18 minute read
3. Be Organised
Section 3
Be Organised!
Pablo Picasso
In this section, you will get quick tips on the following:
• Work Effectively • Be Tactical With Time • Create a Positive Working Environment • Keep Your Notes and Files Organised • Effective Note-Taking • The Marvel of Checklists
Work Effectively
Attitude
Environment Nurture a positive and ‘can-do’ attitude. This way of thinking will make the next steps, and ultimately your studies, easier. Your environment has a powerful effect on the way you work and what you can achieve. Find a quiet space where you can study and learn.
Ways of working Find out what helps you learn better and what keeps you motivated. If you learn best in a group, organise a study session at the Library with other students. If you work better alone without distractions, then think about setting up a study corner in your room or find a quiet spot in the Library.
Goals Goals provide motivation and structure to your studies. A good way to identify your goals is by planning backwards. If your ultimate goal is to work towards a G9 in English, for example, try to work out what steps you need to take to get there.
Prioritise Review your work based on importance and time constraints. If you are weaker at Maths than Science then make Maths a priority. Another thing to remember here is time; if your English exam is in two weeks but Mathematics is in three, then make English a priority right now. You will need to continually review your priorities for maximum impact.
Study schedule List each subject and decide how much time you need to study each one to achieve your goals. When you have done this, work out how much time you have each week to dedicate to study time. Be realistic on this one and always allow yourself a bit of extra time on top of what you think you will need.
Take a break Take regular breaks; endless studying or working is the quickest way to burnout.
Use a range of sources From a traditional library to reading a textbook on your Kindle and studying online, the opportunities are limitless. Another good way to study is by listening to audio podcasts.
Reflect on your learning and act on your feedback! When you have received a piece of work back, look carefully at your feedback and act on it. Then, resubmit your work to your beak with improvements. See if the grade has improved. Don’t start a new assignment/past paper until you have seen how to improve your grades.
Be Tactical With Time
Combat procrastination
Procrastination occurs when our brains prioritise short-term satisfaction over longer-term benefits. This is because we often don’t receive instant gratification for tasks that have longer-term time frames. For instance, the dopamine rush of checking Instagram provides more pleasure for our brains than doing a focused 15 minutes of homework. Even though we know that the healthier or harder option will pay off in the long term, our brains often prefer to choose the easier, tastier, quicker or most immediate option.
If you’ve got a task that has been on your mind consistently but you never seem to be able to get started, try James Clear’s ‘5-minute rule’.
The 5-minute rule is a technique to combat procrastination by setting a goal to start whatever it is you have been avoiding, but only for five minutes. After five minutes, if it is so horrible that you simply cannot continue, you are free to stop and come back to it another day.
The magic of this strategy is that most people find the hardest part of a task to be setting the intention and getting started. Once you have picked up your pen/opened the document/ started reading the book for five minutes, you are much more likely to continue until the task is complete.
Break it up
Another way to make a task more achievable is by breaking it up into smaller, more achievable sub-tasks. For instance, when writing an essay, you could break up your checklist into:
1. Making a plan
2. Writing the introduction
3. Writing a body paragraph
4. Writing a conclusion
5. Proofreading and editing
Instead of sitting down and not knowing where to start, seeing a bigger task as a series of smaller actions immediately appears more manageable.
Create accountability
Often procrastination arises when we don’t see any immediate reward for doing a task, or any consequences for not completing a task. Bring some in. For instance, academically, if you are finding it hard to stop being distracted on your phone while you work, arranging to work with a friend or sitting in the Library could help create accountability and motivate you to stay on task. You could also hand in your phone!
Temptation bundling
Our brains love to be rewarded for hard work, so often procrastination arises when we don’t see a reward or any immediate benefit for the task ahead. Temptation bundling is a strategy whereby you bundle a behaviour that is good for you (or a task you have been putting off) with a behaviour that you enjoy (or feels more engaging in the short run).
The basic format is: only do (THE THING YOU LOVE TO DO) whilst doing (THE TASK YOU PROCRASTINATE ON).
For example:
• Only watching your favourite TV show whilst cleaning your room.
