Productivity and time management for high school students

Maybe this sounds boring, but I enjoy thinking about organization and time management. I haven’t always been good at managing my own time productively—many days I’m still not—but it’s been a part of me for a long time.

I’ve been writing daily to-do lists for at least 30 years. I’ve read and absorbed Getting Things Done, Deep Work, and Everything in its Place. I read every post of David Cain’s Raptitude as soon as it’s published, and I was an early reader of his book How to Do Things. I’ve kind-of done Mission Control. I know the Pomodoro Technique.

I often tell students that the two things they need, for college or anywhere, are a time management system and a meditation routine. Still, I rarely give specific time management advice or recommend specific books or programs. The big problem for those types of books and programs for high school students is that…they’re definitely not written for high school students. They tend to assume family and work roles that are quite different from what most high school students actually have. The thing about time management for students is how little of your time you have control over. It’s about how to manage the time left over from when other people are, for good or ill, managing it for you. While I don’t have a complete guidebook to give you, I would like to point to three main ideas that come up over and over and over again in the guides made for adults.

Write things down! This rule is pretty much universal—everyone agrees: you have to write things down, immediately, in a consistent place. Whenever you get a new school assignment, whenever you make plans to meet anyone, or any other time you think “I need to remember to…” you write it down. Our brains are really good at lots of things, but they are not good at remembering all those details we tell ourselves we will remember. So we need to get into the habit of writing those things down, immediately, in a consistent place. You should have one (or maybe two, but never more than two) places where you write these things down. For most American teens, that’s going to be on your phone. Notes scribbled on little pieces of paper, on the top of homework assignments, or on post-its don’t work. Write things down, immediately, in a consistent place.

Then what? What do you do with everything that’s written down? Every day you go through those notes and do what you need to to do take care of them. Add items to your to-do list. Put things on your calendar. Set up a reminder, send a message. Whatever it is you need to do to get it off the note and into your life, you do that. Daily. Once this becomes routine, you stop forgetting (almost) everything. As soon as you have something to remember, you write it down. Daily you take those written notes and process them. Writing things down, consistently, is the most high-impact thing you can do to increase productivity and organization.

Wake up with the plan already made. You should make each day’s to-do list the night before. You should get the things you need for tomorrow the night before. Instead of waking up wondering what you should be doing and how you’re going to do it, you should wake up with the plan already made. Every night, some time between dinner and going to sleep, do three things.

One, look at your notes from the day. All those times you wrote down something that you need to remember can now be taken care of. Put things on your calendar; put things on your to-do list for tomorrow; set an alarm or reminder. Get all those things off your notes and into your organization so you’re not trying to remember them any longer.

Two, look at your calendar for the next day. Know what classes you have the next day (this is especially important for students with block schedules, where the classes aren’t the same every day), what you’re doing after school, if you have any special appointments or meetings. Know where all you need to be tomorrow.

Three, make your to-do list for the next day. It will probably incorporate things from today’s to-do list that didn’t get done. It will definitely incorporate what’s on your calendar and the things that you do on a regular basis. Wake up the next day with your plan already made. Your plan may change as the day goes on—it probably will. But that’s ok. You can easily go with the flow, because you have a system for writing down anything that comes up and for transferring undone items from today’s to-do list to tomorrow’s.

Keep your work spaces tidy. I’m not Marie Kondo, and I’m not going to tell you to tidy everything you own to reduce it to only the things that “spark joy.” I love high school, but there are a lot of important but joy-less parts of it. I’m not Admiral McRaven, telling you to make your bed first thing every morning. It’s not bad advice, but it’s not my advice. If you want to be organized, productive, and make it easier for you to be successful—however you define success for yourself—then focus first on keeping your work spaces tidy. High school students have several work spaces. Keep your backpack tidy—no loose papers or old snack wrappers. Put everything where it belongs so that you can find what you need when you need it. Keep your home workspace tidy. If you have your own desk, keep it clean so that you can use it easily without losing things. If you do homework and studying at a shared table or desk, clear yourself a space that’s tidy before you begin work. If you do homework and study on your bed, find another place immediately. Your bed is not a good place to do school work.

