Organization 101: Best Way To Organize Your Notes
Managing the overwhelming flood of information and tasks is an essential part of success. There are numerous communication tools available to us. These online learning organization strategies will help you keep organized and successfully balance your work, family, and online studies.
How To Organize Notes
Staying organized is essential for every college student, but it’s more crucial if you’re taking classes online. Because you may not have face-to-face contact with your professor or other students, you must stay on track.
Create an effective workplace.
It can be tempting to be overly easygoing when it comes to setting up a workspace, which may result in you constantly searching for books and other supplies. Instead, create an organized room with all of the tools you’ll need for your online learning organization, such as highlighters, sticky notes, and other items.
Store your materials in a rolling cart, backpack, or another easily transportable item. A backpack might be especially beneficial if you intend to study in different locations, such as your house and the library.
Create a study timetable.
Developing a routine increases the likelihood that you will keep on top of what needs to be done, rather than allowing deadlines to sneak up on you. Make a study timetable for each subject after you’ve seen the syllabus and understand what’s expected of you. Set aside time for regular study and reading, as well as additional time to prepare for tests and tasks like research papers.
If an old-school paper planner works best for you, consider a planning app like My Study App, which stores your schedule in the cloud and allows you to access it from any device.
Use online tools
Bookmark websites you frequently use in your research so you don’t have to look them up every time you need them and experiment with online tools like Quizlet, which allows you to build flashcards and games to help you study. The website also hosts study aids produced by other students, so you might already be able to locate what you’re looking for.
While working online is essential for attending a web-based class, it can also be a distraction. Have you ever found yourself checking Facebook every few minutes, taking a never-ending Netflix break, or otherwise spending time online when you should be working? Try StayFocusd, an online program that helps you limit the amount of time you spend on these distractions.
Establish a support system.
Taking one or more online classes may feel solitary, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re having problems staying organized, reach out to other classmates online – or meet in person – and assist each other stay accountable.
Study groups can be a useful approach to stay on track, and if you require assistance from the professor or would like to meet in person, do not hesitate to ask. Being proactive and seeking out before problems arise is an important part of being organized, especially with online schooling.
How to Take Back Your Day
Tasks arrive quickly and furiously from numerous sources, and we rely on a variety of tools to complete our work. Few experiences prepare people to manage all of this, thus the purpose is to provide you with practical advice, ideas, and methods for dealing with your never-ending workload.
Dispelling the Myth of Organization
There is a misconception that outward organization, such as having a clean desk or a neatly arranged whiteboard, translates to being able to complete tasks. While many superficially organized people properly handle their duties, keeping a clean desk is not required to manage your workload. More significantly, my advice will not be about organizing your desk into clean heaps or building the ideal hierarchical arrangement for your papers in OneDrive. For the scientifically oriented, our endeavor to stay structured is an ongoing battle against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Simply put, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that an isolated system will maximize entropy or chaos. In layman’s terms, when you clean something, it will eventually become messy again. We will never win the fight against the second law, so our goal is to manage it effectively to maintain a steady state of work.
Email is a major impediment to maintaining an effective work environment for a variety of reasons. For starters, most individuals are terrible email communicators, so we waste a lot of time reading through forwarded email threads and rambling communications with no point. Second, our inboxes are full of automatic alerts, notifications, and mass emails, making it difficult to separate our actual work. The most important step toward becoming more organized is to address email.
Step one: Do not escalate the problem.
To gain a hold on your email, you must first stop contributing to the issue. A few simple rules will help others be more efficient while receiving your emails:
Keep communications short and make sure inquiries or tasks are properly labeled. If the email is sent to several recipients, indicate the person(s) who will need to answer questions or complete a task.
When forwarding emails, update the subject line with something that provides context, and include a brief statement at the top explaining why you are forwarding the email. You should not forward the email if you do not have time to draft your response before doing so.
Avoid forwarding lengthy email threads; it is unreasonable to expect the recipient to read through 30 old emails and understand what is going on. Instead, send a summary email to the addressee, explaining the issue. If you need to forward the email threads for escalation or record-keeping purposes, see point #2 above.
Step 2: Get to zero inbox in three actions – Delete/archive, respond/action, or create a task.
Many people get into the trap of email because they:
- use it as a virtual task list and/or
- hoard email excessively.
The goal with email is to empty your inbox every day, a state known as “Zero Inbox.” If achieving a daily zero inbox is unattainable, most people can manage a weekly target. To accomplish this, you need to quickly sort through emails and execute one of three actions:
- Delete / archive: If the email does not require further action, delete or archive it right away. The preference should be to discard email because holding email rarely provides any value. However, if you find it impossible to delete an email, you should archive it. The idea is to have it out of your inbox.
