Organize Your Life with Just a Piece of Paper: Cal Newport's Method

How to Stay Organized Like a Straight-A Student (Inspired by Cal Newport)

The book How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport has quite a few lessons, but the one I want to focus on is his extremely simplified yet extremely efficient organizational system. I'm not even sure if it can be called revolutionary or meticulously designed since the system is simple. But we can always learn.

The simple method requires three things:

• Scratch paper that you can carry around with you.

• A planner with a monthly view (it doesn’t have to be fancy at all).

• A little bit of proactivity.

The author gives a lot of example workflows for this system, so here's an example from me:

During School:

• Crossed a teacher who wanted an explanation of a shared folder → Jotted it down in my notepad.

• Quickly wrote down the assignment I got in my bio lab.

• Met my teacher-in-charge → She asked me to update some information on the Drive and Excel sheets → Wrote that down.

• Remembered I had to send a message to someone → Noted it.

At Home:

• Opened my monthly view diary:

  • Jotted down the biology assignment date.

  • A free lesson I could help the teacher out.

• Actionable items (done ASAP):

  • Updated the info.

  • Sent the message.

Day managed.

To make this work, there are habits you have to build beforehand, and if you're just starting out, the willpower to keep going. The system is very open-ended; make it as complicated or as simple as you want and always keep experimenting.

Yours lovingly,

Vanta <3