When you go into other people’s work spaces, you expect them to be tidy. You want your food from a clean kitchen. You want your school hallways and classroom floors to be clean. When you walk into a store you want to be able to find what you’re looking for rather than have merchandise strewn about in random order. If you haven’t already, begin the habit of making your own workspace as tidy, organized, and useful as you want other people’s spaces.

I’ll tell you what I do. I don’t expect it will be perfect for you, and I don’t even think it’s certainly best for me. But sometimes it helps to have examples, so here’s mine.

Every evening I make the next day’s to-do list. I use a Google Doc. Actually, I use six. Since there are so many recurring appointments and tasks that happen on the same day every week, I have a separate to-do list for each weekday and one for the weekend. The moment I pull up my to-do list, it’s already almost completely done. First I just look over it, deleting anything that can obviously go off the list because it’s already completed and adding anything I already remember needs to be added. I’ve got three sections. At the top I have “On the Calendar.” That’s where I write down appointments from the calendar, where I need to be at a certain place at a certain time. Then I have two columns for “Work” and “Home.” Under those headings, I have my list of things I need to do. I have them, roughly, in order of importance so I can start at the top. The first thing on my work to-do list, every day, is “tidy office.” Because I do it daily, it rarely takes more than 60 seconds, but I always do it first so I know I don’t have stray papers or gross half-empty coffee cups on my desk.

With that doc still open, I look at my calendar to make sure I’m not forgetting anything I have scheduled. If there’s something on my calendar not already in the “on the calendar” section of my to-do list, I add it. Then I won’t need to look at my calendar again for a day.

With the doc still open and my calendar still open, I look at my notes in my phone for things to add. Maybe I need to add something to the next day’s to-do-list. Maybe I need to add something to my to-do list several days from now. Maybe I need to add something to my calendar. When I’m done I delete all the notes, close the calendar and print the doc. I feel confident that I have captured everything that needs to be done.

And that’s it. That’s my example. Do I get everything done I should? Rarely. Do I keep myself away from distractions and spontaneous decisions? Rarely. But do I miss appointments or deadlines because I forgot all about them? Very rarely.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Read these related posts:

   The secret to success? Here are two of them!

   Slow down to speed up

   Study in the quiet places

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

A plan for stressed 9th graders

A few weeks ago an old friend got in touch. Her daughter, who is in the 9th grade, is feeling a lot of stress about college admission. Even though it’s still years before she’ll apply to college, she’s already feeling pressure—mostly from her friends and classmates—to build up her resume and be ready for applications. She’s hearing about people deciding to double up on math classes to look more attractive to colleges. She’s wondering if she should be getting started on test prep. She wants to know how to strategize about the “right” clubs to join and the “best” classes to take next year. My friend asked if I could talk to her daughter and help her understand if that’s realistic.

It’s not realistic. Those are not the things a 9th grader ought to be doing.

But I also understand that “don’t listen to what you’re hearing every day, and will be hearing every day for more than two years” is pretty unrealistic. So I talked to her daughter and we put together a plan. We decided to acknowledge that she’s in a place where there is pressure to begin college prep early, and we decided to find a smarter way to go about it than worry about every rumor of “what colleges want.” I put it into a single page that she can print and have with her—in a notebook at school, on her desk at home, or both.

I’m sharing that one page, and I’d like to explain some of it.

The overarching idea: get out of the “am I worthy?” mindset and treat college like a relationship. All of the discussions, whether formal or casual, about what colleges want, how to look good to colleges, and how to make yourself stand out to to colleges have at their core the “am I worthy?” mindset. This mindset believes that preparing for college is all about showing colleges that you are worthy to be accepted, and that acceptance from colleges is a validation of your worthiness. This mindset isn’t healthy, it isn’t realistic, and it isn’t useful. Instead, you have to think of it like a relationship. Consider what it is you want, what you have to offer, and how to make the most of both of those sides and grow as a person. This is what people really mean when they talk about “fit.”

