The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the last in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College.  This video is all about how to plan well for classes and deal with large projects or papers.  Plan for Classes In this final video, we are finally going to talk about how to plan for and organize each of your classes at the beginning of the semester.  The nice thing about college classes is that the professors generally have done most of the planning before the class even starts.  Once you get the syllabus, you will have a good idea of the all of the reading, assignments, and workload for each class.  The first week of classes for me is a planning week.  I spend at least a couple of hours per class on that first week planning everything out for the semester.  So what does that mean?  I will map this out based on the organization tools that you have already set up. Digital Notes - For each cl...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the sixth in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College.  Even though this targets college students, it could be helpful for anyone who is struggling to organize life!  This video discusses how to build good habits, start the day off right, and focus on self care and mental health wellness. So far in this series, you've set up some great systems to handle your communication, calendar, tasks, notes, and files.  And you've learned some tips on how to be more productive.  And although taking care of your schoolwork is important, it's also really important to take care of your environment and your mental health.  Let's start with Habits - What we do today, we do more of in the future -- both good and bad.  You sleep in -- your body will want to do more of that in the future.  You get to class on time -- that sets you up for more of that behavior.  The...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the fifth in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College.  Even though this targets college students, it could be helpful for anyone who is struggling to organize life!  This video covers productivity hacks -- ways to manage your time, be more efficient, and actually get things done. We've landed on Week 5 of this series.  By now you have tamed your communication streams, figured out a calendar, instituted a task management system, and started a filing system for all of your notes and papers.  This week I'll share some thoughts about planning and getting things done.  Let's get started.  Everyone's brain works a little differently, but almost none of us has a brain that wants to sit and study for 8 hours straight.  The most important thing is to befriend your brain and figure out how to get as much productivity out of your brain as you can.   Y...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the fourth in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College.  Even though this targets college students, it could be helpful for anyone who is struggling to organize life!  This video discusses systems for organizing paper files, personal notes, and notes for classes. So now you have your incoming messages under control, you've organized your calendar, and you've got a task management system.  Now we'll work on getting your notes, papers, and files in order.  Up until this point, you've been able to choose whether to use digital or paper for each system.   But when it comes to notes and files, you don't really have a choice.  It's too much work to force all of the things that come into your possession to be either digital or paper, so you really need an organization system for both.  Fortunately, as time goes on, things are becoming more and more digi...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the third in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College.  Even though this targets college students, it could be helpful for anyone who is struggling to organize life!  This video deals with choosing a task management system to handle your daily to do list, recurring tasks, and future tasks. By this point in the program, you should be keeping up with your incoming communication streams (Week 1) and have set up a calendar for all of the events in your life (Week 2).  Great job!  Those are two of the most crucial ways to stay organized.  This week we'll talk about task management -- or how to remember things and get them done.  Tasks are different than events.  Unlike events, tasks do not necessarily have a predetermined start time, stop time, and  location. They may have a due date, but there is usually no specific timeframe given to accomplish...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the second in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College.  Even though this targets college students, it could be helpful for anyone who is struggling to organize life!  This video deals with choosing a calendar system to handle all of your events and scheduling. Your calendar is one of the most important -- perhaps THE most important -- organizational tool in your toolbox.  It will help you to remember appointments and assignments, plan your time well between events, and see what you have going on for your day, your week, and your month.  It's crucial that you find a calendar system that works well for you. As with almost everything these days, there are digital and paper options.  For those who choose a digital calendar, I like Google Calendar, but there is also Outlook, iOS Calendar, and a BUNCH of other calendar apps.  For those who prefer paper, some pe...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the first in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College. Even though this targets college students, it could be helpful for anyone who is struggling to organize life!  This first video will give an overview of the series and then start with organizing your communication -- meaning email, texts, voicemails, papers, etc.  Overview of Series Welcome to this 7-week series that will help you Get Organized for College.  During the next seven weeks, you will listen to videos on 7 areas of organization, choose your own tools to address each issue, implement your own system, and then maintain it throughout the 7 weeks and beyond.  By the time you are finished, you will have ways to deal with your communication (which I'll cover in this video), your appointments and events, your tasks and to-do list, the information you need to file both digital and paper, you will learn some t...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar channel and today's video is a specific introductory video for parents to my Get Organized for College 7-part video series.  I'm guessing if you are watching this video, you are about to send your kid off to college.  Or perhaps you have one already in college who could use some organizational tools.  I created this 7-week program to make sure my kids have the tools they needed to handle the information, scheduling, tasks, life skills, and assignments that they would be facing in college.  When I went off to college, I was a bit anxiety ridden since I had graduated from a small-town, country school and felt like I was going to get eaten alive if I didn't pull myself together.  During high school, I was not very organized, I left things to the last minute, and I frequently lost or forgot important things.  That summer before college, my dad bought me a book called "File Don't Pile" and he paid me $...