• Only eating your favourite snack when you are learning your Spanish vocabulary.
Ideally, successful temptation bundling helps your brain to start to associate enjoyable things with the tasks that you have previously put off or not enjoyed as much, creating positive reinforcement and more productive focus.
7 quick ways to overcome procrastination
1. Do the task for a few minutes.
2. Do the hard tasks first. If you do this while your brain is still fresh then you are less likely to give up.
3. Believe in your ability – self-regulate with metacognition.
4. Manage your environment – control it and don’t let it control you.
5. Set yourself short deadlines.
6. Model success – who do you know has done this task well? Copy them.
7. Make the task harder – this will make it more interesting.
Track time
The Pomodoro technique was designed in the 1980s by a man called Francesco Cirillo as a time management tool to help you stay on track for short bursts of time. It is fantastic for helping you stay focused on one task at a time and ensuring that you have regular breaks throughout your working time.
How does it work?
• Choose one task to focus on. Put away all distractions and sit somewhere quiet, where you can focus.
• Set a timer for 25 minutes and work until the timer goes off (this is one Pomodoro).
• After 25 minutes of focused work, take a five-minute break. You can use this time to leave your workspace and have a snack, stretch your legs, rehydrate or go outside.
Give your mind a break!
• Repeat this cycle until you have done a set of 4 x 25 minutes of work (four Pomodoros), and then enjoy a longer 10–20-minute break.
Pomodoro can be timed with a simple phone or desk timer, but some people prefer using Pomodoro timer apps on their laptop or phone, many of which are free on the App Store.
Create a Positive Working Environment
Design your environment to help you achieve better productivity and avoid distraction.
Digital decluttering
• Digital decluttering and the removal of distracting apps on your phone stops you mindlessly scrolling on social media or watching Netflix when you should be working.
• Setting time limits, turning off notifications for certain apps, putting your phone on Silent or Do Not Disturb or putting it to charge in another room can all help.
• Ensure your laptop or browser is clutter-free.
Having multiple tabs or windows open as you try to work means that distracting content is constantly in the background.
Physical decluttering
Physical decluttering can also have a huge impact on your behaviour and ‘hack’ your brain into practicing healthier/more productive habits.
• Keep your workspace clear and well organised with labels.
• Have a book next to your bed instead of your phone. This will encourage you to pick it up when you wake up, instead of mindlessly scrolling on your phone.
• Keep a glass or bottle of water on your desk as this will encourage you to stay hydrated.
• Put your guitar out in your room rather than in the cupboard as this will help remind you to practice, increasing the chance of it being picked up.
Visual cues
James Clear also highlights the value of a visual cue or trigger that can help motivate you to perform a habit more consistently.
The ‘Seinfeld’ chain strategy
Jerry Seinfeld, a famous comedian and businessman, used to hang a giant wall calendar up with a whole year on one page. Every day that he successfully wrote for his comedy shows, he would put a big red ‘X’ over that day on the calendar. ‘After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain’. It doesn’t matter if you feel motivated, or if the task you do is done brilliantly, but after a few days of building a chain, the simple motivation of keeping the chain going provides a great psychological boost to be consistent and continue working towards the goal. You could try this method with any habit you want to do more consistently: • Reading your set texts for a subject. • Learning/revising vocabulary for a language. • Practising a sport or an instrument more consistently. As soon as you start to create a chain, it is only natural that you will miss a day or two. Starting where you left off, and attempting to build the longest chain possible will help keep you motivated and get you back on track.
Keep Your Notes and Files Organised
Folders
• Within your folder, use dividers to categorise notes by topic or unit. Make sure you write the date at the top of each sheet to keep things in order and make things easier to find later on.
• Update your folders often. Find a set time each day (the start of Prep, for example), or each week (for example, Friday night), to declutter your bag, sort through any loose paper and file things away.
• Remove unnecessary clutter. Be specific about what you need and don’t need.
• Consolidate your work regularly by writing summary notes per sub-topic and making it clear what you need to know for your exam board or syllabus.
Exercise books
• Note the date and title at the top of each new piece of work to keep track of your work as you go.
