Get organized and write more things down this semester

Even though the semester just began, it won’t be long before the homework piles up.

The best course of action during the slow beginning is to plan ahead and get organized. A planner doesn’t need to be aesthetic to be effective, as long as it works. Whether it’s a digital tool or physical agenda, an organizational system is a cheat code for the semester.

 As a senior at SVSU, I’ve tried and failed at my organizational systems. One “system” I lived by was counting on my (poor) memory for homework deadlines and exams. I mean, why not? The Canvas dashboard always served as a helpful reminder in case I forgot.

I cannot stress this enough: the Canvas dashboard is not reliable. While it is helpful, it doesn’t record everything. For example, some professors have separate due dates for initial posts and responses for discussion assignments that might not appear as an official due date. It’s necessary to track these essential items in a separate place – and no, you’re not going to remember it off the top of your head.

When it comes time to sit down and do homework, it takes an intense level of mental effort to recall tasks and prioritizes. Inevitably, things will slip through the cracks and grades will suffer. But consider what it’s like to sit down for homework and the to-do list is at your disposal, and there’s no need to panic about where to start.

This separate place doesn’t have to be an aesthetic, personally customized $50 planner, either. It can be a combination of iPhone reminders, notes in a notepad, and a not-so color-coded planner. It all comes down to creating a place of function over form where it’s possible to: record due dates all in one place, break large tasks into smaller ones, and designate times to complete tasks. With those boxes checked, it doesn’t matter how it looks.

While it’s popular to have a perfectly curated workspace on a tool like Notion to match personal aesthetics and tastes, people get lost in tutorials, designs, and aesthetics, and the overwhelm leads to abandonment. Instead of relying on perfection, grab a free template or make a simple, unaesthetic list to get started and learn the tool, or any tool of interest.

Whatever system or tool it might be, just write more things down — it’ll save time and mental energy later.