Some students simply hate time management. Maybe it goes against their well-cultivated, leather jacket wearing, acoustic guitar crooning, Kerouac reciting image of artistic rebelliousnesses. Maybe their parents used to beat them with Day Runners. Whatever the reason, they exist. Trying to force upon them a fully-developed, student-centric time management system — such as GTDCS — is a lost cause.

For these individuals, what we need is a middle ground. Something that is better than the stress-inducing chaos that defines their current schedule, but that remains so brain dead simple that they might actually stick with it (and, more importantly, become a big enough fan, down the line, to move on to something a little more advanced). Here’s just such a system:

Three Rules for Brain-Dead Simple Time Management

  1. Jam a simple calendar in your backpack. You can leave it in there. When you’re in class, and bored, and your professor mentions a new deadline, jot it down on the calendar. It’s something to do. Having it on paper will greatly reduce your stress.
  2. Jam a legal pad into your backpack. If something pops into your mind as needing to get done, and your backpack happens to be around, jot it down on your legal pad. Again, the goal is to get it out of your head. Every time you jot something down you can’t help but see the other stuff already on the pad — preventing it from being forgotten. Feel free to cross things off as you finish them. This feels really good. But it’s not necessary.
  3. Follow a panic ritual. Because you suck at time management, you will probably enter a panic attack mode, in which you feel completely out of control, around once or twice a month. When this happens, deploy a set ritual. Take your backpack to an off-campus coffee shop. Get something strong. Fish out your calendar and legal pad, survey what’s on your plate, and try to come up with a plan that seems solid enough to calm you down. If you worry about maintaining your image, you might consider surreptitiously covering your calendar with a book on the Hegelian Dialectic. The chick behind the counter probably digs German Idealists.