• Use sticky notes, sticky tabs or highlighters to help use colour to distinguish different topics and important pages.
• Ensure you keep your work neat and legible so that you can make the most of your notes later on.
• Stick all necessary bits of paper in.
Organising your notes and work digitally
• Most of your teachers will have set up some kind of digital platform or class notebook for your digital work to be stored centrally for example, OneNote. If so, this is a perfect place to store all of your digital notes, essays and revision material.
• If you don’t have a specific place for each class, make sure you have a central folder system on your laptop where you can find everything.
• Have one folder per class and per teacher, which you can further divide by topic.
• Be consistent in how you name your documents in each folder. Consider using the topic title, date or your name to help keep things organised.
For example, using the date, the topic name and the title of the work: ‘12.04.22 – Cold War History – Revision Notes’.
• If your work is going to be handed to your teacher digitally, make sure you save your name in the title and check how your teacher would like you to format it.
• Just like your physical folders, make sure you have a regular time set aside to declutter your digital folders! Delete anything you don’t need, categorise work into subject folders, and label documents accordingly.
Effective Note-Taking
When taking notes in lessons or during revision, it is impossible and inefficient to write every word down. Try these techniques and tips suggested by the University of NSW Australia.
Write phrases, not full sentences. Only record the key words that you need to get the idea of the point. Skip words like ‘the’ and ‘a’ that don’t add additional meaning to the content. Retain key technical or discipline-specific terms.
Take notes in your own words. Paraphrase what you hear so it makes sense to you – it helps you to understand and remember what you hear. Try to paraphrase everything except where information needs to be noted exactly.
Structure your notes with headings, sub-headings and numbered lists. Use headings to indicate topic areas or to include bibliographic details of the sources of information. Use outline form and/or a numbering system and indenting to help you distinguish major from minor points.
Code your notes Use colour and symbols to mark structure and emphasis.
Use colour to highlight major sections, main points and diagrams. You can also use different colours to classify and link concepts or information by topic.
Underline, circle, star, etc., to identify key information, examples, definitions or other important materials. Devise your own marking code to indicate each type. Leave a space on the page for your own notes and comments.
Use abbreviations and acronyms for note-taking
Common etc. (etcetera) = and the rest e.g. = for example info = information i.e. = that is n.b. =note well, important p = page (pp = pages) para = paragraph ch. = chapter no. = number diff = different C19 = nineteenth century
Discipline- specific These should be whatever is frequently used in your field of study. In Chemistry, for example, Au is gold and Mg is magnesium. In the case of quantities and concepts, these are represented by Greek letters in many fields: A or a (alpha), B or b (beta)
Personal Develop your own set so that you don’t have to write every word in full. You can shorten any word that is commonly used in your lessons. • gov = government • nec = necessary Work out a system you’ll remember and use it consistently. Introduce a few symbols and abbreviations at a time to help you remember them.
Acronyms Some abbreviations are so well known and widely used that they have become acronyms – abbreviations pronounced as words. For example, laser = Light Amplification by Stimulation Emission of Radiation
Also, use these symbols for note-taking
= equals/is equal to/is the same as
≠ is not equal to/is not the same as
≣ is equivalent to
∴ therefore, thus, so
∵ because
+ and, more, plus
> more than, greater than < less than - less, minus gives, causes, produces, leads to, results in, is given by, is produced by, results from, comes from ↗ rises, increases by ↘ falls, decreases by α proportional to α not proportional to
Use concept maps and diagrams
Information can also be recorded using a concept map or diagram. Try drawing diagrams or pictures for concepts that are hard to note quickly. For instance, draw a pie chart to roughly indicate the relative strength of political parties in an election instead of writing these details out. Information can be added to the concept map later.
Concept maps can easily become cluttered. Use both facing pages of an open A4 notebook to set out your concept map and allow plenty of space for adding ideas and symbols.
Example
• Begin in the middle of the page and add ideas on branches that radiate from the central idea or from previous branches.
• Arrows and words can be used to show links between parts of the concept map.
• Colour and symbols are important parts of concept maps, helping illustrate ideas and triggering your own thoughts.
