Author: Shannon Amrein

How to Become the Most Organized Person Ever (Even If You Totally Hate Planning)

I’m an anomaly: I love organizing. You know how Monica on Friends has everything in her house organized precisely and hates when things are out of place? Well, I’m not quite on her level, but I’m close. I love having an organized living space, but I am more particular about organizing something else: My time.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “time is money,” right? This is more true than ever today. Do you feel like there are a million things to do every day, and there never seems to be enough time to do it all? If so, this article is for you. By learning how to plan your time well, you will find that you can easily fit in everything you need to do. This also means learning how to prioritize your life.

So how do you do this? Here are 4 easy steps.

1. Learn How to Prioritize

This is essential. Which is more important: school or work? Your intramural game or the paper that is due in an hour and worth 20% of your grade? Going out with your friends or studying for your test tomorrow morning?

In these examples, your paper and studying are probably more important than you other options. This isn’t always the case. It’s important to learn how to decide what’s more important, and manage your time better so that your paper is already done and you don’t have to let down your friends on your intramural team. There are several different ways that you can prioritize, however they all build off of one straightforward method: The Eisenhower Method. This method teaches you to sort your tasks for each day, week or month, into four boxes: Import and Urgent, Important and Not Urgent, Not Important and Delegate, and Not Important and Delete. You can read more about this method here: http://jamesclear.com/eisenhower-box.

The other useful method is the 80/20 rule. This rule states that we spend 80% of our time working on only 20% of our work, so if you figure out which of your tasks are in the top 20% of what you need to do each day, then you can effectively use your time to accomplish those tasks. To figure out which of your tasks are the most important, think about which ones will have a long-term effect on your life. Which will have the most effect on the things you wish to accomplish? These are the ones that go into the 20% category. You can read more about this here: http://www.time-management-guide.com/prioritizing.html.

2. Compromise

You can’t always pick school or work over fun. That’s a recipe for overworking yourself into a major breakdown, so you have to learn when to say yes and when to say no. Maybe if you’ve aced every other test and you’ve already spent a significant amount of time studying for this one, then you should go out with your friends, but maybe if you have barely started writing your paper that is worth 20% of your grade, you should skip your intramural game in favor of getting that done.

How do you actually make yourself compromise on these things? The best way is to remember your long term goals. You’re in school for a reason. What is going to help you more in the long-term – writing your paper and doing well in class or going to your intramural game? The paper is more important in this case. There’s no easy way to learn how to make these decisions if they don’t come easily to you, except to start consciously thinking about what is more important to complete in the long-term. This goes back to the 80/20 rule I described before. In order to compromise, you prioritize and 80% of the time choose to complete the task with the higher priority.

3. Invest in a Planner

This one will save your life: Use a planner to write down everything, including when assignments are due, what your work schedule for each week is, when your club meetings are, when your friends want to go out, and when your favorite TV show is on.

A good planner should have a few lines for you to use to write about each day. Most academic planners include a monthly overview as well as larger spaces for each day. A couple good options can be found on Amazon, such as: http://amzn.to/2grLmTF and http://amzn.to/2g3rP6S. While these are good options, you can also easily find planners like this at your school bookstore or at a store like Target or Walmart.

After you’ve purchased a planner, use it to map out your time every day. I do this every Monday morning. I check online for all of my assignments for the week, write them down on their due dates, write down everything else non-school related I have to do, and then come up with a rough plan of how I will structure my time every single day to get everything done.

How do you figure out how much you can schedule each day without scheduling too much or too little? Start by making a rough estimation of how long each task will take to complete. Then add fifteen to thirty minutes to each task to accommodate for unforeseen extra time you may need. Now that you have time estimates, you can plan your tasks into your day.

4. Be Flexible

Your plan isn’t always going to work the way you want it to. Your professor might add in an extra assignment that you didn’t know about. You may have to cover a shift for someone at work. Maybe you’ll need to go out with friends on a night you weren’t planning to, because it’s someone’s birthday.

Whatever happens, you can pretty much assume that something will change your plan. That’s why it’s a rough draft. You have to be able to adapt to it, and squeeze in some extra time on another day to get things finished. To do this, you should avoid scheduling every hour of your day. Be sure to leave an hour or two open every day to allow for flexibility when unexpected obstacles arise. If you’ve organized your time well, you should find that these unexpected times are not as stressful as they otherwise would be. Plus, if you have a day where everything goes according to plan, then you’ll end up with extra free time. That’s definitely a plus.

It’s time to get over the fear of planning. Being able to organize your time is a necessary skill in life. It’s difficult to get through college without planning anything, and it’s going to be difficult to excel at a job after college if you can’t organize your time.

Finally, if you think organizing is a waste of time, take a moment to think about how much time you’re wasting by not organizing. That’s way more time than learning how to organize will take you.

5 Proven Ways to Connect With Your College Professors Right Now

There are so many great things about college, and so many opportunities to get involved, meet people and forge connections that you will continue to value in the future.

One of the most underrated but important resources are professors. You interact with professors several times a week in so many ways, including class lectures, group presentations and class discussions. Considering how much time you spend in their presence, it makes sense that professors are valuable resources beyond the grades you earn in their classes.

So, how do you approach getting to know your professors? Here are five easy steps.

1. Actually Go to Office Hours

The most obvious, but often underutilized strategy, is to go to office hours. Every professor holds office hours at least once a week, giving students a chance to drop in for help or to discuss something from class.

Even if you aren’t struggling in the class, it is a good idea to stop by office hours a few times to discuss the material with your professor. Show that you are interested and that you want to have a deeper understanding of what you are discussing in class, and allow your professor to get to know who you are. This is especially important if you have a lot of big lecture classes! Starting a conversation with a professor is as simple as asking a question about a concept from the previous class or asking for study or essay writing tips before your first test or assignment.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Email

If you’re too nervous to go to office hours, or if you can’t make them, try sending an email to your professor with your questions. I had a professor whom I occasionally emailed to ask questions about what we were talking about in class.

This showed my professor that I was really interested in what we were talking about in class, and now my professor will actually email me extra pieces of information outside of class to push my understanding of what we’re discussing in class.

3. Make an Effort in Class

Participate in class. Ask questions. Answer questions. Make observations. Be an active and engaging student. This becomes more intimidating if your class is huge and mainly lecture-based because there may be less opportunities to participate.

Nevertheless, doing what you can to stand out in a sea of students is vital, even if this is as simple as keeping your eyes open and engaging in class. Once, a professor told my class that one of the most gratifying things to see when teaching is a student nodding along to what the professor is saying. So, if you think your professors don’t notice when you’re paying attention or dozing off, think again.

4. Talk to Your Professors After Class

If your class is a large lecture with little opportunity for participation, why not spend a few minutes after class talking to your professor about what was discussed? Save your questions for afterwards. Don’t immediately bolt when class is over; instead dedicate five or 10 extra minutes to have a short conversation. Professors appreciate this more than students realize.

5. Take on Opportunities to Work With Professors Outside of Class

Participate in any outside activities. This one may not be applicable to every class, but this could include extra credit assignments, department activities that your professor advertises in class, a guest lecture and more. Once again, if you take time out of your schedule to show your interest, it can only benefit you in the long term.

Professors can be intimidating, but they are incredible resources. They can help you find jobs or internships, introduce you to people in the field you’re interested in, help you find undergraduate research positions as well as give you useful advice. And, if you follow these steps, I can guarantee that by the end of the semester, you’ll be able to ask for a letter of recommendation.