What does a student need to do to be productive?

Over the last week I've been thinking about the following question:

What sorts of things does a student need to keep track of in order to lead an organised, productive and efficient life?

Leaving aside the sector of the student population whose main concern in life is the location of the nearest watering-hole (and I won't even attempt to guess what proportion that is), most student have many different demands on their time and energy. These group quite nicely into three main categories:

1. Academic
2. Social
3. Domestic

1. Academic

These are all the things that are necessary, important or useful in getting a degree - the whole point of going to university in the first place, and therefore one of the first things that spring to mind. The types of things in this category divide into two sorts: scheduled (those with a time constraint or deadline) and unscheduled.

Scheduled academic commitments include, first and foremost, lectures, practicals, seminars and tutorials. These are the unavoidable things. No matter how hard you try, if you don't turn up to a single lecture all year, your chances of doing well are pretty non-existent. I also include any meetings with tutors or supervisors here: although they can be rescheduled (unlike lectures), missing them always makes a bad impression.

Secondly, deadlines for essays, projects, dissertations and the like are also scheduled commitments, although not in the same sense as lectures. However, they're one of the most important things a student has to keep track of: miss a deadline, and your grade is likely to be a big fat zero.

Finally, there will be other types of work that have to be done by a certain time, or not at all, such as set reading for one of the above mentioned commitments, or other types of preparatory work, which will vary from course to course.

Unscheduled academic commitments are things like keeping up with class reading, doing extra reading or practice assignments, and, for most people, the preparatory work for assignments. (In many cases I think this should be scheduled, but more on that later).

2. Social

Despite all of the frenetic work that the above implies, most students will also wish to indulge in some social activities, be this a student society, volunteering, or simply meeting friends at the pub for a drink. There may be recurring commitments (such as orchestra rehearsals or weekly meetings) or one-off events. Either way, it's important to leave some space for the stuff you want to do, as well as the stuff you have to do.

3. Domestic

This heading covers all those things that you can't really avoid if you want to survive - cooking, cleaning, shopping, dental appointments and the like. The point here is to get them all done in the most efficient and painless manner possible, so that your mother doesn't winge about how ill you're going to get from the 3-week old milk in the fridge.

It's all too much - how am I going to keep on top of it all?!

Although keeping track of all these varied commitments seems difficult, all that is really necessary is a system in which to plug it all into and the means to keep that system up-to-date and trustworthy. Having browsed the multitude of websites on this subject, I have decided to try and implement David Allen's Getting Things Done system (GTD). I've just received my copy of the book today, so keep your eyes peeled for another post explaining the system soon. In the meantime, check out these resources for an introduction to the concept:

Getting started with Getting Things Done at the excellent 43 folders,

and the highly detailed and excellent GTD primer at Black Belt Productivity.