Having OCD isn’t fun. It’s something I’ve struggled with for a while, and it changes the way I live my life, whether I like it or not. My day is a routine, and everything I do goes according to plan. Not that my obsession with being organized has made me a professional in any aspect, but if someone finds themselves always being disorganized, I feel that I’ve picked up a few tips in my time to help. If you’re always arriving late, procrastinating on work, not cleaning up after yourself, or you have other organizational problems, here’s some tips on how to improve.
1. Keep Track of Time
Assignments always come out of nowhere, even when they’re on the syllabus, when you don’t plan ahead of time. Make note of things that are going to be due, even if it’s not for another week, or even month. There’s plenty of ways to keep track of time, whether in a journal, or in a calendar app, or anywhere else you please. Make sure it’s somewhere you look at often, and won’t neglect. This will help you stop doing work last minute and having your grade suffer.
2. Plan Ahead
If you have a lot of things happening around the same time, plan things ahead. Three projects the same week, and two exams the same day? Can do, just work ahead of time. This doesn’t just apply to work. If you have meetings, errands, and a confusing list of things to do, write everything down. Print a blank schedule and figure out how long each thing will take, or just make a list you can check off. It helps make you stay sane to see things being done.
3. Create a Rewards and Punishments System
This is something that has worked for me since the beginning of high school, and it works for anything. Whether you’re slacking off on school work, studying, going to the gym, cleaning your messes, or anything else. All you need to do is follow a strict rewards and punishments system, and it’s simple. Finish a task in time, and do a good job at it? Go do something you love. Go shopping, eat out somewhere, go on a walk, play a video game, watch a movie, anything. Procrastinate a task or skip it completely, you don’t get to reward yourself, and you can even take away something. No ice cream that day, you have to stay up an extra hour and do work, and more things. Just stay healthy, please. Don’t be stupid.
4. Change Your Environment
Usually there’s a reason why you’re disorganized. Maybe you can’t get work done because you’re too tired, you have other things on your mind, or something else. Move around when you’re doing important tasks. Don’t stay on your bed all the time, but sit in a lounge, study room, the library, the Bird’s Cage, the Sacred Space, or somewhere outside the BSC or lake. Changing the environment often can clear your mind and help you focus.
5. Break It Up Into Small Sections
More than just writing your tasks in a list, breaking things up makes it a lot less stressful to do it all. Don’t try to finish and start a huge essay in a few hours, write one paragraph per day for a week or so. Do this with all the things you have to do. Think of it as waiting for your room to get to an absolute disaster to clean it, versus picking up something once you drop it, so it never gets messy.
6. Don’t procrastinate stopping procrastination. Start now. Yes, now.
College procrastination is a whole new level compared to high school procrastination, because now you live right next to your classes, and home and school life combine into one. Maybe you can’t focus, you hate doing work, or a number of things. It’s time to stop slacking this semester. Not doing work on time is a real problem, and I’m an education major, I know these things. You think staying up all night doing an essay the night before will get you a good great, sure, but your mental health won’t be doing too well. The easiest way to stop procrastinating is to just take care of yourself.
Stop fighting it. You are your worst enemy, and you should be the number one person who’s taking care of yourself. An organized room, and an organized workload, equals an organized life. Getting control over the tasks you have to do this semester can help narrow down your stress and anxiety over your workload, which is always a plus.