Underwater Cameras
Regular
Needs special housing Amphibious
Nikonos
Lenses
In air + water Snapshot
Only under water
Tips for note-taking with electronic devices
• Save notes from each lesson as a separate document labelled with subject name, topic and date.
• Organise all documents and other lesson materials into a folder labelled with the subject.
• Choose the notebook layout for your note documents.
• Try a note-taking app like Evernote, Microsoft OneNote or Google Keep.
• Become familiar with keyboard shortcuts so that you can easily add formatting and ‘save’ while you take notes.
Combine handwritten notes with electronic note-taking
Interacting with your notes is the best way to process information, which is after all the goal of note-taking.
• Save lesson slides as PDF files and annotate them. There are various applications that allow annotation of PDFs, such as Notability, iAnnotate, PDF Pen, Evernote or Adobe
Acrobat Pro.
• If notes or summaries are in Word, use the
‘track changes’ function to add annotations and comments.
Minimise distractions
If you use a laptop, make sure other programs are closed. Get a website or app blocker such as Self Control that can block distractions.
Typing vs writing notes: which is better?
While many students prefer typing notes to handwriting them, research indicates that taking ‘pen and paper’ notes increases your focus and improves your comprehension and retention of lesson materials, more so than typing. On the other hand, note-taking on a laptop or device can make notes easier to format, save, edit, share, and reread (with no worries about messy handwriting).
It can be easy to fall into transcription mode on a laptop, and simply record everything that is said, instead of actively deciding what is most important to write down. Transcribing can seem like a good strategy, but the memory and cognition benefits of note-taking are lost unless you review and re-engage with your notes several times. If you type your notes, be sure to review them at least once within 24 hours after the lecture.
The Marvel of Checklists
Checklists ensure that the essential tasks get done
• They help avoid distractions by forcing you to only do the tasks that are on the checklist.
• Checklists free the mind from having to remember the steps that need to be completed and worrying about the possibility of forgetting to do something.
• Checklists can save time. Having the steps written simply and in order makes them easy to follow and is likely to result in less errors, therefore avoiding time wasted needing to fix issues. They also help avoid the time-wasting
‘what-should-I-do-next’ indecision as the checklist tells you what to do next.
• The use of checklists can help when things go wrong by providing evidence of whether a particular step was completed.
• Checklists can improve productivity – there is something that humans find satisfying about ticking items off a list and research has shown that using checklists make us more likely to complete tasks.
Instructions for how to use them
There are two types of checklists, according to Daniel Boorman of Boeing.
Read – Do
You read each step of the task, and then perform them in order, checking them off as you go.
Do – Confirm
You perform a number of steps of the task from memory until you reach a defined pause point, when you go through the checklist and confirm that each step has been completed.
Creating checklists
• Start with subjects or assignment types or processes (for example, revision) that you are not strong at.
• Make sure the checklist focuses on the most important things that need to be done for the task to be successful. You will want to include the mark criteria if necessary.
• Each item on the checklist should be nonnegotiable and be your single focus of attention, having only a yes/no or go/no-go style that prevents you moving forward in the list until you have checked off the item.
This is how the checklists used by pilots work, ensuring that each item checked is air-worthy before continuing through the list.
• Test the checklist to make sure it delivers the required outcomes. It is very likely that you will miss out steps when you first create the checklist. If appropriate, have someone else use the checklist and confirm that they can use it successfully to complete the activity.
Some advice for creating checklists
Keep it simple – use short, precise, easy to understand descriptions of the tasks.
Keep it short – keep the list to one page if possible.
Make it easy to use – include a checkbox or leave a space to mark items complete.
Review it regularly – look to edit and simplify the tasks involved.
Where to build your checklists
• Use a word processing program or a create a spreadsheet. This is ideal if you want to be able to print out the checklists you create.
• Use Google Tasks, ToDo or similar task management applications on your laptop or smartphone. These options provide a useful digital alternative to paper checklists.
Some things you could create a checklist for:
• Keeping your working environment tidy.
• Creating a revision plan.
• Completing a lengthy assignment.
• Ensuring you have included the mark criteria in an essay.
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