With so many tasks to do, it can be easy to loose track of deadlines or forget the small details. Staying organized will save you so much time and energy, and allow you to reach your best academic potential. Organization is not a one-size-fits-all skill, and the best organization techniques will be the ones that work best for you! Regardless of how you choose to get organized, you want to be aware of upcoming deadlines, breakup large tasks into smaller ones, have a plan for how and when you want to accomplish your tasks, and set up a daily routine.
Being productive means that we benefit from our time as much as possible. We want to make meaningful progress in a given amount of time. There are three stages to accomplishing meaningful productivity: planning, committing, and adjusting!
Tips on Meaningful Productivity
Effective time management can be summarized into optimizing two different areas of life — planning and performance.
"Planning" refers to the set of actions taken before you dive into a task. "What is it that I want to get done today? What are the steps I have to take to achieve this? How long will this take?" It is this effective forethought about the necessary actions of the day, and delegating time accordingly that allows individuals to succeed.
"Performance" refers to the self-reflection of individuals while doing a task. "Am I performing at the best level I can? Is this the best use of my time right now? If not, how do I do better?" It is this constant re-evaluation of one's settings and personal abilities that allow optimization of time — that is, improvement on how time is spent day after day.
Tips for Effective Time Management ⏱️
Throughout the goal-setting process, Notion can be used as a visual representation of your goals (short-term and long-term), but also help to organize the various steps and checkpoints along the way. You can organize goal setting via the "milestones" tracker on the dashboard. Here, you can plan out what are your short, mid, and long term goals for this week, month, and year respectively (although these can be modified to suit whichever time frame you prefer.)
Having a lot on your plate, whether it's academics or extracurriculars, can be overwhelming and prevent you from knowing where to start. You might feel demotivated, and want to simply give up. We've all been through this! We want to help you out by providing tips on self-motivation and pushing yourself to complete your daunting list of tasks! Click on the article to read more: