Like I said on Thursday, 18 credit hours in a high-level MBA program is kind of a lot. A lot of reading, a lot of note-taking, a lot of project coordination, a lot of deadlines. (And a lot of driving. Thank God for satellite radio.)
So you might suspect that as an organizational type, I had some magic trick up my sleeve for keeping all my classes and projects organized. Well, I did have an essential tool for managing everything. And there it is, on the right.
Yeah. It's a paper calendar I made in Excel.
The one at the right covers the half of the semester after Spring Break (on the other side is the pre-Break portion). Basically, I copied all of my assignments—reading, deliverables, meetings, etc.—onto the calendar, made little checks next to every completed task, then marked through the day after it was done. (It was that kind of a semester, I assure you.)
This spectacularly low-tech tool worked so well for me for a number of reasons. For one thing, my schedule didn't vary much from week to week, so I could just note what was due in the general area of a particular class's time, and not have to note what class it was due for.
For another, this calendar was supplemented by a daily to-do list that captured the smaller stuff and outlined the best order in which to do all my tasks. That way, I could keep the overall calendar relatively uncluttered and focused on school obligations.
The main reason I'm showing you my little calendar is to reinforce one of the maxims of Sorted: it doesn't matter what you use, as long as it works for you and you use it consistently. I could've used any number of online, computer-based or professionally designed paper tools to keep track of my semester. But what worked for me was a basic calendar and a bunch of scratch paper.
What humble tools have worked for you in the past? Let me know in the comments!