A few guiding rules:

1.     If the only reason to do something is because “it looks good to colleges,” don’t do it. If you want to take extra math or science classes because you really like the subject and are hoping to keep yourself challenged, that’s great. Go for it. If you want to join an honor society, do what it takes to join it. If you want to keep yourself occupied in a lot of different activities, because you have a lot of different interests, by all means do. But don’t do anything of those things just because you have a sense that “it will look good to colleges.” That’s a lousy reason to do something, because it takes up time and energy that can be spent on doing something that’s actually interesting and important to you. When you find out what colleges are looking for in an applicant you won’t find any of them asking students to waste time on unproductive activities. That’s actually the opposite of what they want.

2.     Focus on the qualitative, not numbers. You’re a person, not a resume. It’s a cliche to say “don’t be another statistic.” However, way too many ambitious high school students work really hard to become statistics. They obsess over GPA, test scores, and the number of accolades they can list. Don’t make yourself into a list. Always be thinking about the quality and richness of your experiences, not the numbers.

3.     It’s not the choice you make, it’s how you explain it.

4.     The keys to success are time management and a meditation practice.

5.     Not sure what colleges want? Ask them. People get their ideas about what colleges want from all sorts of places. They rarely get their ideas from colleges themselves. Want to know what a college is looking for in its applicants? Go to the college website. Go to the admission section. They will probably tell you what’s important to them. You can also search for the college’s Common Data Set to see exactly what’s required and important to them. Simply search “[name of college] common data set.” Go to section C, “first-time, first year (freshman) admission,” which will begin somewhere around pages 6-10. Here is an example of a Common Data Set. Begin at page 7. If you have a specific question about admission requirements that isn’t answered on the website or their Common Data Set, email the admission department at that school and ask. Don’t rely on information that isn’t first-hand from the college. Especially don’t rely on fourth-hand information that comes from your friend’s mom’s coworker who talked to “someone in admissions.”

 To do:

Look at writing prompts. Discuss often. How would you answer them now, and how can you improve your answers over the next year and a half? If you feel the need to prepare for college applications early, begin with writing prompts, not GPA or tests. Make these sorts of questions common discussion topics among you, your family, your friends, and your teachers. Don’t actually write essays yet. But think about how you would answer the question now and how you like to be able to answer the question by your senior year. Here are some samples to get started.

o   “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?” (from Common Application)

o   “Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.” (from Common Application)

o   “Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?” (from Common Application)

o   “Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major?” (from UT Austin)

o   “Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved.” (from Georgetown University)

Have five go-to colleges for looking things up. Don’t let “colleges” be abstract. Have several in mind, several that you’ve gotten to know. These don’t need to be colleges you will necessarily apply to—you have time to figure that out. But have a list to work with. Get on their mailing list; get to know their website; look them up in guides. Change as often as you like, but always have a list of around five. Here are some to begin with. I picked these almost randomly to get variety. A large public university and a small liberal arts college. Northeast, Atlantic Coast, Mid-west, and California. Places where you might major in art or major in business. Again, make your own list of five, but always have a list of five that you’re familiar with.

o   University of Michigan Ann Arbor

o   Skidmore College

o   William & Mary

o   Santa Clara University

o   Carnegie Melon University

Deepen your relationship with a mentor (including, if necessary, finding one). If you have at least one adult who is not a family member and who you can go to for advice, deepen your relationship with that person. Make an effort to talk to them more often and ask more questions. Discuss the essay prompts above with them. If you don’t yet have a mentor, whether formal or informal, think about how and where you might find one. Sometimes mentors just happen into your life. Sometimes you have to work to find them.

Read more texts, and read more difficult texts. By “text,” I don’t just mean books. Books are great, but they’re not the only kind of text. Whatever you like—books, music, art, video games, poetry, history, science, sports—spend more time with them, and push yourself to deeper understanding. The key here is to study what you love. Don’t only study things that are forced upon you, and don’t let the things you love only be passive distraction. If “study” and “things you love” sound like complete opposites to you, then you’re definitely not ready for college. The more you combine studying with the things you love, the more prepared you’ll be.

Want more? Some places to look for college advice and a better understanding of how the process works:

Apply with Sanity newsletter

Selingo, Who Gets In and Why

Newport, How to Be a High School Superstar

Georgia Tech admission blog

Notes from Peabody: the UVA Admission Blog

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Zoe Herring.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.