Getting Motivated & Handling Stress
Organization Station
Not every organization system works for every person; here are a few of different ways to organize what you need to do (and allow you to remind yourself instead of your parents reminding you)
On Paper
Know Thyself
Match your organization systems to what you know you'll be able to stick to. If you are someone who HATES opening your binder to put things away, using a binder can be a recipe for having just a million loose sheets of paper at the bottom of your backpack, lost forever.
Keep it simple and hard to mess up; the more steps involved in putting something away, the more time it has to get lost
If you use separate folders, make it easy to know which one to grab by color coordinating
Give your papers for each class a specific 'home'
If something is graded, and no longer needed- have somewhere else to keep it so it doesn't make it harder to find what you're currently working on
The Post-It System
Have three sections: To-Do, Doing, Done
Move post-its with what you have to do through the sections as they are being done or get finished!Using Your Planner
So, the school gave you a free planner and asked you to write things down in it. It might just seem like a thing that you get asked to do, but actually, the reason schools give those planners out is because the act of writing things down in that way is PROVEN to help you remember and keep track of things!
brain hack:
writing fun things in your planner too, like friend hangouts and birthday parties, helps to make sure that you're checking it more often and that you don't have as much stress about opening it
The Adapted To-Do List
Keep a 'bullet point' To-Do list in your planner or on a paper near where you work, BUT instead of just using dots for your list, use symbols to categorize them. I like to use ! for 'Priority,' ✓ for 'Done', ? for 'Need Help,' and → for 'Needs More Time tomorrow.'
Things that need to be done as soon as possible get marked as !
Things you can't finish today get the → and are added to the list for tomorrow.
Anything you're unsure about gets a ? [and then you add asking for help to the Today List as a priority(!) task
When you finish something (and have it turned in) it gets a ✓
brain hack:
for BIG projects that require lots of little steps, make a mini to-do list that includes the steps and things that need to get done that go into the bigger project being done. That way it will be easier to know where to start, to plan out when things need to be done, and how to focus your energy (one at a time)
Tech Organizing
Setting Alarms
If you have a phone, you can use the alarms for more than just waking up! Try setting alarms to help you have a specific time to start your work or to help you keep your breaks for the amount of time that you planned them to be!
Google Calendar
When things are assigned in Google Classroom, it adds the due dates to your Google Calendar! For those of you with a phone, you can download the Google Calendar App for easy access to seeing all of those important dates!
You can also use google calendar to create events for when you want to start working on things, or for things that happen weekly, with built-in reminders, so that way your phone will go off to say "HEY YOU WANTED TO DO THIS TODAY!!"
Knowing where things are on your Computer
Just like you should be organizing your papers from classes into folders after class or when finishing your homework to help you know where they are, keeping your work for different classes in different folders on your computer desktop or your Google Drive can make it easier to find your virtual stuff later when you need it.
Make sure you name the work something that will help you know what it is when you see it a few days later!
Understanding the Breakdown
Sometimes it can feel hard to care about assignments because, as much as we know they make up our grades, it can be hard to visualize how they do.
For those of you who like video games, try thinking about the points you earn in your class as your health points. If you miss an assignment, you lose points. By making up the assignment, you can heal back some of your points!
It can also be hard, when you're told you have a certain percentage in a class (ex: 75%), to know what that means in terms of what grade you're currently getting. SO here is a handy dandy chart that says what percentages fall under what letter grades!
The Usual Grading Scale
A 90-100%
B 80-89%
C 70-79%
D 60-69%
F 0-59%
Pay Attention to Your Grades
This one seems like an 'of course,' but for many of us, it's not our first impulse to check and look at how much our grades go up and down every week. By practicing checking how we are doing in our classes often (like once a week), it helps our awareness of seeing how our hard work can impact our grades and can help us know if what we're currently doing is working or not.
Knowing when things are happening and setting MicroGoals
When you have a certain date in your brain that things need to get done by, you are more likely to getting around to doing them, especially if you're someone who relies on that last-minute procrastination panic to get things done. Being aware of timelines can be a great motivator.
Unfortunately, leaving EVERYTHING up to that last-minute panic can make us shut down or make it so that the work we do isn't very good (just very fast. That's where setting mini-deadlines aka Micro Goals for yourself can be helpful.