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.
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