Staying Organised for A-levels // Cambridge Student

hey everyone welcome back to the channel so if you're new here my name's ray and i just finished my second year doing physics here at cambridge and in the summer of 2019 i achieved 4a stars and i largely attribute that to both doing anki flashcards and my organization system the organization system i'm going to present in this video basically helps me keep on top of everything so if you want to jump around between the video then check out the timestamps below otherwise we'll get straight to it so

the motivation behind my system was that i didn't want anything that was too complex or required too much maintenance ideally you should be spending about like 90 of your time or 95 percent of your time doing the work and then the other 5 10 time actually planning and organizing what you're going to be doing next spending any more than that probably means your system requires too much maintenance or is a bit too complex so i would keep that in mind anyways feel free to base your system off mine in this video but if you find that things aren't working for you then try and figure out why it's not working and try to come up with your own system but don't spend too long trying to create the perfect system because otherwise you won't have enough time to do the rest of the work so feel free to just try my system and make adjustments as you go along yourself and basically fix up anything that you don't think is working for you so anyway my system was split

into three main parts and number one being my daily drivers which included my paper planner which i have an example of here and then my folder which i kept always kept to my back and this next part was my notion board and past paper tracker which allowed me to keep track of more long term things rather than day to day or week to week things and then finally included my archival system in which i just basically put things into a bigger levatch folder and uh hopes that it might come in useful later which sometimes it was sometimes it wasn't so

i think this piece of paper with a bunch of boxes on it is much better than most to do apps out there and before i explain why i'm going to explain how this works if you want to download it yourself and then print it out too then and there is a link in the description down below do bear in mind when you are printing off yourself then when you go to your printing option uh you want to send it to your printer and press print on both sides and then flip on the short edge and not the long edge because if you flip on the long edge then it won't come out right but yeah that's just a brief um caveat here so anyways you can see that it has seven columns one for each day of the week with the weekdays in bold and then it has nine rows so i will just put a task in each of these boxes uh along here and then as i did that task i would just cross it out and if there were certain tasks which i couldn't get done that day then i would just i would like do a cross line for it and then just uh draw an arrow going to the following day so i know that i have to do that task that following day i mean it looked pretty messy by the end of the week but i don't think it really mattered because i was just getting it done um and then at the end of the week i would print out another one of these and then just start the week again on the back you can see there is a homework sign which i used to keep track of all the homework i was doing and there are a few columns over here so there's the s slash d which is the set date and due date um for each of the homeworks there's s t which is the subject and teacher and then there is a description of the homework itself and then there's c r so the first box being that i've completed the homework uh which is c and then r is that the teacher has received the homework which means i've handed it in so i think it's beneficial during my freeze because i knew exactly what to be doing uh that day and every free and like after school two and when you know exactly what you're doing then it's much easier to like just get started and not spend the freeze just sitting around with friends chatting uh which i found many other friends did when they had no idea what to be doing so basically this whole simple system ensured that i was on top of homework and i knew exactly what to be doing on each day and the weekends and whenever like something new came to mind then i just take this at my pocket and quickly fill it in or add something to end of the box or just add something onto the homework side so you can fill this piece of paper normally but if you want to see the most effective way to follow this piece of paper which i'm not kidding is actually effective uh then there is a video linked in the description which shows you how to do it anyways i found this to

be much better than most of the apps for a number of reasons firstly with to-do apps i think it's so easy to just set yourself way too many tasks for one day and just get none of them done whereas this uh you're only able to set yourself nine tasks on each day and usually i would only end up setting myself four or five tasks on each day um so i wouldn't feel overwhelmed and i was making sure i was focusing on the big and most important tasks rather than say like 20 minor tasks secondly with apps you usually have to get your phone out and that can lead you to like checking messages and everything else or like you have to turn your phone back on if you want to say in a revision session to check what you're doing next having a separate paper-based system is much better because like it doesn't require you to use your phone and it means you're less likely to get distracted also i found this to be super useful because i could just pin it up to my wall when i got home and then i could just see the task right in front of me because i had a bad habit when using to do apps that when i close the app then i would just end up forgetting about the app completely and forgetting about having to do that work whereas when i'm sat down on my computer and i have this up in front of me then whenever i look up i just see that i still have tasks due that day or i have to move them on to another day if anyone particularly feeling like doing any more work that day also as a minor point i think it's so much nicer to cross things out using pen rather than just like tapping a button on an app but that's just me so next up is a free pan ring

binder folder which i bought from a store called ryman and that's a stationary store in the uk maybe in other countries i don't know but basically this has lasted me the last four years or so um and i've always kept this in my bag and then i used some subject dividers which i bought off amazon to like sort of separate into a few different sections so i did four a levels and i had one section for each of my subjects and within each section i usually had two plastic wallets uh one for each teacher because i usually had two teachers for each subject i think i bought 50 of these plastic bullets from ryman for about eight pounds they sell like thicker ones and thinner ones and i prefer the thicker ones because whilst they are a bit more expensive they last so much longer as well so basically i would put any unfinished homework that i had for a teacher in this folder and then i would be doing the homework so during my freeze or something and once i completed the homework i would just stick it into the end of the folder where i also had some more plastic wallets which meant that during the lesson when they were collecting homework then i would just ten straighter back and then pull out the homework from that so

