The Productive Student

In our day and age, information flows into our lives from various sources: e-mail, blogs, regular mail, newspapers, websites, phone calls, meetings and many more.

I find myself overwhelmed by this massive stream every now and then. My peers never understand this, but to put it frankly: I’m a messy person. I need organizational help. I do a lot of things, maybe more than the average student, maybe not – nevertheless, I can’t cope by going about my duties as the average student would.

The challenge we face is to (1) streamline and organize the inflow of information and (2) distill the important whilst eliminating the irrelevant. I was sick of being drained of my attention by trivial things.

In a series of articles, I want to first focus on principles of handling these challenges and apply them on our digital life. Most of our information these days is in digital form, which is why we’ll look at that first.

I often find myself fiddling with various systems of management, and while I agree that everyone should seek to find what works for them, I’m also convinced that you’ll never find a system that works. So the basic principle I try to follow in this series will be to eliminate the concept of a “system” as much as possible. We’ll try to focus on bare essentials, the needed tools, and not more. We’ll put the tools in place so they assist us, but do not rule us.

We’ll approach with common sense and logic, using as few tools as possible, implemented in as little time as possible.

The same principles will then be transferred to our paper-filled life, which can be organized in similar ways. The articles in this series are:

1. How to Put Your Computer on a Data Diet
2. Creating a Simple 26-Piece Filing System
3. 3 Productive Folders to Revolutionize Your Storage System
4. How to Become a Student E-Mail Ninja
5. Staying in Sync

You may find some of this useful, and I appreciate your thoughts expanding on the ideas put forward here.