By Kristopher Heaton, Premier Tutor with Tutoring For Success

Academic success and personal well-being share one standard key: staying organized. The ease with which it’s achieved isn’t a constant, but it can become as easy as doing it in your sleep. That’s the power of habit. Here are seven habits organized students can and should develop to manage their tasks, time, and materials effectively and efficiently:

1. Set Clear Goals

At the start of my tenure with each of my students, I ask the same question: what do they want out of this class? Not what their parents want, not what their teachers wish, but what they want. If a student wants to achieve, they need to know why they’re in the game in the first place. The goal can be long-term, like graduating with honors, but a short-term one, like finishing a research paper, will do the job as well. No one needs to know the whole plan; they need to know the next step.

This can take as little time as a few minutes a week. During those few minutes, write down your academic and personal goals. Keep it simple, and keep it sane. That doesn’t mean you have to avoid big goals, nor should you, but they become a lot more manageable when you break them down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

2. Create a Routine to Follow

A daily routine is one of a student’s most significant tools against procrastination and a surefire way to make time your ally rather than your enemy. It can be easy to stress over knowing when to study, complete homework, and engage in extracurricular activities. A good routine will automate this time management and is essential to consistency.

For example, one of TFS’s students I get to teach, Amelia, has been able to stick to her study goals by setting a hard, non-negotiable block in the early evening for studying. Sometimes, she only needs to study for fifteen minutes. She takes an hour for more extensive tests, like her upcoming finals. But however large the block, sticking to it and making time for breaks, meals, and sleep has made her that much more effective.

3. Keep an Organized Workspace

Clutter the workspace, and you clutter the mind. Organize the workspace, and you organize the mind. I know organization gets talked about to death, but here’s a question: How can you do anything if you can’t find what you need when you need it? Whether the organization is physical or digital, that’s the point.

One of TFS’s students whom I get to tutor, Brittany, has, with the help of her family, gotten into the healthy habit of ensuring she has her workspace organized, with everything she needs in place (including water and a snack). It only takes her a second due to the shape she’s gotten her workspace into in the long term. Is your space not there yet? That’s all right. At the end of each day, ten minutes to clean your desk will get you there quickly. Is the space that needs to be organized digital? Folders and apps should help you organize everything and save you plenty of time (and the need to search like crazy) if you need any of your notes.

4. Use a Planner or Calendar

There’s a reason some teachers emphasize using agendas or to-do lists. If you’re keeping track of assignments, tests, events, and meetings with your memory, STOP DOING THAT. We should all know from experience that memory can be faulty, especially if we’re trying to fit more in there. Checking a planner becomes unconscious when you make it a habit. When you make it a habit, you don’t even need to remember it. A planner helps students keep track of assignments, tests, meetings, and events. Whether it’s digital or paper, keeping a planner ensures they stay on top of their responsibilities.

It’s a practice in plenty of schools to have students write down all assignments, deadlines, and tests at the start of each week. While not always a rule, it’s presented as at least a strong recommendation. However, considering how often extra assignments and tasks can be assigned (by school, life, makes no difference), the ideal approach is to update, or at least check, your planner every day to keep track of everything. It’s a surefire way to avoid unneeded last-minute distress, which is never good.

5. Prioritize Tasks

The organized student is a master of priorities, a modern-day superpower in this fast-changing world. A master knows how to distinguish between tasks based on priority, ensuring that the high-priority ones get tackled first.

Use a to-do list. I recommend Todoist, available on the web and as a mobile app. Its built-in feature allows you to sort between categories much more quickly. I recommend just three categories: “urgent,” “important,” and “optional.” It also allows you to use due dates; knowing those is always essential. Just remember: always focus on the most pressing tasks. Other items can always wait.

6. Stay Consistent with Study Sessions

Consistency is better than late-night cramming. An organized student should habitually study regularly and break study sessions into smaller, more manageable chunks.

The Pomodoro Technique is popular and effective. The trick is simple: take a short break for every larger amount of work you do. It might mean 25-minute work spurts with 5-minute breaks. It could mean 30-minute work spurts with 10-minute breaks. For me, it’s 30-minute work spurts with 8-minute breaks. Every student I’ve taught this technique to has told me they feel less stressed than before they started using it, and the results have been evident in their learning and work. After all, the best learning environment is one where you can relax, take your time, and make as many mistakes as you need to learn. Remember, we learn more from our failures than our successes. Take the time to learn. And that ties into the final, and perhaps most important habit for any organized student to learn:

7. Review and Reflect Regularly

The organized student makes a regular habit of reviewing what they’ve learned so they can reflect on their accomplishments. This is a moment of triumph, where there should be a celebration. Still, it can also help identify areas needing improvement and stay one, two, or even ten steps ahead of any academic goals you have.

I set aside an hour every Sunday afternoon to write down reflections. I also write down notes throughout the week. Use this session to review them. Reflect on what went well. Reflect on what didn’t. You can do something other than what I do, but some version of this that works best for you will help reinforce learning and prepare you for future tasks.

These seven habits help students achieve their goals and stay on top of the game with significantly reduced stress. But remember, whether it’s academics or your personal life, the game’s actual name is self-awareness. Build and implement these systems to work wonders for yourself, but do it in a way that works best for you. And no one can ever know what works better for you than yourself. But whatever the case, all habits require consistent practice. That’s how students unlock their full potential and create a path to success.

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