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.

Helpful Tips

1. Use an agenda and/or a calendar

   • You may use a traditional hard-copy agenda, or a digital calendar (ex: Google Calendar)

     • Digital calendars allow you to set up reminders and notifications on your devices, but you can also manually set up phone reminders if you prefer using a physical agenda

   • Add all your deadlines, meetings, and commitments to the calendar

     • Feel free to use the Deadline Tracker in this notion

       Deadlines

   • Check your agenda/calendar on a daily basis!

   • You may document through out the day (or at the end of the day) what you accomplished or did. Not only does this track your progress, but also gives you a sense of how long a certain tasks takes for you to complete (which allows for better planning in the future). This is easier to do in physical agendas than digital ones.

     <aside> 📢 Remember, even small progress is good progress!

     </aside>

2. Create to-do lists

   • Create a daily to-do list for tasks to be done that day, and a "bigger picture" to-do list of upcoming tasks

     • You may also plan how many hours you intend to spend on each task, and how often (certain tasks in the "bigger picture" to-do list may require you to work on them over a long period of time)
     • Feel free to use and customize the following to-do lists:

     To-do Today

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     To-do This Week

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     To-do Later

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   • Order tasks by deadline for completion or urgency, and work in that order

     • You may choose to only move on to the next task until you completed the previous (more urgent) task, or have progress/time goals (ex: I will finish at least two topics from this course before moving on to the next task, or I will spend 2.5 hours studying for this course before doing something else). **
     • You can re-order tasks in a to-do list on Notion by dragging them

     <aside> 📢 Try different approaches to see what works best for you, and take into consideration what your schedule looks like!

     </aside>

   • Keep tasks for one day feasible and realistic to accomplish

     • Otherwise, you may feel overwhelmed or disappointed with your progress

   • Add unfinished tasks from today to tomorrow's to-do list

     • Again, sort the new list of tasks by deadline or urgency, and work on them in that order

   • Finally, cross things off when you are done!

     • It is incredibly satisfying to look back and see all the tasks you accomplished!

3. Use a note-taking app or maintain organized hand-written notes

   <aside> 📢 Organized notes can be used not just in your current courses, but also referenced again in future courses. You never know when you may need a refresher on a specific topic — if you previously made organized notes on that topic, you can just reference those notes instead of researching it again! Digital notes are easier to organize and retrieve.

   </aside>

   • You may upload your notes to OneDrive
     • Western University students have 1TB of online storage on OneDrive
     • This syncs your notes and documents in real-time and allows you to access your files from multiple devices.
       • In case something happens to your device, you can still access your notes online
       • If you don't have enough storage on your device, you can remove them from your device and keep them saved on OneDrive in case you ever need them again
     • Alternatively, you may use Google Drive or Dropbox
   • If you take your notes on a tablet, you may like OneNote
     • OneNote allows you annotate pdfs directly, is free, and will sync to your OneDrive account!
   • Notion is also a great note-taking app.

     • Feel free to add notes in the course pages

       Academics