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With the new semester approaching, I’ve been rethinking the idea from David Allen of Getting Things Done and it’s application to college students. I’ve been using a modified version of Getting Things Done up to now.

David Allen summarizes his approach this way:

Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up—not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you’re doing (and not doing) at any time.

Adaptation For College Students
The idea here is to manage everything about college in a way for you to get the grades that you want in the most efficient manner and still have time for partying calling mother and friends. And to do so while flying under the radar from the geek police your fraternity brothers/sorority sisters.

Here is the context that I’ll be assuming here:

1. Dorm living – This assumes you don’t have a lot space to work with, so no fancy file cabinets, but a very compact system.
2. College environment – The context here is college and any and all services provided by it, with minimal services assumed, so your community college might work as well.
3. Cost sensitive – College students are usually broke or on the way to being so, so we have to manage with the smallest cost or FREE.
4. Strong on technology – Since most colleges are pushing forwards with technology and I usually like to use technology if it helps, I’ll incorporate it whenever possible.

Without further delay, let’s dive in:

Collecting or Trapping
The idea here is to make sure that nothing slips.

1. Your bag – your bag will become one of your biggest “in baskets”, so if it’s important just dump it into your bag. Designate one big pocket of your bag as your “Inbox”. Than at a predetermined time you can go through your portable Inbox and process everything into its proper place.
2. One subject notebook – this will become your day planner and list keeper. In this notebook you’ll write everything that you need to remember, this will be your memory outside of your brain. You shouldn’t spend more than 70 cents on this.
3. Email box – you’ll be doing a lot of emailing in college, everything from communicating with professors, friends and family. Get yourself a Gmail account and forward all of your email to this account, you’ll find this the best long term solution.
4. Digital box – most colleges provide for some kind of space on their network for their students. Unless this network disk space is available outside of your college network, I wouldn’t recommend using it. Your best bet is to use a service like Google Docs, as there’s Internet available everywhere around colleges, you’ll have no problem connecting and working on your papers. DO NOT use a thumb drive, as the chances of you losing it are great (I’ve lost two during the first semester).
5. Laptop - I wouldn’t recommend storing your papers or other valuables on your laptop as the incidence of them breaking, crashing, dieing are huge. If you area going to use it for taking notes, connect to the college WIFI when in class and write your notes directly into Google Docs. Your laptop should be used for more productive things, like gaming, listening to music, watching videos when listing to boring lectures. etc.

Processing
OK, so you got your “boxes” of places where you have stuff. What to do now?

1. Do it now - if it’ll take two minutes or less, you can do it on right then. This means that if your professor mentions something and you need to send an email and your laptop is on, then do it right then, send the email. Or if you need to contact your buddy for the weekend plans, send him the txt msg right then.
2. Make it a project – if it’ll take more than one step, write this into your 70cent notebook under the projects, and then write the very next thing you need to do to move this project forward in the NEXT ACTION area of your notebook.
3. Not ready to act on – if you get an idea, but it’s something that you are not ready to act on, put in your 70cent notebook under a list called Someday/Maybe. This will make sure to get it out of your head and out of clutter and into a nice list. Then during your weekly review you’ll be able to spot it.
4. File it – You should get one manila folder for each class that you are enrolled in, and everything should be put in there that relates to that class. But, only put relevant stuff into the files, if it’s a past assignment or test and you won’t need it, Archive It.
5. Archive It – Everything that you want to keep from your college work needs to be archive, professors screw up or you want to show your mommy your A+ after you go home for summer. The chances of you ever actually needing your archives are small, but you’ll need want to keep them. The best way to archive everything is to go to your local OfficeMax or Staples and get a 12″ by 12″ box, and put everything in this box. Hopefully you will never have to go through it again, and after the semester is over you can just tape up the box, label it and put it away until your retirement.
6. Trash it – if it’s something that has no current value and will not be needed in the future, you can trash it.

Organize
Once you have everything out of your head and being processed, you’ll need an organizing system to glue it together. Here’s how to work it.

1. Projects Lists – This list should be long and it should be in your 70cent notebook. Anything that will take longer than two minutes you’ll want to get out of your head and into this list.
2. Waiting For List – If you are waiting on somebody else to move ahead with any project, such as waiting for another student to finish their portion of a group project before you go do yours, this will go here. This list will remind you of what other people are doing for you so you will not lose track.
3. Calendar - You will need to have keep track of day/time specific activities, such as your class schedules, when tests and assignments are due, and the end of the semester.
4. Context Lists – There are some things you can do in one place that you can’t in others. For instance, you might want to leave all of your studying for when you are in the library. Or do your homework when you are in front of a computer. This makes sure that you do the right things in their right context. Some example contexts: dorm room, computer lab, library, Inclass and so on. Put your action items here, so when you are at a specific place you’ll be able to look at the list and move alone.

Review
You’ll need to review your calendar and your Next Actions at least once a day, this will ensure that you can take care of what needs to be taken care of today. You can review the other lists also if you have time. You should also schedule a weekly time with yourself to review all of your projects, lists and actions at least once a week. I have found that Sunday night is a great time to do so as that is when many students get back into their “school mode” after the weekend.

Do What Needs To Be Done
Once you have this system set up and you keep with it, you’ll be able to track everything that’s important and needs to be done. It’s up to you to actually do the tasks, assignments and projects, and you probably already know how you work best so it’s up to you to take care of the actions and graduate with that A+ average you mother wants to see. LOL.

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