Eva Week 5- Keeping Track of Life

Most Juniors in high school have busy schedules. Some like to use Google Calendar to plan and keep track of their tasks. Others might like the iPhone Reminders app. I don’t. My methods of organization may be a bit unconventional and seemingly disorganized, but they work for me. 

My go-to planning tool is my agenda. I love my agenda. It is more like a piece of artwork than a planner, and I almost feel bad for writing in it. Each page has unique, often floral, designs in vibrant colors that make writing down assignments fun! It is extremely compact: only 5 in by 7 in. The small size, however, is not all positive. I can fit it easily in my backpack, but there is little space to write down my homework. I often cram all the assignments close together and write down one or two words to capture the task, leaving me to forget what I was referring to later. It is infuriating when I have an assignment to complete but I do not know what it is. 

My next schedule management tool is my alarm clock app. Instead of using a tool such as the Reminders app (can be easily overlooked), I have alarms going off at random periods throughout the day reminding me to attend a meeting or complete assignments. As long as I take the time to label the alarms carefully, I can usually figure out why I set them and complete the task required. My family and friends often find the alarms annoying and unnecessary, especially when I have multiple going off leading up to an event. I can have a silent buzzing alarm go off, but I generally only use those when I am in the middle of class or other meeting.

Another important work tracking app I use is the texting app. If I am on the go or in the middle of a task, I will text myself the information to remember and look up later. The key is swiping out of the text chat before the message gets sent back to me. That way, I have the notification come up as a text message later that I can only clear by clicking on the chat. This is not a fail-safe method, of course. I often click the message as a habit and have to resend the information to myself for it to appear as a notification. Additionally, with the newest update, the reaction time of the message being sent is much quicker, so my swiping skills have needed to improve. 

These are my top three organizational methods, but I would love to know unique homework tracking techniques you use! I am also really excited to cross the blog post out of my beautiful agenda.