Organization and Time Management Part 3: Write down assignments!

By Chelsea Wicks & Kimberly England

Write down assignments and due dates

In order to write useful to-do lists, you need to know what information is time-sensitive. Time-sensitive means that something must be finished by a certain time or a certain day.

An example of a time-sensitive item is making a PowerPoint presentation for your Oral Communication class: before you can give your presentation, you must write and create the PowerPoint document. It would be a good idea to make the presentation with enough time before your presentation day to practice giving the presentation. If I write down my presentation day as Friday, February 13, my PowerPoint document should be finished by Wednesday, February 11. Having my PowerPoint finished on Wednesday lets me practice and feel comfortable on Thursday so that I can be confident about my presentation on Friday.

Write the to-do list.

Just like in Step 1, when you write down a meeting, you need to think about what should happen in order to prepare for the meeting. By writing down deadlines for your assignments, you can start to imagine what smaller steps you need to accomplish before that last deadline. Similar to Step 2, make a list of all the smaller tasks/to-do activities that will build up to the bigger task. Looking back at our presentation example, my to-do list might look something like this:

Presentation To-Do List

1.     Pick presentation topic

2.     Do research

3.     Make outline of presentation

4.     Email outline to my teacher for correction

5.     Add supporting evidence to outline

6.     Make PowerPoint document

7.     Practice presentation with a friend

8.     Email presentation to my teacher

9.     Give presentation in class

When writing the smaller steps for your bigger project, try to make each step worth one hour or less of your time. For me, each of the smaller steps in my to-do list will take me about 45 minutes. If you need to make each smaller step more specific, more special, or particular, then make the steps even smaller. For example, my presentation topic is “Reasons why every person should have a cat as a pet,” so my “do research” step will be made into 3 sub-steps:Add sub-steps to the list. 

Presentation To-Do List

1. Pick presentation topic
2. Do research
   1. Research benefits of pets
   2. Research how to take care of cats as a pet
   3. Research different ways to keep cats as pet (house-cat, indoor-outdoor cat, outdoor only cat)
3. Make outline of presentation
4. Email outline to my teacher for correction
5. Add supporting evidence to outline
6. Make PowerPoint document
7. Practice presentation with a friend
8. Email presentation to my teacher
9. Give presentation in class

Now that my steps are easier to finish and I have a plan for what I need to do for this bigger assignment, I’m going to set deadlines. For this step, I recommend starting backward and working up the list from the bottom up (#9 up to #1):

Add deadlines to the list. 

Just like we mentioned in Step 2, there are a few ways to remind yourself of deadlines. I use Google Calendar and Google Keep to remind me of what I need to do at what time. On Google Calendar, I create an event during the time of day that I know I can do this sub-step and add a notification. I know that if I remind myself at 9AM, I will remember to do it later in the day but if I remind myself at 5PM and I need to work on the task at 6PM, I won’t make time for it because other things have become more important. This is why it’s important to set your to-do list at the beginning of the week and keep changing it as each day goes by.

My sample to-do list from my phone’s to-do list application

Set reminders for the deadlines.

For my list, I kept Saturday, February 7 free, so that I can take my break. If you remember from Step 1, it is important to schedule breaks for yourself. However, because I saved time for myself on Saturday, I need to work on Friday and do more work on Sunday. Following these deadlines will be hard for me, but I know that if I do each of these things when I decide that I should, I won’t need to do more than 60 minutes of work each day for this big assignment. Keeping each of your list’s steps small, fast, and simple will help you stick to the schedule. Additionally, staying on schedule will help you finish assignments on time.

Stay on track with help from others.

If you’re like me, I need to talk with teachers and my classmates to make sure that I understand an assignment or project. I usually talk to my teacher after I make my to-do list for my assignment to make sure that I know that I didn’t miss a step. Teachers also like to know that their students are thinking ahead and preparing for success.