7 Ways to Organise Your University Workload

Whether you’re in your first year of University or your final year, organising your workload becomes a difficult task and it’s easy to lose track quickly. In this blog post, we’re going to explore 7 key ways to organise your University workload and how to achieve that perfect balance with your social life.

Navigate this article:

• To-do list
• Schedule
• Setting goals
• Note taking
• Balance
• Progress
• Apps

To-do list

The best place to start if you’re stuck on how to manage your work, is with a to-do list. It’s never too late to begin with one whether it’s digital or on paper, this is the easiest first step to make for organisation. This involves creating clear tasks to meet specific goals you have for the day, for example writing down a module that you have to study for an exam. Next, create a realistic goal for the day in your to-do list, instead of writing down to study for an entire module narrow it to a specific part of that module. Then, day by day you’ll complete each part of the module in smaller more manageable tasks from your to-do list. Need inspiration? Feel free to check out our downloadable to-do list to get started!

Schedule

Having a schedule is vital in ensuring success for your studies, consider first creating a daily timetable with your classes, revision time and free time. By allocating each activity to a time during the day will allow you to discover a daily routine. First try testing this routine out for a week or so and see what works and what doesn’t. From there, have a go at changing things around and seeing what works best for you. For example, choosing to study in the mornings or evenings truly depends on your needs and when you’re most productive! Speaking of studying, we have a free downloadable revision timetable that you can use, to save you from creating one yourself. Using a timetable will help you make studying easier, and reminds you to take regular breaks.

Setting goals

Organising your workload, also gives you the chance to set realistic goals for you to achieve either by the end of the month, day or term. For example, try creating a monthly goal and for this, list ways you can achieve this goal. This can help you envision the process. Which in turn will allow you to create an effective schedule to meet this goal! The same process can work for the end of term and even end of the year. Don’t worry if you don’t meet these goals, just by simply tracking your progress and recording the things you did to meet this goal places you on the right track to eventually achieving it!

Note taking

Depending on your course, finding what note taking method works best for you will help shape your understanding of the course content. Whether this is using pen and paper to write or a laptop or tablet for annotations. The Cornell note taking method can be a helpful note taking tip. It effectively divides your notes up with a summary, notes and key words making it readily available to look back to when studying for your next exam. You can do this both on your tablet or on paper, and organise it by each module within your course. Alternatively, you can also annotate your lecture notes and match them with the relevant seminar or lab notes that you have, so that whenever you need to revise you can easily check back onto the relevant notes for each module.

Balance

University is a great place to socialise, meet new people, find new passions and develop new skills so use this to your advantage by joining any societies or relevant University events! It’s best to try and find a balance between both your extracurriculars and academic work, and you’ll be able to-do this once you’ve found your own routine. After exploring a few societies and finding what works for you, try aligning your classes and other needs with these new extracurricular events. It’s always important to have a healthy balance!

Progress

An important step after setting your goals is to be realistic and acknowledge the progress you make throughout your journey. When trying to complete your bigger assignments and tasks, first consider breaking them down into smaller manageable chunks. This can be incorporated into your daily to-do list. With regular deadlines and updates you can easily track your progress and meet these goals. You can also add your exam and assignment grades to track where your weaker areas of content may be in your course and what your next steps of action should be for this.

Apps

There are a variety of useful apps dedicated to helping you plan your workload and allocate time for tasks which can even include daily reminders. Some include:

Google Calendar: Organise your classes, lectures, revision time and social events in your calendar and set reminders for them!

Todoist: A great app to help you manage your deadlines and keep track of your upcoming tasks

Asana: very flexible and helps manage your tasks and projects plus you can collaborate with others in this space

Now that you know 7 ways to organise your university workload, how about organising your home too? Resooma Bills simplifies and splits your utility bills for you and your housemates easily, into one monthly bill. When joining Resooma, you’ll get a FREE 12 month Tastecard and a gift card to one of many retailers. You can create a free quote here today.