Staying Organized

By: Meagan Baron

Detailed To-Do Lists

They keep you organized because:

They remind you what needs to be done and when
They allow you to mark off what you’ve already completed
They can be altered to fit criteria and needs in current time
They can be color coded
There are/can be dividers between each day/subject
They allow you to work out your thought processes. Sometimes they can help you grasp what you need to do for an assignment by paraphrasing in your own words
You can organize it in whatever way you want/whatever way makes best sense to you. (You can organize by day, week and/or month, etc.)
You can use various objects. For example, you can use:
- A calendar
- An official school or standard planner
- A composition notebook
- A website like Trello.com

Above information from experience and https://www.toodledo.com/info/whyuse.php

Picture taken and drawn by: Meagan Baron

Use Folders/Binders

As the information guide for new middle school students by MiddleSchoolGuide.com suggests, a binder is a huge tool. Using a binder and its folders for organizing our tasks, classes and thoughts is something that most of us learned at a young age.

Folders/Binders allow you to:

Group things by category so that they can be found easier
Have dividers and labels so it is clear where groups start and stop
Organize things your way

Picture taken and folders made by: Meagan Baron

Color Code

Picture taken and notes by: Meagan Baron

The CengageBrain.com article, Use color codes to get organized for college, is one of the many websites reflecting color coding organizational information.

Color coding notes and important concepts/events by things like different colored sticky notes, pens and highlighters supply numerous benefits:

You can label your class with a specific color. That way, when you go to remember something from a specific class, you picture the information in the color that class’ notes were written in.
You can highlight items from your to-do list that you have already completed. This allows you to see automatically what doesn’t need to be looked at. Also, if you color code by day, you can tell when you finished the task.
You can color code when a textbook chapter switches topic. You can assign different colors throughout, changing every time a new section comes. This allows you to easily look back and see where one section starts and ends.