My best organization tips to help you stay on top of all your work! 

• Google Calendar. 

Google Calendar (or any digital calendar) is amazing for knowing all your classes, work, and events for the week. I love using Google Calendar because you will always have it on you, creating an easy and accessible way to know what you have next or if you are free on a certain date.  

One of the advantages of a digital calendar over a physical copy is the notifications it can send to you. This is a life saver for me! With so much going on, it’s easy for me to forget the meetings or events I have, but the alerts are a great reminder. 

If you link your University of Hawaii Star account/email to your google calendar, all your classes will be scheduled with the name, time and building information for each day until the semester ends. Also, if someone invites you to a zoom meeting, the zoom information, with links and passwords, will automatically be scheduled and shown in your calendar! 

• Master Sheet.

A master sheet is helpful for seeing all your important dates and tasks in a broad form, allowing you to put all your work into perspective.  This is a good reminder of what needs to be done this week, while helping me to plan ahead.  

I’ve done this on multiple platforms such as Notion, Google Docs, or Excel sheets. You can even create a physical sheet, it’s all up to preference. This semester I created mine on Google Docs, and it is organized by week and classes.  Usually on their syllabus, teachers will give a timeline of the semester with exam dates or what assignments are due each week.  I’ll take this information from all my classes and combine them into this master sheet.  I also highlight major assignments/exams to make sure I am prepared for them and can see which weeks are going to be busier.  An example is shown below:

• To-do List.

These are great for prioritizing your work and making sure everything gets done. (It also makes you feel more productive when you check off the boxes!)  I create to-do lists for the week using the information on my master sheet.  I will have everything I need to have done for the week including homework, meetings, applications, or emails.  For me this is a good resource for not forgetting the small tasks and details.  

It helps me when I can take this long to-do list for the week and prioritize it by importance and schedule my time for it.  Next to assignments sometimes I’ll write what day I want to have it done by, so each day I know which tasks specifically need to be completed.  That helps me to feel less stressed because you don’t have to be working 24/7, you can see that when those are done, you’re free for the day! If you want to work ahead too and finish more tasks by all means, now you’re in the mindset that you are ahead which can be motivating!

Many times all the tasks on the list are endless and the week can be daunting, but it helps me if I write how much time the assignment actually takes.  For example, a quiz might take me 30 minutes to complete, while an email will only take 5.  It helps to create a more approachable perspective into taking on the week!