16 Tips To Help You Stay Organized in College (Plus Benefits)

 

In this article, we discuss the benefits of staying organized in college and provide16 college organizing tips to help you prepare for a successful semester.

 

Benefits of staying organized in college

There are many things to keep track of when you’re in college, and developing a system of organization can help you better manage your time. Knowing how to stay organized can help you prepare for a future career in just about any industry.

There are many additional advantages to staying organized in college, including:

• Increased productivity: Staying organized makes it easier to know which tasks to complete for which classes and create a schedule for yourself to follow. This can help you accomplish even more tasks.

 

• Better grades: Organization may help you get better grades by making it easier to prepare for assignments well before they’re due. It can also increase your confidence by allowing you to better allocate your time to study for exams.

 

• Reduced stress: Developing a plan for completing your assignments and creating a schedule to adhere to can help you feel less stress and have more time in your life to do the things you enjoy. Reducing stress can also help you focus more on studying and completing your projects.

 

• Improved preparedness: When you’re organized, you can better prepare yourself for expected and unexpected situations. Organization can help you remember when to attend class, meetings, appointments and practices and it lets you know how much time you have in a day to complete tasks.

Related: Q&A: How Can I Stay Organized?

 

Useful college organizing tips

Use these tips to help you stay organized in college:

 

1. Understand the importance of organization

As with most new goals, reflecting on the importance of staying organized can help you take the steps necessary to save time and achieve greater academic success. Regardless of what you want to achieve during your college career, it’s important to think about why organization matters and set yourself a few organization-related goals to achieve.

To motivate yourself to become more organized, consider writing a message to yourself on a whiteboard or leaving sticky notes on your desk or workspace.

Related: How To Organize Your Day at Work: 15 Tips for Success

 

2. Create a calendar

A calendar can help you organize your events for the month, semester or full year. If you prefer quick visual reminders and putting all your events in one place, you may prefer a physical calendar.

If you’re tech-savvy and want to access your events across multiple devices, you might also want a digital calendar, which can provide you with reminders about upcoming events. You can add events like:

• Assignment due dates

• Test dates

• Work hours

• Appointments

• Meetings

• Plans with family and friends

Related: How To Effectively Organize Your Calendar

 

3. Use a planner

Planners are another way to keep track of all your daily events. Like calendars, they may be paper or digital. Most include monthly, weekly and daily spaces for recording information.

Planners may give you more room than calendars to add individual assignments, notes and to-do lists. They can also help you segment long-term assignments like semester-long projects into smaller, more manageable tasks.

 

4. Develop note-taking strategies

Having good note-taking strategies can help you record and remember the most important information from each class. It can also help you create a reference document for studying. You may choose to take your notes by hand, on a digital device or using a combination of both methods.

Some students take notes by hand to help with memory and recall when studying. If you choose this option, consider using one notebook per class to keep them separate. You may also use different colored pens or highlighters to find key points more quickly.

If you choose to take digital notes, create folders on your computer or in your drive to save notes from the same class in one area. Electronic notes come with the benefits of clean editing, search features and comment capabilities.

You could also consider taking photos or scans of written notes to keep on your electronic devices. You may also use tablets with pens or styluses to hand write your notes in a digital program.

Related: 7 Methods for Taking Organized Notes

 

5. Organize your class materials

Keep all your information from one class together to better keep track of your assignments from that class. Get a binder for loose handouts like worksheets, tests or quizzes. Consider a notebook with holes in it you can store in the binder.

If you don’t have room to carry a binder, consider a pocket folder or a notebook with folder inserts. Color coding your binders, folders and notebooks by class can also help you pick out the right materials with less searching.

 

6. Plan ahead

Using a calendar and planner are just two methods that may help you plan for the future. Creating a plan for larger assignments and projects can help you discover how to best approach them and avoid procrastination.

Most professors provide students with a syllabus for the entire semester during the first week of class. Use this to your advantage to estimate how long it may take you to complete each assignment and create a schedule for completing your work.

 

7. Follow a schedule

Schedules can help you stay organized each day and make it easier to avoid missing assignments or activities. Set a plan that’s realistic and works for you.

