Imagine: you’ve just come home from school and you tell yourself you’re going to finally write that English essay that’s been on your mind for a few days. Hours later, nothing has been completed and you’re still staring at a blank screen. You feel demotivated, useless, and helpless. You tell yourself that today just wasn’t your day, and you’ll complete the essay tomorrow. Tomorrow comes, and the story repeats itself. The work is not being done, and each day that you fail to complete tasks, you become more stressed.

Imagine then, a solution to this problem. Imagine having the ability to manage your time, attention, and environment in a way that stimulates your productivity while avoiding the last minute scurries of procrastination: the ability to manage yourself. 

Throughout this four part article series, I will be describing my own methods for time management, attention management, avoiding procrastination, and creating an environment that is productive. In this article, I will begin describing my method of time management and organization.

To me, organization is divided into two systems: the reminder system and the calendar system. To explain each system in general terms, the reminder system deals with remembering to do specific things at specific times, whereas the calendar system gives a more holistic view of what one must do in a day or week.

Firstly, when it comes to reminders, it’s important to place them somewhere that you will look at continuously. For example, one might have a physical planner that they check daily, and so that would be a smart place to write reminders. However, it is more likely that you will check your phone (or a similar electronic device) more often than anything. For that reason, anything that I must remember to do goes onto the reminders app on my phone.

Within my reminders app, there are three main categories: homework, questions, and random things. Homework is simply a list of homework that I must complete, ordered from the closest occurring deadline, to the farthest deadline. Within each item on this list, I write the name of the assignment, the class that assignment is for, and the due date.

My other two lists are very simple. My questions list is quite literally a list of questions that I need to ask (usually to teachers). I schedule each item on this list to notify me at a certain time when I know that the teacher I require will be present. In this way I remember to ask my question. My random list is a list of any other things that I must do that don’t fall under a particular category. For example, I put chores, taking medications, and checking for computer software updates into this list. 

While you may be thinking that certain parts of this system are excessive or stupid (she must be crazy to need reminders to take medication!), David Allen, author of the hit productivity book Getting Things Done, suggests that useless small things like medication, chores, and having to respond to a certain email can weigh on your mind as things to remember. Allen states, “If it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear. And that applies to everything-little or big, personal or professional, urgent or not. Everything.” To achieve true focus, and therefore true productivity, your mind must be able to focus only on the thing it is working on at the moment. Therefore, it is more efficient to write down every single small thing you must do, no matter whether you think you’ll remember it or not, because this act frees your brain from having to remember dozens of small things. Of course I’ll remember to take my medication! But not being preoccupied with remembering to do so frees my mind to do other things. This, in turn, allows you to focus on just the thing in front of you, without being preoccupied with anything else, which boosts your productivity. 

In conclusion, the reminder system serves as an “external hard drive”, where one puts all that they must remember to do down in one place that isn’t your mind, allowing your brain to focus on only the thing that you are currently doing. This prevents the mind from doing two things at once, i.e. remembering and completing tasks. As Publilus Syrus once said, “To do two things at once is to do neither.”