Organisation
Time Management and Getting Things Done
How well do you plan your time?
Do you know how many hours in the week you spend on various activities?
This calculator from Virginia Tech will help you think about the number of hours in the week you have available for homework and study.
Do you consider how important / urgent your various tasks are? This is essential for good time management. Have a look at this urgent/important time management matrix. (This is from the businessballs.com site and is based on the work of Stephen Covey.)
For examples of the type of task in each quadrant see this blog post by Sid Savara.
See also this guide to Time Management from Surrey University.
The Cornell University Learning Strategies Centre has several study skills resources including advice on creating a daily to-do list.
If you like using online resources to help with your organisation – do any of these free online resources help? An excellent application for example is Evernote (for students age 13 and over) which allows you to capture ideas – just create a note. You could just use the web application (the free version gives you everything you need). You can also download a program for Windows (check with your parents before downloading programs); there is also a version for many mobile devices: iPhone / iPod Touch, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Palm Pre / Palm Pixi, Windows Mobile.
See this example of an Evernote notebook for the Year 9 Extended project.
Note that if you like the idea of Evernote and create your own account (free) you can link the above page to your account.