Consider using your biggest tasks and appointments, like class and work hours, as the basis for your schedule and then fit in other items around that. Other points to add to your schedule may include:

• Sleep plans

• Meals or meal preparation

• Studying

• Chores

• Relaxing and leisure activities

• Spending time with family and friends

 

Related: How To Organize a Schedule

 

8. Take advantage of your most productive times

Try to optimize your working hours for times when you’re most productive. Some people work better in the mornings while some work better at night. You may find your mind is clearer after a workout or you become drowsy around 2 p.m.

Use this information to plan your class schedules, meals, study sessions and breaks. Knowing the times when you’re most productive can help you complete your most important tasks more quickly.

Related: How To Be More Productive

 

9. Clean your room

The state of your work and living spaces can affect your productivity and stress levels. Having a clean room and tidy space can help decrease anxiety in other areas of your life. Give everything a proper place in your room so you can find what you’re looking for when it’s time to use it.

Consider putting items in their designated areas when you return to your room each day instead of setting them on a floor or chair to pick up later. Try to clean your living space at least once each week.

Related: 11 Tips on How To Organize Your Desk Like a Pro

 

10. Dedicate time to self-care

Dedicating some time to improving your mental health allows you to become more mentally organized while lowering your stress levels. Self-care consists of things that you can do to enhance your overall mental well-being. It often involves taking breaks from studying or working when necessary. It also means exercising, eating healthy and drinking water.

Make sure you’re getting enough sleep and balancing class and work time with seeing friends and doing fun activities. Consider practicing meditation, doing breathing exercises and journaling to better understand your emotions.

Related: 10 Useful and Engaging Self-Care Activities for Groups

 

11. Organize your backpack

Similar to keeping your room clutter-free, keeping your backpack, purse or laptop bag organized can help you save time throughout the day by allowing you to find what you need more quickly.

Consider carrying only what you need when you’re away from your room or car and switch out essentials each time you return. This can decrease the weight of your bag and make it easier to find the right items. Consider keeping just the essentials in your bag, such as:

• Textbooks

• Laptop, tablet or mobile device

• Notebooks

• Binders

• Folders

• Writing utensils

• Room or car keys

• Snacks

• Water

 

12. Compare your to-do lists

Reviewing your to-do lists at the end of each week may help you better understand your time management habits. Look at the things you accomplished, and what you didn’t, to determine how to better structure your lists.

You may find some situations were out of your control, like being unable to complete an assignment because the teacher didn’t provide the instructions. You may also find that you overestimated how much you could get done in a day. Understanding these factors can make it easier to plan future schedules.

Related: How To Create a Productive To-Do List (With Tips)

 

13. Follow the syllabi

Keep your syllabi from the first week of classes with all your class materials until the end of the semester. If you receive a paper copy, put holes in it and put it in your class binder or notebook. If you receive a digital one, put it in the correct class folder.

Take notes right on the syllabi sheet to make extra notes of things to remember. You can also use it as a checklist to cross off items or days of class as you complete them.

 

14. Separate your workspaces

Try to separate your workspaces from the areas where you relax. If you live in a dorm room or a small apartment, use your bed for sleeping and relaxing and your desk or a table for assignments and studying.

This mind trick can help your brain associate your bed with sleep and your desk with work, which may help with focus and attention. You may also choose to leave your room strictly for relaxing and choose to study in the library or a cafe to make the distinction even clearer.

 

15. Use email filters

Email is one of the primary communication tools in college that you can use to connect with professors, peers and the administration. Use email filters to keep your correspondence organized and ensure that you read every important letter.

Some email programs let you set different tabs for email types. You can also set up alerts to get notified of incoming messages from a certain address. Use the tagging features to filter emails into secondary folders automatically.

Related: 10 Free Email Account Providers and How To Choose One

 

16. Back up your computer

Consider making two copies of all your digital and hard-copy work. Keep your digital files both on a computer and in the cloud or on a drive. You can take photos or scans of print materials and store them on your machine or drive too. This can help you continue to stay organized even if the original files or documents go missing or become unavailable.