Advice for Staying On Top of Deadlines

When students are accustomed to lounging around the house all summer break, it can be challenging to adjust to the school’s heavy workload. Deadlines pile up quickly, so it’s best to establish effective time management habits before you’re overwhelmed with work. 

Using a planner to keep track of deadlines is a tried-and-true method of time management that is easy and effective. Staples and Office Depot have a wide variety of affordable planners in different designs and sizes to fit your personal needs. 

If you are someone who loses physical planners or finds them difficult to maintain, using an online planner may be the solution for you. A popular website for this is Notion, which is useful for creating to-do lists for yourself and other study partners, and tracking upcoming events in one place. Notion describes itself as “One place where teams find every answer, automate the busywork, and get projects done” (“Notion,” n.d.). Structured is another website that is useful for assigning tasks and visualizing study plans on a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. Its website describes, “Structured combines all your tasks and to-dos into a single visual timeline” (“Structured,” n.d.). 

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Physical and digital planners each have their benefits to help with planning. Taking the time to write tasks down in a physical planner will help you remember your important deadlines and prioritize what needs to be done. Meanwhile, Notion and Structured–as well as many other digital planners–are downloadable apps for mobile devices that are useful for working on the go. 

To ensure you are giving yourself adequate time to complete tasks, it may be beneficial to create a personalized schedule that outlines how much time you can dedicate to work each day while balancing extracurricular activities and self-care. 

Cramming for exams and projects may seem fine to do once in a while, but this  should be avoided because it can contribute to feelings of stress, exhaustion, and anxiety according to Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If this becomes a habit, it can also decrease academic performance and worsen mental health. For daunting essays and projects, you should try to do a little bit every day for at least a week before the deadline. 

It’s tempting to procrastinate on assignments when it seems tedious, but this issue can be fixed by changing your mindset around schoolwork. You can reduce feelings of hesitation around work by including small acts of self-care into your routine. Romanticizing studying can look like making curated playlists, going to aesthetic libraries and coffee shops, and collaborating with friends in a study group. What gets you motivated to work is personal to you, so I recommend trying a few techniques until you find what is most comfortable and productive.

Every school year is a fresh start, so let’s begin strong with these good study habits!