- Answer / Action: If you can answer or action the email in less than a minute or two, do it promptly and then send your response. When you respond, immediately follow step 1 above. Remember that most email applications keep a copy in your Sent Items folder when you respond to an email, so you don’t need to save an email to which you have replied.
- Create a Task: If responding to or acting on the email will take more than a minute or two, add it to your task list to complete later. Please see the section on task management for advice on how to properly manage a huge task list.
If your inbox has reached epic proportions, consider clearing it and storing all of your messages in an archive folder. While you might believe you’ll get to those 5,000 unread emails one day, the truth is you won’t, so quit pretending.
Step 3: Delete emails when you get back from vacation.
While this step is debatable, it is required, particularly if you receive hundreds of emails every day. First and foremost, you should have a clear out-of-office response that contains the following:
People don’t care if you’ll be gone from one day to the next or if you’re on holiday in the Congo. Simply let them know when you’ll be back at work and responding to emails.
The contact(s) who can assist you while you are away – Provide as much information as possible, and include an escalation point in case of an emergency.
A clear message requesting that the sender contact you again after your return – If an issue is critical enough to necessitate your response, the person will most likely contact you again. By stating that the individual should contact you once you return, you establish a clear expectation that the quickest method to receive a response is to re-engage rather than wait for a response to an email buried 1,000 messages deep.
When you return from your trip, collect all of the emails you received and delete them. Yes, that’s correct; erase them. If you can’t delete them, archive them and remove them from your inbox. If you have time, study the emails you got; nevertheless, keep in mind that your email volume will not reduce. Attempting to review your vacation email will result in slipping behind. While we must prioritize responding to our consumers, others must also respect our time away from the business. If they can’t be bothered to contact us again when we return, their problem isn’t that serious.
Suppose you receive a large number of essential automatic emails, such as Workday or ServiceNow notifications, or emails from important mailing groups. In such a scenario, sort and scan for those when you return so you can take action on them. The most efficient solution would be to employ filtering rules to move important automated communications to folders, preventing them from cluttering your inbox.
Task Management
People have a limited capacity to mentally manage things. While some are better at it than others, everyone will reach their limit if given enough chores. When it comes to task management, most people find that they spend more time managing the process than doing their work. It may appear that way at first, but if you get into a groove, it can significantly increase your ability to handle your day-to-day work.
Step 1: Create a simple task tracker.
The purpose of task tracking is to relieve you of the need to remember when to perform things. A task tracker must include two elements: the work to be accomplished and the due date. Anything beyond that, such as categories, tags, task linking, and so on, is unnecessary unless you are already familiar with task management.
Many task trackers are available on the market, including Microsoft To-Do, Any. do, and Things. Other software, such as macOS and Outlook, include built-in task management features. Choose your favorite task tracker, but keep in mind that all you need to track is the task to be performed and the date it is due. While manual approaches, like as lists in a diary or on a whiteboard, are an option, you want a list that is infinitely expandable, quickly changeable, and portable. Most users prefer an app with a mobile version because they always have their phones with them.
Step 2: Compile your task list.
To make a task list useful, you must use it. Because the idea is to offload whatever you need to remember to do later, add a task to your list as soon as you see something you need to do but aren’t doing right now. For example, if you receive an email with a task or action that you are unable to execute immediately, create a new task, include any notes about the email that prompted it, and assign a due date. Then move on, knowing that your job list will remind you when the time comes.
Step 3: Review your work list frequently.
If you are appropriately offloading jobs to your task list, you now have a roadmap of what has to be finished. First thing in the morning, go over your to-do list and prioritize what you need to get done. When you have 10 minutes free, go over your list and see if you can do anything. At the end of the day, go over your list one last time, see if you can do any quick activities, and then postpone the rest to tomorrow.
Have you ever been impressed by those who always seem to contact you when they need something done? Create follow-up tasks for future dates to remind individuals that you asked a question, checked in on a project, or confirmed that a colleague accomplished a task. For example, suppose you wrote a coworker on Monday and requested something that needed to be completed by Friday. Create a task to contact that individual on Wednesday and send a quick reminder. You have now become that person who never forgets anything!
Conclusion
The path to organization is not easy, and everyone’s journey will be unique. While the techniques and tricks listed above have helped me in my approach, tweaks and alterations are suggested to ensure that they are appropriate for you and your work style. At the very least, I hope these suggestions provide you with a starting point on your quest to become more organized!
