A (brief) Survival Guide: Organizational Skills Presented to you by your friendly tHSS officers – Ashley, Jaime, and Faith

Moment of Truth… How many of you felt extremely organized last semester? Did you have your time management under control? Did you tend to miss assignment deadlines or found yourself emailing professors for extensions? How many of you feel as if you could’ve done more? Did you accept responsibility when you would make these mistakes? When you completed an assignment, were you pleased with the final product? *Ask questions and have them raise their hands for yes*

Methods of Improvement Academic Planner/Agenda Calendar Physical or digital Push-notifications Filing Systems Color-coding Sticky-noting and “?”s Tidying up *Show your personal planner* Notice how I crossed out things I accomplished or dates as they passed. This may sound silly, but physically checking something off – no matter how mundane the task – is a stepping stone for a good daily rhythm. Pretty soon some of the more simple tasks will become habits to you to where you probably won’t have to write them down in the first place! Calendar: If you don’t like carrying around a planner with you, you can always invest in a pin-up or desk calendar to write down deadlines. Most phones also have a built-in calendar app to where you can set reminders, edit frequency, color-code everything, etc. For example, I have a bill due every 25th of each month. I color-coded that green and set the frequency to once a month. You can also set the frequency of the reminders. I personally prefer writing things down as opposed to looking at my phone because I have a tendency to dismiss notifications. However, some people really do prefer using technology to keep them in check. Notifications: What I mean by this term is more or less directed to email notifications. By linking my phone to my email, I am able to see emails from my professors or concerning important matters right away. Filing Systems: Examples of a physical filing system would be dividers, accordion binders, and paper storage racks. Examples of a virtual filing system would be separate folders in your email or on your computer files Color-coding: Do NOT be ashamed to color-code! Again, this provides a satisfying visual for your brain that more often than not causes you to feel like you are very organized. You can delegate a specific color out to each class or you could even do a small scale version of color-coding by highlighting important things in specific colors. I personally prefer my classes to be different colors, but some prefer all of their exams to be red no matter the class. It is all about preference on this one folks! Sticky-noting: This may seem confusing but let me explain. Have you ever had a question you wanted to ask so you wrote it down, but couldn’t remember where you put it? I realized over time that I would forget about my questions unless I ensured I would see it again. A piece of advice is to place a sticky note on the page you have questions or concerns over. Write down your question on it or if you are simply confused, just put a big question mark. This way you are more likely to remember your question because as soon as you view the notes/assignment there is a huge sticky note blocking everything!!! Tidying Up: Lastly, one method of improvement I have personally benefited from is tidying things up. This can mean a variety of things from removing old receipts from your wallet or taking a moment each day to mark your emails as read or deleting them. Trust me I used to have over 1k unread messages but when I had time last semester I sat down and created sweeping rules in my email to help tidy it up and push stuff I don’t care about to automatically be deleted. Now when I go into my email, I usually only have at most 17 unread messages but that is so much easier to deal with than 1k! I will mark all the spam that got pushed to my inbox as read or delete it, so that way I can focus on the time-sensitive ones. This can sometimes go hand-in-hand with creating a filing system. I can testify though that 99% of the time now I will always see an important email. Before I would say my chances of missing a wonderful opportunity or an important change to a class were about 50/50. ?

Suggestions from the Audience? Is there anything we missed that you feel would be a great organizational tool? Please share!

#Goals Write down at least 3 attainable goals you have this semester to keep you on track Place them somewhere visible! Take out a sheet of paper and jot down at least 3 attainable goals you would like to have completed by the end of this semester to improve your organizational skills and time management. If you don’t have a slip of paper, let me know and I will provide you with one. Here’s my personal example: By the end of this semester I hope to have used at least 75% of my planner, gotten on a better sleep schedule than the one I am now, and create a better filing system for my email. *Give them 1 minute* Okay, so now I want you all to hold on to those goals and when you get home or to your dorm, put that list somewhere you can see it everyday – be it on your mini-fridge, re-written in your planner, typed up in your phone’s notes app, etc. This will reinforce these goals into your daily routine and give you a way to hold yourself more accountable. If you fail to meet one or all of them, then you can reflect on what implications that has on your grades and your mental health.