during the lessons we either had to use a class book or some refill pad paper now i had two types of refill pads the first one being the oxford campus refill pad which is a little expensive but the paper is really nice i think it's like 90 gsm uh so 90 grams per square meter and yeah i found it to be pretty convenient um for when making notes in class and i usually stored this at the front of my daily folder so i just take out some sheets and stick it to the front because carrying a 300 page refill pad in your bag alongside some textbooks and everything else just makes it so much heavier but that's just me and then the next refill pad i used was a much cheaper ryman essentials repeal refill pad which is also 300 pages but 70 uh gsm so the paper is much thinner and i usually use this paper for doing any homework or like doing rough work or basically anything that wasn't to do when making notes in class and these are like really cheap so you can get about six of these each being 300 pages for about 10 pounds from the ryman website so i had my refill pad paper at the beginning and then during the lesson when we were making notes or something i would like take out a few sheets make notes on that and then i would stick it into a relevant section uh depending on whichever subject i was in so if i made some maths notes then i would like after the lesson was done i would just stick in one of the wallets for whichever teacher i had because i had two wallets in each section and i'd also stick any homework in there and then do the homework everything like

that so now after teacher finished a topic rather than keeping all the papers in my bag i would take them out and then at home i would make flashcards on them uh which i explain more in my a level workflow video which if it's out should be linked to my open right now and then i would stick those class notes which i just made flashcards on into a larger leave arch folder so i had one largely watch folder for each subject one for masterful mass physics and chemistry and i roughly kept in order of the specification and any class notes and stuff and any homeworks or topics tests i did i just stick in this into this folder and use it for reference later i usually check through my flash cards every day so i would never really have to look over my class notes that often because i turned my notes from class into flash cards so things that i usually used for reference was either some tricky maps question or some complicated chemical synthesis reaction whatever and then every couple months as this larger leave watch folder filled up then i would go through it and then like just throw away any topic tests that i think i didn't need anymore or did well enough or basically just anything that i thought was no longer useful so now for

the digital my organization system i used a kanban boards to keep track of like more long-term activities of progressing through say larger topics and adding stuff onto my flashcards and making flashcards um so i used a kanban board on an app called trello during my a levels but now i use an app called notion which also has this kanban board feature so if you haven't heard of notion then i would highly recommend finding a video online and watching the video online and basically learning how to use it because it's really useful um anyway this is the notion board that i have and if you want to uh duplicate this board and use it for yourself then there should be a link in the description to duplicate it and use this as some template anyways you can see that i have a few columns i have a to-do doing uh topics done overdone and then practical endorsements so i just like to keep track of which practical endorsements i was doing for my a levels um and i kept everything in one board and then just used filters for subjects so if i press filter add filter and then do say subject is uh say physics then i can see all the physics tasks i have so i've done all these topics uh which is basically the whole a-level spec because i've finished with video levels and if i click on some of these topics then i can see i have a checklist here and this checklist basically helped me keep track of uh what i was adding onto my flash cards you can find more about it there in my a level workflow video um and then i also had to do tasks like the remaining physics of workbooks or like this past paper um so let's say i go to my chemistry tasks um i have some past papers which i need to do so i would decide which past papers i want to do on which day so i'll do these two and then i would change the dates to say today if i can find today and then do the same for the other paper too and then nice thing about notion is that i can switch to calendar view and then just see this and i can see i have these two papers due today and let's say once i've done the papers then and i've marked them and everything i will just drag these over into overdone and that would be it also it can be a bit um difficult to just switching like i don't know topic or if you want to see all your subjects in one view then it's better to remove this filter and then to make another view so for board view if i do duplicate this view then i can change this to say a copy of board view to chemistry view instead so let's change that to chemistry and then if i add the filter uh then i can do add filter subject and then chemistry and now it shows everything to do with chemistry and if i want to see everything else rather than removing the filter and adding it again i can just switch back to board view uh and now i can see physics 2. and for this like um if you know a little bit about notion then you can see that you can add properties and change some of these properties so if you don't actually do further maps then you can just completely delete the third maps tag or just rename all the tags yeah basically learn how to use notion it's very useful so to keep track

of over long-term tasks i also had a past paper tracker board um and this was just on google sheets so i had one for sort of every subject uh and if i go back to the chemistry board or the physics board in this case then you can see i put in all my scores for all these different past papers some years they didn't have any past papers and then i added a like small comment about like how i did in that paper and the wrong walks i got um if you want to download this yourself then there is a link in the description down below to download it but it was really useful for the time it came to doing past papers and keeping track of which types of papers i wanted to do and then which ones to redo as well so like this one i did particularly bad on and i wanted to redo so then i redid it like a few weeks later or something and i did better on that um so like when exam times comes around out two to three months before your exams and you're doing a bunch of papers then having a google sheet to keep track of them is really useful so that's basically for my

organization system if you want to see how a few parts tied together then i would recommend checking my a level workflow video hopefully this system wasn't too complicated and you can try some parts out yourself and see what you like and don't like and then just sort of use that for yourself if you found the video useful then do like and share and stuff like that and i will see you next time bye