If you can’t stay organized in college, you’re going to struggle to succeed while you’re in school. Not only will you miss deadlines and flunk exams, but you’ll also forget to do your laundry or pay the rent. In extreme circumstances, a lack of organization can be the reason you fail to complete your studies.
The good news is that if you want to stay organized, you’ve already taken a significant first step by reading this article. As long as you have the desire to be organized, you put the time in and you follow a few basic rules, there’s no reason why you can’t be organized. Even if you’ve never shown the knack for it before.
And so with that in mind, let’s get started. Here are six of the best ways to stay organized in college.
1. Organize your Computer
At the start of every semester, you should take some time to organize your computer by setting up folders for your work. Create backups, ensuring that you have all of the software that you need and clearing your desktop. Consider opening up a Dropbox or Google Drive account or using tools like Google Docs to make sure that everything that you do is automatically backed up. It’ll save you time in the long run because it’ll be easier and more efficient to work. It’ll also give you a little peace of mind in case your computer crashes since you won’t lose any work.
2. Make a Schedule
If you make a plan that outlines exactly what you intend to do and when you want to do it, it gives you something to follow. Just remember that a plan is only any good as long as you stick to it, so hold yourself responsible for following the plan. Make sure to have regular check-ins to see whether you’re still on target.
3. Keep Your Desk Clean
In the same way that keeping your virtual desktop clean on your computer can help reduce the number of distractions, keeping your physical desk clean can help you focus on the task at hand. After all, how are you supposed to focus on essay writing and revision if there’s clutter all around you?
4. Check Your Emails
Get into the habit of checking your emails every day. If you struggle to remember then consider doing it at the same time every day. This is where you’ll receive confirmation about everything from course changes to updates to your tenancy agreement. If you fail to be on top of them, you’ll quickly find that you’re losing your grip on both life and school.
5. Get a Whiteboard
Even if you use a digital planner, it’s also a good idea to get a physical whiteboard and to duplicate your key dates and deadlines on to the whiteboard. You can store important notes on there and anything that you’re struggling to memorize.
6. Take Care of Yourself
Finally, while getting good grades and making sure that you’re organized is a good idea, you also need to know when to take time off to have fun. Take care of yourself! If you have to, schedule time that you can spend doing whatever you need to do to relax. Even if it’s just to watch Netflix and chill out.
With the right mindset and the knowledge that you’ve learned today, there’s nothing to stop you from going ahead and getting as organized as you possibly can. Don’t treat it as just a one-off task, though. Organization and productivity need to be ongoing efforts that become habits. Otherwise, you’ll end up buying calendars and not updating them or spending time tidying your room when you should be studying.
The good news is that if you master these skills now, they’ll give you a head start when you enter the workplace. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to start getting organized today.
Featured photo by Estee Janssens on Unsplash
Thanks for such an in-depth post on How To Stay Organized In College. I wanted to add because this is not in the article, a situation from my personal experience. I had a persuasive essay examples for college project, and at that time I was completely unorganized, believe me, if you have a large-scale project, it is better to divide it into a detailed plan and follow the points. This will help you!
Excellent Post! I really appreciate the author for sharing such great tips to stay organized at college. As a college student, I hope this information will be helpful to me. Basically, I am following another useful website https://myacademicprogram.com/ that was specially made for college students. I have been got various academic writing tips and support from this blog that helps to improve my study performance in college. Thank you very much for this useful article.
your advice really helps a lot, but I also wanted to add that it will be very helpful for you to start keeping a calendar. Because with it you will not forget important dates and you can easily organize your day. Therefore, here is a good site where there are many beautiful and practical calendar designs for printing: https://printablecalendar.net/ I am sure you will like them and you will be satisfied with the way you manage your time