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Fresh Ideas to Help Students Get Organized in 2018

 ( Photo by Yingchou Han on Unsplash )

Nearly half of high school students attending private schools are chronically stressed. Juggling three plus hours of homework each day on top of sports, government, and clubs is enough to make anyone grapple with anxiety and feel as if they are treading water to the finish line.

With the pressure to attend a prestigious college, it wouldn’t be surprising if students in public, charter, and home schools feel the same way.

Once students go to college, the same stressful process happens all over again, as they put together the best portfolio possible for grad school. When does this madness end?

While we may not be able to banish stress, we can definitely learn how to manage it better, with organization being top priority. You see, the more organized students are, the more in control they’ll feel about their workload.

That being said, here are 3 ideas to help students get and—more importantly—stay organized this year.

 

1. Use Time Management Apps

Wunderlist, Trello, and Stay Focus are a few useful time management apps students can use to manage multiple deadlines and activities.

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is more list-based; students type out their to-dos in their folders (i.e. Today, Week, etc.). Wunderlist has synchronizing features, which means students can receive updates via email about important to-dos that are coming up.

Trello

Like Wunderlist, Trello is list-oriented; however, whereas students can only look at one list at a time on Wunderlist, they can create and view several boards with all of their to-dos on Trello. Trello also has synchronizing capabilities so you can get updates via email and text about upcoming events and deadlines.

Stay Focus

Think of Stay Focus as the Pomodoro Technique time management app. Basically, it breaks tasks down into 25-minute (or less) increments. Students click on the timer and work on that task for the set time increment. Once the time is up, students are rewarded with up to a 5-minute break.

 

2. Set a Personal Deadline

Students are juggling several deadlines; it’s bound for one to slip through. To prevent a late assignment, students need to set personal deadlines a few days ahead of the official deadline.

While there is some wiggle room with personal deadlines, students need to treat them as if they are official. Not doing so defeats the purpose of creating one.

The reason why personal deadlines are a must is that should you wind up with a cold or your car breaks down, you don’t have to worry about doing that assignment feeling miserable or having to quickly catch the bus to study for that test. You have a few days to spare.

 

3. Don’t Rule out a Physical Planner

In the world of online calendars and synchronizing multiple devices, it’s easy to dismiss the reliable planner. However, we recommend that you buy one and use it anyways (along with your Google Calendar or ICalendar). Here’s why.

Let’s say you forget your computer or your phone, or the Internet is down or your computer crashes. Should any of the above happen, you have a back-up: your planner. You can still flip through the pages and know where you need to be tomorrow and when you need to take that Psychology test.

 

Photo by Josefa nDiaz on Unsplash

Final Thoughts

High School and college do not have to be stress-inducing times for students. In fact, with a little time management and organization help, you’ll look back at these memories with a smile (not dread).

For more information on college success, go here. What other organizational tips do you recommend? How did they help you manage assignments and extra circulars? Comment below.

 

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