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:

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2. Read these related posts:

   The secret to success? Here are two of them!

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Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

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The secret to success? Here are two of them!

May 1st will soon be come and gone, and I’ll done thinking about the class of 2021. Time to focus on ‘22!

So let’s look at two things that will increase your success. It’s not strictly about college admissions, though it can help you immensely with the college application journey. It can also help you be a better college student and a calmer person after college. There are two things you need for success in high school, college, and beyond: a meditation routine and a time management system. Maybe need is a strong word. You can get by without either of these things—many people do. But I promise that a meditation routine and time management system will never be a waste of your time or effort.

Meditation. Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are very popular at the moment, and for good reason. I’ve been falling in and out of my own mindfulness meditation habit for 20 years, so I’m obviously a fan. But it’s not the only type of meditation that you might consider. I’m using the broadest possible meaning of meditation: any repeated activity that allows a person to focus their mind for the purpose of relaxation and/or awareness.

There’s mindfulness meditation, mantra meditation, loving kindness meditation, body scan meditation, and many more. Meditation is commonly associated with Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Many meditation practices are completely secular, even if they originated in Hindu or Buddhist religions. There are also Christian, Jewish, and Muslim contemplative prayer traditions. There’s a meditation routine to fit any body, any belief, and any community. There are ways to meditate sitting, standing, walking, even running.

The important part is to completely disconnect on a regular basis. Disconnect from the noise and activity around you. Disconnect from your critical inner voice. Disconnect from all the thinking about the past and the future. Disconnect from everything that prevents you from relaxing and raising your self-awareness. Sleep also helps you disconnect, and sleep is essential. But sleep isn’t focused, and many of us don’t experience sleep as a way to get away from stress or anxiety. Meditation, however, is focused and intentional. So don’t assume that sleep is all the relaxation and disconnecting you need. (You’re probably not getting enough sleep anyway.)

Meditation works best when it’s a regular routine. Daily is better than occasional. Five minutes, twice a day is better than an intense weeklong retreat every few years.

What’s so great about meditation? It helps control stress and anxiety. It promotes the ability to focus. It may make you healthier. If you’re a spiritual believer, it helps you attain spiritual awareness. It makes different people more focused and happier in different ways, but a meditation routine, once you find the right one for you, will make you more focused and happier.

Recommendations. There are an overwhelming number of meditation books, meditation classes, guided meditations, and websites exploring meditation of all sorts. If you need a place to begin, try the Calm app or Andrew Weiss’s book Beginning Mindfulness: Learning the Way of Awareness. I think it’s better to start any meditation routine while you search for the best fit rather than wait until you find the best fit before you begin.

Time management system. Ours is a culture with too much. Too much stuff, too much to do, too many choices, too many distractions, too many solutions that never quite solve the problems. That’s a blessing; I’d rather be in a place with too much than not enough, and too many people within our culture still don’t have enough of the things that are important. But our abundant culture also has challenges—lack of sleep, lack of direction, anxiety, missing out on important things and people, self-destructive habits. This is why we need a time management system. As a high school teacher I told countless classes that the secret to doing well in college is time management. It’s something a lot of people say. But that doesn’t mean that we’re good at teaching time management.

Like meditation, there are so many ways to go about it. There are programs and systems for managing your time, and they often contradict each other. There’s not a single solution that fits everyone. The different systems use some combination of to-do lists, calendars, inboxes, notepads, routines, rewards and notes, but there are two main ideas almost universal to productivity management.

The first main idea is that you have to get your organization outside of your brain. Get your thoughts onto paper, or a note on your phone, or a calendar. But get these things, literally, outside of your body. The more you’re asking your brain to keep up with all your commitments, all the things you have to do, all the things you want to do, and all the things you hope to do, the less energy is left for your brain to focus on the thinking that it needs to do at the moment.

Imagine you’re very, very rich, and you can hire people to do most things for you. A personal shopper buys your clothes, and a helper has them ready for you each morning. A chef makes all your meals, housekeepers keep your home clean and looking good, a secretary takes care of all your planning, and someone drives you everywhere. You literally have no decisions to make or things to do that you don’t choose for yourself. Imagine how much time and energy you can focus on the projects you want to focus on! Very few of us have that much money, but the time management systems we put in place serve the same purpose. By spending 30 minutes each day reviewing what you need to do the next day and making a plan, you can maximize the time you spend on what you want to do, minimize the on-the-spot decisions you have to make, and make it less likely you’ll be unprepared for whatever is in front of you. But if you’re constantly trying to remember what you need to do, where you need to be, and what you should have done to be ready for it, you’re always behind and not spending much mental energy on what’s important to you in the moment. Any routine that gives you more time doing what you want to do and less time trying to keep up with what you need to do is a good thing. Explore your options.

The second main idea is that you have to use your system consistently. A time management system that you only use some days doesn’t work. A way to keep track of your assignments and appointments that you only check sometimes doesn’t work. You have to be consistent, or the organization doesn’t actually get out of your brain—you’re still trying to keep track of everything in your head when you could be focused on other things.

Take, as a simple example, my car keys. My car keys are always in one of only two places. They’re either in my left pants pocket, or they’re in the top drawer of my bedroom dresser. I never set them down anywhere else. It took some self-training to get myself to that point, but I did it. And now I never lose my keys or waste time looking for my keys. I also spend exactly zero mental energy thinking about where my keys are—it’s just a habit. But it wouldn’t work if I only put my keys in the same place half the time. Even if I mostly put my keys in my dresser, but sometimes left them on the kitchen table or in the bathroom, then I would either end up spending some time looking for my keys or a lot of mental energy trying to keep myself aware of where my keys are.

The same is true of your homework assignments or deadlines for college application materials. If every time you get an assignment or a deadline you write it down in your calendar, and you check your calendar daily, then you never miss a due date or deadline. And you don’t have to spend any mental energy keeping track of them, because you know they’re in your calendar. But if you only get your assignments and to-do items written down half the time, then it’s not much better than writing them down never.

Recommendations. All of my recommendations for time management systems are books: Daniel J. Levitin’s The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload; David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity; Laura Vanderkam’s Juliet’s School of Possibilities: A Little Story about the Power of Priorities; James Clear’s Atomic Habits; and Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Also: watch this.

People often ask me for tricks and tips for getting into the college of their choice. I usually have to tell them that college admissions doesn’t work that way, and I definitely don’t work that way. The best way to get into a good college is to be a good high school student. But forming a meditation routine and using a time management system will definitely help you be a better high school student and get into college. They’ll also help you be a better college student. And a better employee and a better leader. So, you know, put that on your to-do list.

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. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts:

   Your parents’ fears and wishes

   Set goals for the new school year

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.