The beginning of school generally means, for me, a wild scramble to get my life together before it is simply going too fast for me to catch up. Every year, I think that I’ve found The Answer; Google Calendar alerts to my phone (I forgot to add new deadlines and events to the calendar two weeks into this strategy), a daily to-do list in my notes app on my phone (I got sad when I couldn’t complete the whole list in a day and stopped doing it out of spite), a good old-fashioned weekly agenda (not only did I lose it, I forgot that I owned it altogether). What inevitably ensues every time is a game of catch-up with my (extremely forgetful, extremely unmotivated) brain. I have been juggling class schedules, work schedules, meeting times, deadlines, and the (very) occasional social obligation in my head ever since I was old enough to not have my mom keep track of all of that for me, and frankly, I am TIRED.
It is simply a miracle that I am ever on time to anything and that I haven’t missed every deadline for classes. There is no way that a brain like mine, that will forget what I intended to grab from my room by the time I reach the top of the stairs, could ever withstand the sheer force of life as a university student without buckling under pressure.
So this year (I say hopefully and fearfully) is the year of change. I publish this here in the hopes that its existence out in the open, rather than just in my head or on a notepad that no one will ever see, will hold me accountable. This is a survival guide to being organized when you are possibly incapable of ever being organized at all.
Here are my thoughts, out on the page as haphazardly as my schedule usually is in my head. To be organized is a gift to your future self. Sure, it’s easy to not have to keep track of everything on some device or notebook. But the small inconvenience it is for present me is nothing compared to the enormous gift it is for future me. This is how I will try to justify it to myself when the selfish part of me asks: what’s in it for me? Guess what, me? It’s in it for future you.
So, this is the big, revolutionary plan: monthly schedules. Instead of writing things down as they come in a seemingly never-ending cycle of horror, I will lay out just the month in front of me—all the deadlines, all the meetings, all the events. I’m using a big whiteboard calendar and taping it to the back of my door, but anything will work. On the side of this calendar will be a list of monthly goals—by the end of this month, here is what I have to have done, if nothing else.
And because obviously that will not be enough, because I am bound to forget things, the first layer of reinforcement: sticky notes and/or mini whiteboard on my bathroom mirror. These are for the small things that I tell myself to remember, and then never write down anywhere, so I obviously forget. Alternatively, this could be sticky notes on your computer desktop, or a note in your notes app used exclusively to scribble down those little things you know you’ll forget but need to remember.
Obviously, the gaping hole in this plan of mine is there is no strategy for getting all those things that are populating my whiteboard calendar done. Here is what I have learned as an uber-disorganized person: there is no point in setting a daily schedule for myself, because I will always, always ignore it. There is also, unfortunately, no point in ranking my list of things to do by priority, because I will always end up balking at the terrible, daunting thing at the top of the list and then do whatever I can to avoid the list in order to not have to tackle that monster in the number one spot.
So, this is my suggestion for myself and every other similarly disorganized person out there—tackle your disorganization with more disorganization. Which is to say that I will just do things as I please, in any order I’d like, as long as I am actually doing something. Even if that thing is the literal least important thing on the (internal) list, like unsubscribing from email lists that you don’t want to be a part of, at least you are doing a Thing and not avoiding All The Things because you’re scared of the Big Thing!
And finally, as the last layer of reinforcement—pick a friend (even your mom), probably an organized one, who reminds you that this year, you are trying to be organized. This is better than a reminder app on your phone, because it is so easy to dismiss the particular reminders you are trying to avoid that it’s sad. A real, live person is much harder to swipe away, and definitely cares about you more than the app does.
This is it, comrades. We are going to do this. We are going to make a real attempt at organization, and it’s going to feel great.