Staying organised is likely harder now than it was at any other point during human history. The sheer amount of distractions are nearly impossible to count. From social media to artificial intelligence, people are bombarded with a never-ending stream of attention-grabbing disturbances.
That makes it hard to be a student, especially for those who attend remote classes such as those offered by the Open University. Anyone who tries to study at home is likely to get overwhelmed by every little interruption that comes their way. However, these classes are growing in popularity as younger people look to increase their earning power. According to a Forbes study, somewhere around 35% of all UK residents are looking to change jobs and the numbers are probably much higher for certain age groups.
Trying Out A Few Low-Tech Life Hacks
Experts at the University of East London took a close look at a group of very young history and biology students. Some of them took notes by hand while their classmates typed them out on a computer. While they found no real difference in factual understanding, the group that wrote them out understood concepts better than the ones who just did everything with a keyboard. Researchers believe that’s because writing things out forces learners to remember their lessons holistically.
Students who have a hard time keeping their assignments straight may want to apply this concept to everything. They could organise their to-do lists on paper instead of using a calendar app. One of the more popular choices these days is to invest in a personalised diary, which is custom-tailored to your specific needs. A specialty firm from West Yorkshire called TOAD offers a service where those who want to get away from high-technology distractions can design their own custom planner online. That gives users all of the flexibility of a modern digital solution in a paper format.
Despite all of the efforts at transitioning to a truly paperless society, stay-at-home students are going to end up with a fair number of documents lying all over the place. Something as simple as a traditional wire file basket can work wonders when it comes to organising all of this mess. Once you have the physical world under wraps, it might be time to actually apply some of these lessons to the digital one as well.
Eliminating Your Digital Distractions
The single biggest obstacle to obtaining an Open University degree has nothing to do with the coursework itself. Distnace learning students are going to be using a computer, a smartphone and possibly even their telly. That means there’s always a possibility the lesson plan could get lost somewhere in all of this noise.
It isn’t just students that suffer from this. A few years ago, researchers found that more than a quarter of London residents needed help putting flat-pack furniture together. Though pieces of furniture like this are designed with ease of assembly in mind, it’s become so difficult to focus on just one single task so people often have to ask others if they have too much going on. Students who feel overwhelmed like this may want to set specific times of the day where they turn the do not disturb feature on all of their devices.
Depending on how many services you’re signed up for, this might be the best time to go through and ask yourself if there are any you don’t really need. Doing this is very difficult for many people, especially those who want to stay in touch with friends they made in secondary schools. Getting rid of just a fraction of the services you’re subscribed to can help dramatically. Those who have to stay online for personal reasons or because their classes require it can use a few extra tricks to get their devices in order.
Social Networking Life Hacks
Art students in particular need to use social media to check up on things, which can become an organisational nightmare. One possible way to handle this problem is to use separate accounts for personal matters and those related to school. That should give you the freedom to check out illustration trends online without any difficulty.
Consider making digital bookshelves or special directories to hold course materials. Chances are good that you have a download folder filed with files and you may not know where more than half of them came from. An academic specialist once recommended immediately renaming every document as you download it, unless there’s some specific reason you need to keep the default.
Whenever you create a file, you’ll want to give it a reasonable name as well. This will help you find it in the future even if you end up misplacing it. As long as you have some idea of what you called it, you can use your device’s search feature to track it down. Students who call every homework assignment something similar will eventually run into problems. Keep in mind that you can also normally sort files by the last date they were modified if you’re having trouble finding your most recent pieces of homework.
Most phones and even digital telly sets allow users to hide unused apps so they won’t be constantly tempted to take a look at them. Some even give users the freedom to create little storage containers that hold apps they don’t currently need. If this is an option, then you might want to make one category for personal things and another for those related to school. Looking at a screen full of icons can make it nearly impossible to find the one thing you’re looking for, so taking the time to organise these can end up saving you many hours in the future.
Dedicating just a little time each day to keeping things in order will ensure that your university years are as succesful as they could possibly be.