Organizational Tips for Disorganized Students
Staying organized in school is an incredibly important part of ensuring you’re able to meet all your deadlines, improve your time management and keep up your mental health.
While it may seem that some people are frazzled because they’re just taking on way too much, the majority of the time it’s because they’re disorganized.
However, by following these tips, you’ll be able to lower your stress levels and keep your productivity high!
1. Keep a Checklist
It might be a classic tip but it’s a damn good one. By creating a checklist, you can organize your thoughts and figure out what’s important in order for you to succeed.
It’s important to remember that your calendar is used for events and deadlines while a checklist is beneficial to know what tasks need to be done.
Tasks differ from deadlines because they are things that need to be done but don’t necessarily need you to be at a certain time or place. Having a checklist or to-do list will help you know what needs to be done on a day-to-day basis.
One good tip is to create your to-do list the night before so the next day you can better organize your day without stress!
Whether it’s 30 minutes or 2 hours, working on different course work throughout your day can reap many rewards. If you set aside the whole day to finish a project, there might be too much pressure to get it all done that day.
Working on the project for an hour across different days in the week will allow you to gauge how much more work needs to be done and you can devote more or less time in your schedule if need be.
Setting one subject per day can be disastrous for your schedule since failing to get enough done can throw the whole week off. This method is best suited for reducing the pressure of each subject. Reading a 70-page chapter of a textbook is far easier when you choose to read 10 pages a day instead of all 70 in one day. Setting goals for each course is another way this method can benefit you.
Having a specific thing you want to achieve each day will make the work more attainable. For example, if you tell yourself that you want to read for biology for 1 hour, you might not know where to start. Instead, you could be more specific and choose to study a couple pages or a certain section of the assigned chapter. This way, you have a place to start and finish that isn’t so ambiguous.
2. Create Your Own Deadlines
Sometimes you get an assignment or a test and you hear about it way in advance. You’ll either hear about it at the beginning of a semester or a month before it's due and you keep saying in your head “oh, I have SO much time before that’s due.” And before you know it, the date is here, you’re scrambling and you’re beating yourself once you’ve realized you should have started it earlier.
One way to help combat this is to create your own deadlines for assignments and projects. Force yourself to have certain aspects done by a date to ensure you’re keeping yourself on track for success. Whether this looks like physically writing out a date on a calendar or setting a reminder on your phone, by keeping these personal deadlines, you hold yourself accountable for your own success.
3. Use a Planner
While a planner might not be for everyone, for some, it is their whole lives. Being able to write down everything you need is a great way to keep yourself organized. One great part of your planner is you can color code it and customize it to how you like it. Try color-coding your planner so you know what is a priority and what’s not.
Keep in mind, having more than one planner can get messy so try to just have one where you can have all your information. In addition, planners are a great way to include extra notes for tasks and deadlines so you don’t forget important details when looking back at what you need to get done.
A productivity app on your phone might be better for someone who is constantly on the go and likes to have their schedule accessible. Having both digital and paper schedules could also work better; it all depends on you. Keeping track of yourself is something that only you can do.
Remember that it’s not just what you have to do day-to-day, but you also have to make sure you’re ready for the next week and the next month. All of this information might seem overwhelming, but you would be even more overwhelmed if you didn't have a plan at all.
A general rule to finding the best method or methods is to find the one that is easy to manage, the one that compels you to keep using it, and the one that keeps you on track. When you find the optimal way to make a schedule, everything starts to feel just a bit easier.
4. Utilize Your Phone
In our digital day and age, it’s easier to feel more comfortable utilizing your technologies than going back to basics. While professors and teachers will constantly remind you of the benefits of handwriting your notes, our technologies are here to make our lives easier so why not use them?
One great tip is to automatically put in all your deadlines and test dates once you receive your syllabus at the beginning of the year! Using your phone to set reminders, create on-the-go checklists and plan deadlines in your calendar is a great way to keep yourself organized.
If you’re constantly finding yourself on your phone or computer, it’s super helpful to have automated reminders to keep you on track of your assignments and deadlines especially if you always have your phone with you. In addition, there are a ton of great apps that are able to help keep you on track!
5. Make Sure That You set Time for Yourself
Post-secondary education can completely overwhelm you and take up all of your time. Make sure that your health and well-being are at the forefront of your daily schedule. What’s the point of going to university if you can’t keep up with the work?
If you have a deadline at the end of the day or a test the next morning, all of your time and attention would be focused on it. Many university students will tell you how they pulled all-nighters or forgot to eat one day because they put school work at the top of their priorities.
Ensuring that you eat well and take enough breaks from your work will keep you from burning out and will lead to better results in your courses.
We commonly see success in our courses as the deciding factors of our future successes. In later years, you will slowly find that this is not the case, yet most of us fall into this trap in first year. We forget that we don’t have other people keeping track of us like we did in high school.
Learning to manage yourself in conjunction with your university schedule will greatly benefit your daily life and your life in years to come.
Struggling to balance life as a student? Check out this video about the 5 best apps to help you stay organized!
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