Summer has ended and students are ready to tackle the new school year. You have all of your school supplies including the ol’ planner. Each year your trusty planner has successfully managed to keep you organized and on track all semester long…unless you’re like me.
Every school year I would purchase a planner, hoping to be like many of my peers who would write in them every day and have perfect grades but alas, it never worked. Another year, another planner and another unsuccessful attempt at staying organized in my classes.
As I grew older, I developed my own ways of keeping myself organized without the use of your typical planner. Some of these methods are quirky while others are more orthodox organizational methods. So, here are my ways of staying organized when planners just don’t work.
Get organized with Color Coding
This is a more common method of staying organized but it has always helped me. Assigning colors to different classes makes it easier to purchase the materials needed for class and it always helps me keep myself a little more organized. When I need something for a specific class, I always know what color to look for.
Update your phone calendar
While this method is like using a planner, I feel like it is more beneficial for a few reasons. Planners have limited writing space for each day and if you happen to have a lot of assignments due on one day, shorthand is needed to fit everything in. Phone calendars are also handy because you receive reminders that something is due, unlike a planner.
Get organized with Alarms
I set alarms on my phone and assign them an “Alarm Name” for a quick nudge to finish assignments. I frequently use this method when I know I need to finish my class work within a couple of days. This method is convenient because the alarm can be snoozed until you are able to work on the assignment or the time when the alarm will sound can be adjusted. It is also nice because it is like the alarm is hollering at you to be a more productive student.
Text your friends
I use this method quite a lot. If I need to remind myself to do something, I will text someone that I speak with often with a list of everything I intend to work on. I don’t always send the message though; sometimes simply writing the draft is good enough because I will still see it and they won’t receive an odd text.
Write on your hand
This method is more old school, but it still can be useful. If I am too lazy to write a task into my phone or if I don’t know the date the assignment is due, I just write it on my hand. If I feel like being a productive student that day, I might even choose to complete the assignment the same day I wrote the note on my hand but that doesn’t happen often.
Get organized with your Browser
Typically, after using a browser, the user closes it but I will often leave my browser open with multiple tabs pulled up. The tabs are usually on specific pages such as on a discussion board post or research for a paper. I do it with word documents and my programming applications too as a reminder that the assignments on these tabs need to be completed before I exit out of them.
Utilize sticky notes
I usually don’t use sticky notes, but the concept is the same. Instead, I use clingy thingies, which stick to everything and they can be reused. I jot down a note and stick them to my laptop or somewhere else that I see often. Once I have finished the task, I erase it and then use it again. Clingy thingies are used with expo markers. When they are losing their stick, I just run them under water to clean them.
Hopefully this list of quirky organizational methods will help someone stay organized when planners have failed them once again.
Keep up the productivity on the off season with our article “A Productive Summer”.
(Photo by Meah Blackmon)