If you’re anything like me, you have everything from classwork and actual work to meetings, presentations, laundry, and social time on your daily to-do list. We all know how hectic school can get and how quickly it can become difficult to keep up. I’ve come up with a few tips that have helped me stay organized and on task each day, and I hope that they can help you too!
1. Sticky Notes – I love sticky notes because they’re easy to collect and carry around throughout the day! I tend write out daily task lists and stick them to my laptop, planner, and or notebooks so that I always have them with me. Try getting ones in fun colors or shapes (those donut-shaped sticky notes are the cutest) that will catch your eye!
2. Academic Planner – As helpful as daily sticky notes can be, I also like to be able to visualize long-term scheduling to make sure I have things planned out ahead of time. Utilizing an academic planner helps me keep track of assignments, deadlines, and tests so I always know what’s coming down the pike! Our Features co-editor Carly suggests using those fun sticky notes in combination with your planner can make using it more fun and effective!
3. Calendar App – A good planner is great for keeping up with deadlines and daily tasks, but I find that the calendar app I use on my phone is crucial for helping me stay on top of meetings, class times, and more. While physical calendars are awesome, my calendar app is way more helpful for me because I (usually) have my phone in front of me, and the automatic notifications are definitely not something you can get from a physical calendar! I just had to switch calendar apps (which was a very traumatic experience by the way) and am currently using Tiny Calendar. So far, it’s been great because it syncs with my gmail calendar and offers natural language input (for example, if you type “dinner with mom on Saturday at 4pm” in the description, it will automatically start filling in fields for you) and multiple views. Our Profiles editor Kellyn also suggests Trello, a fun app (and website) that allows you to create multiple visual checklists, which can function similarly to a calendar.
4. Goal Lists – My latest planner has a special section called “Top 3” that I’ve really fallen in love with… We all have a million things on our to-do lists, and sometimes getting to all of them in one day just isn’t realistic. One thing that’s helped me is ranking items on my to-do list according to time sensitivity or picking out 2-3 of the most important things to focus on each day. This way, even if you don’t accomplish everything on the list, you’re more likely to get the most essential things completed, which is a great feeling! Trust me, accomplishing one or two really hefty tasks feels so much better than accomplishing 5 little things on your list and realizing at the end of the day that you didn’t get to any of the bigger, more important stuff!
Remember, school is tough, but you are tougher! If you can stay on top of your day-to-day activities, you’ll be miles ahead of the game. So best of luck, and here’s to a kick-ass fall semester!
XOXO – HC