An introduction

I've been exploring the world of productivity and studying efficiently for a while now, ever since I felt lost and confused in the sea of chaos that was my final year at undergraduate level. At that time, the reading and research I did online helped, but I never implemented a coherent system, for obvious reasons - implementing a system to stay organised requires some thought and effort, which I didn't have at the time. I've since decided that it's time to devote some energy to it, before I go on to post-graduate study in October.

So why write about it? Why not just follow one of the dozens of schemes out there, like David Allen's Getting Things Done, probably the most well-known organisational tool out there? Several reasons:

• Although there are plenty of systems out there, none are directly targeted at the student lifestyle. In fact, surprisingly little has been written on how students can keep themselves organised by adapting a system like GTD.
• I've always found writing an excellent way of shedding light on a topic. This is more than an academic exercise - I'm hoping to learn a lot and change the way I study, in order to be more efficient and achieve the academic career path I want. Writing will help to clarify my thoughts and show me what's working, what isn't, and how I might improve.
• Publishing, as opposed to writing privately for myself, is intended to provide some accountability for myself. I don't want to get lazy about this, and one way of helping me stay on track will be knowing that other people can read, and perhaps learn, from what I'm doing.

If you're wondering why I am not, at present, making my identity known, it is simply this: if things go badly wrong, I can crawl back into the oblivion of the World Wide Web without embarrasing myself to all my acquaintances. But just in case you want some background facts:

• I've just gained a 1st class honours degree at a top English University.
• In October 2006 I'm beginning a 1-year Masters course at another top English University.
• I'm hoping to publish parts of my undergraduate dissertation in the course of the next 12 months.
• Eventually, I plan to complete a Phd and stay in academic research, in some form or another.

You may be thinking: "Why does a 'high-flyer' like this need to organise her life? Surely she has it all organised already?" Well, no. On top of my academic commitments, which are set to be pretty intensive come October, I play two musical instruments, ballroom dance socially, am active at church and enjoy running and cycling. I also read fiction voraciously. During my undergraduate degree, I often found one of two effects:

• I had to work hard at my studies, and didn't organise myself well enough to leave time for other things.
• Or, I procrastinated about studying, and then got stressed out and didn't achieve as well as I could have done.

So I have decided that I need to implement a more structured way of organising my life. I'm hoping that this will have the following beneficial effects:

• Keep me on top of all my studies and allow me to excel.
• Allow me time for leisure activities.
• Most importantly, free up my mind so that I can do some thinking.

This last may sound rather strange, but let me explain: I'm not the sort of person who tends to forget appointments, lectures, exams and deadlines. I keep a pretty good calendar. But I also tend to keep a lot of stuff in my mind, important things that I would worry about forgetting, and less important things that I later couldn't remember. Crucially, using my mind as a memory-dump allowed me precious little time for creative thinking, reasoning and research - things that will be essential in later academic life. My ultimate goal is to have myself organised enough to leave plenty of time for actually engaging my brain and doing some research.

Enough for the first post. In subsequent posts, I'll be going over some of the tools I've looked at, see how they might adapt to student life, and start implementing a system.