headphones. Take a look at this list.

Turntable.fm is like a virtual dj room. You have five dj’s each gets takes their turn at playing a song, and you get to vote it up or down for points that give the DJ the ability buy new outfits for his character. Compared to Spotify, Pandora and all the other music discovery services out there, this is by far my favorite. From the “Indie While You Work” to the “Dubstep” room, some of the music played on this website is absolutely terrific. I usually leave it running in the background, and if there’s a song I like I’ll pop in to the tab jot the song down, and upvote it. Turntable is still in it’s beta, you can get into it as long as you have a facebook account though.

4. Fitness Blogs

There are some terrific fitness blogs out there. My three favorites are Nate Green’s personal blog, Nerd Fitness and Valhalla Training Systems blog (which is undergoing a huge overhaul soon). These three websites provide great information, outside of the hard scientific backed articles of elitefts and t-nation. These guys provide great life-hacking articles, and I learn something new from every article that comes out.

5. Yelp and Indie Food

A meal swipe at my dining halls is the equivalent of 13$ Thirteen dollars. Do you know what kind of good, non-shitty food I can get outside of my dining halls with thirteen dollars? No? You don’t? Well, thirteen dollars can get you a big plate of absolutely delicious stir fry. I’ve gotten into yelping and indie food. I love walking into a small restaurant and eating good hearty food. You’d be surprised how cheap some of these places can be as well. Yes, I’m a college student and I’m very close to broke. But these are usually much cheaper alternatives to eating in the dining hall or at the crappy fast food restaurants on campus. Every week, I try a new restaurant.

Get yourself a yelp account, and go out exploring your city.