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How to Make a Productive Study Space

In recent years, we’ve seen the term “aesthetic” pop up over and over again on social media. In it’s current usage, the word refers to the distinct look or style of a person, company, or place. Aesthetics have also entered the academic sphere, with things like studygram, studyblr, studytube popping up on various social media platforms. These are accounts that are centered around making productivity, academics, and study visually appealing. The logic behind it is, if your space is functional as well as beautiful, there will be more motivation to study.   I think this is an interesting phenomena, and I think it is a true one. In today’s post, I will be taking you through some of the things I do to maximize my work space, as well as make it efficient. First, let’s start off with some of the basic things that I always have on my desk Book stand Planner/Notebook Globe (this will make sense later, I promise)   As history majors, we do a LOT of reading and writing. It’s so difficult to fumble
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Why I Never Used a Planner (and why I use one now!)

    Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that the planner section of Target is getting larger and larger - it almost has its own aisle now.

I’ve never really been one for day planning or time blocking. I’ve always found it took up too much of my time to be bothered with. And also…how would I even do it? Do I write assignments on the day that they’re due, or on the day that I plan to work on them? 

Once I have to start planning the details of every hour, I get confused. How do I know if I’ll be hungry at 1:00? What if I finish the summary in one hour instead of two? I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in a few hours. Even as I’m writing this, I’m still not sure what I’ll be working on when I’m done. Maybe I’ll clean up that essay I’ve been working on, or maybe I’ll go shower. Not planning out my entire day in a planner gives me the ability to be flexible and adjust my daily tasks in a way that fits my mood and energy levels. Being able to make changes like this also ensures that my work will be of higher quality, since I’m completing it based on an intuition-based system. 

Until my sophomore year of college, (August 2020, I’m writing this in March 2021) I had never used any type of planning system in school, unless it was required for points. All my assignments lived in a nice pocket in my brain, where I could easily access them without flipping pages or scrolling back through weeks of Google Calendar. 2020, however, changed all that. I found that professors put their assignments in different tabs of Canvas, that they deviated from the syllabus, and that in the confusion of the pandemic, I couldn’t rely on my head as much as I used too. At first, I was frustrated. I prided myself on being able to retain details about assignments after hearing them only once. So I started using a simple weekly planner. 

I hate to admit it, but I actually kind of like it. It's incredibly satisfying to aggressively cross out assignments with my pen, and to end my day seeing all my completed tasks. I like how I've figured out a simple, minimal system that works for me. 

If you're thinking about buying a planner or using an online planning system, though you've never done it before, I would recommend trying out a simple, low-effort system. It'll make it much easier to adjust to the new routine than an elaborate system would. 

Try out this new system for a month or so. If it works, keep it. If not, throw it out and try something else (blank journals are great for doing this; there are no constraints of a pre-formatted planner). 

Let me know what kind of system you enjoy using! 

Next week is midterm season for most students, so we'll be talking about test taking tips! 


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