Staying Organised as an Architecture Student
As an architecture student you are only as good as your organisation system. You can be the most amazing designer, technically minded for your construction drawings and detail orientated, researching topics for your dissertation.. if however you are not organised enough to get all of this done, you will fail.
This is because architecture is not just one thing, your research and history module, technical and communication modules all feed into your studio module which tends to be the biggest time sink of them all. Now you could just wing it, do work as and when, throw in a few all nighters and just about get everything done. Your quality of life and the quality of your work however, will suffer.
Apologies, that all sounds very doom and gloom and a tad over dramatic to be honest. My point is, get having a good organisational system makes your life a hell of a lot easier to allow you to get everything you want to get done, in addition to all the stuff you have to get done.
Here are 5 tips which I will go through in detail to ensure you are ready to get sorted.
I hope this are helpful and if you have anything else to add, please write them in the comment box right at the bottom of the page. It would be very helpful for everyone else reading this too!
Enjoy! :)
Find your System
This is first because it is the most important. It’s basically the backbone to how you will stay organised and, I’ll take a moment to say, this is completely dependent on you and how you work.
During university (2013-2016 & 2017-2019), I saw a mixture of mostly diaries and bullet journals/notebooks.
I am still a firm believer that actually writing things down is the best option for day to day quick notes. I personally, then use digital means, so a google calendar and Notion database on top of this for planning things over a week for example. As I said though, it’s completely up to you, it depends on how you work, what you remember and what you’re organising.
Baseline, have something to write in. This could be a diary where each day or week is already set out for you. This is of course is helpful to see when you made the notes and easy to then drop deadlines into future days or weeks.
You can also go down the route of a plain notebook. Plain, ruled, dotted whatever. You can keep it super basic and use it for notes during a lecture or a studio tutorial.
The best of both is the bullet journal. You basically take a plain notebook and then customise it to your needs. Have a few pages for notes and sketches, a few pages for weekly goals, monthly overviews to see the month at a glance.. If you want a video on this please let me know.
In the digital world, your Google Calendar for example, is your diary - days and weeks already set out and your Notion Database is your bullet journal.
In a Google Calendar you can colour code different categories, input tasks, move things around extremely easily and see everyrthing for the week at a glance. You can also very easily share calendars with others which would be very helpful for architecture group projects. Notion is also very flexible but it is more than a calendar, its a database. I use it to plan holidays, keep track of deadlines, store ideas and if it was around during my university days studying architecture, I definielty would have used it to manage my time and tasks over the various architecture modules.
Whatever system you choose, you need to find a system that works for you and allows you to keep everything in one place. Or at least grouped things in one place.
2. Set your Non-Negotiables
So you’ve decided on how you’re going to organise yourself. Now, what are you going to put in this calendar or diary? What goes in first?
Your non-negotiables go in first, things that without a doubt you need or want to do throughout the week. Yes, this is space for your contact time at university, lectures, seminars etc, maybe your part time job if you have one (click here for blogs on part time jobs) but it’s also time for you.
It’s sometimes hard to believe but you and your mental and physical health are more important than your degree. Make sure you get into your calendar, time to exercise, time to socialise and time for self care.
3. Keep an eye on deadlines
Now you have your non-negotiables, you need to add in the, well they’re not flexible but they are things that you are not under your control. Your deadlines!
You can usually predict when they’ll be (A quick one to get the year started, another just before the holidays etc) but it’s so much easier to get them in your planner of choice so you can see them coming up and they are not a jump scare the day before.
You can also use this to plan the time you have left prior to your deadline.
Pick a day, I shall use Sunday, to look forward to seeing what’s happening the following week, month or few months if you can. This is a great way to plan ahead for deadlines, especially larger deadlines like dissertations or studio thesis work where you’re given months to work on something. This is an excellent way to keep yourself on track and use the time you have for the project as effectively as you can.
4. Make the ultimate list
I love a list. If you don’t love lists, you’re not going to like this step as i’m basically telling you to write the biggest f*cking list you have ever written. (Perhaps a bit hyperbole, but gets the point across).
Every week or so, depending on how you work, could be every month, I want you to write a list.
Heading in bold, and then under the heading write every single thing you need to do.
Not ‘finish portfolio’, it’s
add title to page 1,
add page numbers to master slide,
photo on page 4 needs to be edited etc etc.
If this feels far too overwhelming for what you have on, then keep lists for different projects or sections of your portfolio for example separate so you’re only looking at a few things at once.
The point of this list is to ensure:
1. Nothing gets left behind,
2. You haven’t scheduled an hour for a task that actually has 15 minute tasks within it that would take you an hour each, and
3. It will 100% give you a boost as you cross/tick/whatever the tasks off as you complete them.
5. Time Block your tasks
Now. We time block.
This basically means getting everything you have listed out, scheduled in your calendar to ensure it gets done.
If you’re doing your part 3, this is actually really good practice for pricing a job as you need to know how long tasks are going to take in order to propose a price where you make profit.
Anyway, using your chosen planner looking specifically at when things need to get done, you need to start prioritising your time.
For example, you have two projects, it’s October, one is due before the holidays, so mid-December, the other is due in February.
The December project is quite small, and the February project quite big.
You would need to find a way to start on the February project to make sure it’s ticking along in the background, whilst keeping your focus on the smaller project due in December. Start populating your planner with the tasks, making sure to do your best to estimate how long each task will take.
It is unlikely you will get this right first time, it takes experience and a lot of self-awareness to accurately allocate the correct amount of time into your schedule. So don’t panic. Figure out how much time you think a task will take and add a contingency. The more you time block and get used to it, the smaller the contingency needs to be and the more efficient you will be too.
Organisation doesn’t mean being rigid, it means creating space for your creativity to breathe. Once you have a system, you stop chasing deadlines and start designing with intention.
Thanks for reading! I hope this post helped you in way you needed it to!
If you’d like more guidance, I offer 1:1 tutorials available here or you have a question or a topic you’d like me to cover, drop me a message or fill out the form below - I’d be happy to write a blog post or create a resource to help you out!
