The transition from high school to college introduces independence and accountability into our lives. You are responsible for attending your lectures, choosing your class times, and for many of us, paying room and board. These responsibilities can be overwhelming, especially staying on top of your assignments, completing personal tasks, and including time for socialization and self-care. It might feel as though you have to neglect certain parts of your life in order to be successful as a student, but that isn’t always true, this post includes tools you can use to give you peace of mind and structure in your life.

Notion

Notion is an all-in-one workspace that allows you to keep your life organized and gives creative freedom on what you want to create. There are endless possibilities on what you can create, such as finances trackers, vacation planning, habit trackers, and most importantly assignment trackers. This is the platform that I have used since my freshman year of college and I believe it is the reason I have been able to be successful and stay on top of my coursework.

Before using Notion, I had been overwhelmed with the daily tasks of being a college student. I remember asking myself, how do I stay on top of class, complete extracurricular activities, work on side projects, have a job, stay on top of finances and bills, have time for social activities, and have time for self-care? When you list these things out, it sounds extremely overwhelming, and can cause of sense of doubt. Since you’re stressed out about what you have to do, many times we procrastinate and prevent ourselves from achieving what we are capable of. In reality, it all comes down to how well you organize and structure these activities.

Assignment Tracker

An assignment tracker is a great way to start your journey with Notion. I start off my pages with a cover, which I usually download from Pinterest or choose from the built in options on Notion. I then choose an icon to be at the top of the page to be the page identifier on the sidebar view. I then insert a table and put in my school schedule with course number and class times, including an estimated study time depending on the day. Under this schedule is where I insert a call out, where I include my reminders. Lastly, I include a table view with my assignments! I include the class name, my status on the assignment, the date I want to start working on it, then the due date.

Here is an example assignment page that I use!

It may be difficult to get started on Notion and learn all of its functionalities, there are guides available to help you get started with creating your online workspace! Additionally, if you are stuck on how you want to customize your pages, there are free templates available that you can import into your Notion page that has everything all done for you! These include templates such as study pages, travel planners, investment planners and more.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is an online calendar that allows you to plan your daily tasks in an organized manner. I have tried numerous online calendars and highly prefer using Google Calendar to plan my day because of the color customization and overall visual aspects of the calendar.

A tip I have as a college student is to plan your days one at a time, this means setting apart 20 minutes at the end of each day to plan how you want the next day to be structured. When you do this, you are most likely to stick to your plan and not set unrealistic goals for yourself as you might do when planning an entire month out at once. Knowing this, it is still good practice to note down any special dates such as meetings, appointments, or any future commitments so you don’t forget.

I recommend planning absolutely everything, especially if you are someone that struggles with productivity. This means planning the time you will wake up, time to get ready, time to get to a certain destination etc. Of course, life happens and it may not always go as planned, but knowing an idea of how your day will look like helps bring a sense of peace to our already busy lives. 

Here is an example of how your Google Calendar may look like:

To customize the colors and make your calendar look aesthetically pleasing, there are multiple online tutorials to help you get started.

Do I Need Anything Else?

It is a common belief that to be productive we need to purchase extra tools such as a nice laptop, an iPad, or digital journals. If these are tools that actually do help, that’s great! However, many times these are unnecessary purchases that may not help at all or be useful to you. Productivity comes down to you and how you utilize your time. I realized that all I need to be successful is my laptop and nothing else. I was someone who was influenced to buy an iPad due to the belief that it would boost my productivity, sometimes I write some notes on it, but there are times where I go months without touching it. Don’t feel like you need fancy materials to be productive. You are capable of achieving your goals by your determination and willingness to try out new tools such as Notion or Google Calendar.

Good luck on your academic journey!