How to Manage Your Time & Stay Organized!
Life at UCR writers share their tips on balancing school, work, and life at UC Riverside.
Keshav:
My #1 go-to tool for organizing my life is my iPhone. Personally, using apps on my phone works best for me because it’s something I always have on me. If I were to use a planner of some sort, I probably wouldn’t have it with me when I’m out and about, which is why I find my phone to be the best tool for organizing my calendar, to-do lists, and more. My favorite apps for organizing my life are Clear and Google Calendar.
Clear: This is a to-do list app that is very intuitive and clean. It helps me organize my life with different lists, and in these lists there are my to-do list items. I have four different lists - Personal, School, Work, Home. When school is in session, I organize all my upcoming assignments in my School list, and I order them with their due dates. The app also has a feature for reminders, but I prefer to use Google Calendar for reminders.
Google Calendar: I am not really a fan of the stock iPhone calendar app. I use Google Calendar for all events and reminders in my life, and I prefer its interface and simplicity. One feature I always like to use is location - which tells me what I time I should leave for an event, based on traffic data generated by Google Maps. There is a neat feature on R’Web that allows us UCR students to transfer our class schedule to Google Calendar, and this also adds the location, time, and everything else for the quarter. It’s so awesome and it just works! Lastly, I use the widget for Google Calendar, and that makes it easy to get a glance at what’s next in my day.
Syncing with iCloud: I’d say I’m definitely somewhat of a technology geek. I love it when apps sync with my iPhone and Mac, and it just makes me feel like I’m in 2017 (haha). With Clear, I’ve also bought the Mac version which sync via iCloud whenever you add, complete, or delete a task/reminder. This makes my life so much easier when I’m working on my computer and I won’t be getting distracted on my phone. With Google Calendar, I use the stock Mac Calendar app and linked it to my Gmail account, which in return gives me notifications on my laptop as well - even for traffic!
Amrita
Reminders App: This application is super helpful to plan my life. Since its on my phone, which is always with me, I can easily plan my day the night before and check off the to do list as I go about my day. Moreover, checking off items on my to do list makes me feel like I am being productive, which in turn motivates me to accomplish other tasks on my to do list!
Planner: While the app allows portability and efficiency, I use it more as a day to day tool. In order to plan my months, I use a planner. My planner is very detailed and outlines all the important dates ranging from exam dates to friends’ birthdays. Furthermore, I also color code my different involvements so that I do not get confused between the different activities I am involved in. For example, I would use purple for academic dates and yellow for my job. Being a visual learner, I also appreciate being able to see my life from month to month. This way I can also determine if I am accomplishing my long term goals and make sure that I am not double/over booking myself.
Overall, the key to successful planning for me depends on three main things: simplicity, routine and adaptability. Since I only use two methods of planning/organization, it is key to keep them simple so that I have time to plan even when life gets super hectic. In addition, rather than being confused in a convoluted system, a simple system ensures that I will stay dedicated to plan. Secondly, by making planning a part of my routine, it ensures that I always have time to plan. Next, since this planning system works for me, I can have fun with it and even be excited to plan!
Caylin
For me, the only thing that works even remotely for me is a tangible, printed planner. My weapon of choice is a Passion Planner, and I don’t think there is any other planner out there that works so well with my mindset. I am currently double majoring, have two jobs, and do custom art orders on the side- all of that paired with regular cases of anxiety makes for a lot of chaos in my schedule. My Passion Planner helps me in creating and tracking my goals along with keeping order in my day to day life by helping me manage my schedule, tasks, and thoughts.
Month Overview: Because I love the structure of Passion Planner and the flexibility of bullet journals, I use an undated Passion planner (mine is the Lavender Bliss undated) and use the first two spreads at the beginning of a month to add blank pages, where I add an expense tracker, habit tracker, and mood tracker. I also design each month to have a single color accent (this month is blue!) I use all of the above to keep track of my spending, lifestyle, and academic habits and see how they are correlated with my mood. This part is kind of useless lol but I genuinely enjoy this part of planning my month.
Weekly Overview: The most beneficial part of this planner for me is that it is broken up per half hour starting from 6:00 am to 10:30 pm. This allows me to plan out time for exercise, both jobs, study time, meetings, classes, deadlines, and everything else you can think of! The weekly layout also includes modules titled This Week’s Focus, Today’s Focus, Personal To-Do List, Work To-Do List, and my favorite- Space of Infinite Possibility, where I put a motivational quote or self assuring reminder to help me get through the week.
I don’t know what it is about having to right things down, but if I forget my Passion Planner or forget to write something down, I will literally forget it within seconds lol. For all of the things I have running through my head, Passion Planner lets my organize my thoughts in a really structured and creative way while giving me the flexibility to adjust the layouts and designs as needed.
