Fresh Ideas To Help Students Get (And Stay) Organized In 2019

Getting organized can be like herding cats if you don’t know what you’re doing. Whether you’re a student or the parent of a student, you’re going to have some level of an uphill climb ahead of you—for a while. The key here is getting to a level of sustainability which induces naturally good habits that don’t need to be enforced. There are a few ways to do this.

Establish Proper Study Habits

One means of organization involves establishing proper study habits. When you’re on top of your studies, you don’t have to go in after hours for extra tutoring, freeing up your schedule and making the organization less difficult. It’s the same principle of cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen rather than letting the mess pile up. If you clean up immediately, then there is no mess.

If you don’t, you’ll have dishes and other waste piles until it takes two hours to clean things. It may seem like you’re saving yourself work by not immediately cleaning up after yourself, but it turns out you’re actually making more chores for yourself. The same applies to school studies. If you’re on top of your lessons, you actually free up time and are more likely to be organized than if you’re not.

If you’re seeking how to focus on studying consistently, one of your best solutions is going to be expanding your willpower.

Keep Your Place Tidy

As in the example above, your organizational habits should not just involve learning how to organize your study materials, lessons, and exam preparations. By keeping the most part of your life in order, you will have fewer hiccups along the way.

Make sure to keep your apartment or dorm room tidy. The best way to do that is to keep only the essential things around you. Hoarding is a bad habit that many people unknowingly start nurturing from a very young age. But, when you move out from your parents’ nest to go to college, it’s best you bring only what you really need with you.

Expanding Self-Discipline Is Like Learning An Instrument

Self-discipline is kind of like learning an instrument, learning a language, working out, or changing your existing skill-set in any way. With practice comes skill expansion. Eventually, you’ve got the willpower to get through difficult tasks naturally—but you’ve got to work at it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the brain of Einstein.

Another tip integral to staying on top of your schedule, and subsequently being more organized, is prioritizing organization.

So say, for example, that you’ve got the choice of wasting time with friends and ne’er-do-wells before a test, or studying. Study, take the test, and waste time with your goofball friends later—they don’t study; they’ll be doing dumb things every night of the week. You can have your cake and eat it, too.

Practicing your discipline will help you even after you finish college – if you took out a student loan to help you fund your studies, you’ll need the discipline to stay on top of your student loan repayments and prioritizing them instead of other, less urgent expenses.

Exercise Considerations

Something else that can, surprisingly, help you stay organized is to eat right and start a regimen of exercise. This gives you more energy and actually clears your mind, allowing it to more effectively ingest and retain data. Here’s something that’s hard to do, but it can totally change you: cut out all sugars and alcohol from your diet. For those in K-12, the alcohol part isn’t hard; but the sugar component of that equation is next to impossible.

But it can be done. What you’ve got to do is eat natural fruits and vegetables, fish, meats, and fats that aren’t saturated. Don’t drink soda or other sugary drinks, have water or fruit juice. Unless the sugars are naturally contained in the food, don’t put them in your body.

Raw sugar isn’t so bad for you, but the problem there is that the body must use its reserves to process it, and this tires you out. The same process doesn’t happen with naturally-derived non-GMO fruits and vegetables—just be sure to wash them before eating them to get all the pesticides off.

Extra Time And Surprising Places To Find Effective Strategies

Also, should something unexpected like an illness come out of the blue and backhand you into bed-confinement, you’ve still got an advantage. Working out daily is going to be about a two-hour chunk of your regular schedule. 

If you’re sick, just stop until you’re better; you’ll have an extra two hours per day. Also, you’re more likely to recover from a cold quickly if you’re healthy.

Unhealthy people can catch a case of the “creeping crud”, as it were, and be sick for a month. Those who work out and eat right will catch the exact same virus and simply be uncomfortable for three or four days, but otherwise lose no productivity. The choice is yours, but let yourself go slack for a while and you’ll definitely notice the difference.