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One key to staying organized is having a constant reminder of what needs doing. Even if you know what you’re supposed to be doing, that constant reminder can be your signal, even your motivation to go ahead and do it. For years I’ve tried to organize myself. Kept notebook upon notebook of lists, carried around packets of index cards, even tried to follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done to a T. Still, it wasn’t until I got my BlackBerry that I started implementing all of these methods successfully. The difference was having a virtual pad and paper around all the time. That, and using a few choice BlackBerry apps, including StudentDocket. It’s a great tool that can keep you moving, even when you don’t feel like it.

Overview

StudentDocket is an application designed to help students better organize themselves. In its truest form, however, the application is an extension of David Allen’s Getting Things Done program, which you can read more about here. It’s essentially a natural way of handling workflow. We receive a number of inputs every day, and oftentimes we lose sight of what they mean. Getting Things Done (GTD) is a method of processing these inputs and organizing them in a way that is easy and natural to remember and, most importantly, act on.

The name StudentDocket is misleading. We covered it in our teacher and student BlackBerry applications, but it works just as well for professionals. In fact, because it uses the principles of GTD, it might work even better for professionals who are looking to organize their workflow. As I said, I’ve been using the application to help keep myself organized, and even though I leave some of the application’s features unused, it still works wonders.

Creating classes

Before creating a project or task, you’ll have to create classes. This might seem unnatural for non-students, but it does serve its purpose. After all, work isn’t the only thing that matters, right? You can use the classes section to divide up your projects in any way that makes sense for you. I divide my StudentDocket into a number of classes. I have one for each website I manage, one for educational projects, and another one for personal projects.

To create a class, click the Menu button on the main screen of StudentDocket, and then select New Class. You’ll then have the option to name the course, give its location, set the date and time, note how frequently it occurs, and set a start and end date. As you can see in the screenshot, I left the location blank and the time as the default. I did change the Repeat Rule field to daily, since I work on BBGeeks every day. The end date I left set to never.

Below that you can enter in the teacher details. This is mainly for students, who can enter in the professor’s name, office hours, and other information. Professionals can use this field to note their boss, or the project leader. You never know when having that information in hand might be useful.

Creating projects

Once you’ve created classes to organize your workflow, the next step is to create projects. The project is the main unit of the GTD program. In our work we either create projects, or have others assign them to us. It’s easy to lose focus when working on a project. It consists of many parts, and if we lose sight of those components we can lose focus on the project as a whole. GTD is designed to keep projects flowing by breaking it down into tasks.

To create a new projects, highlight the class under which the project falls, click the Menu button, and select New Project. You can really hit the Menu button at any time, since you can change the class in the New Project screen, but that just makes it easier. Here you can enter the project name, the class it’s for, the due date, and the date to begin displaying the project. This is useful if you have multiple projects in one class and want to finish one before beginning the next. You can also enter any notes here.

You’ll notice also a section called Tasks below the project information fields. This is what David Allen calls Next Actions. They’re basically the step-by-step instructions for how the project will flow. We’ll cover that in the next section.

Creating tasks

You can create tasks two ways for StudentDocket: standalone and for projects. The standalone way acts as a basic to-do list. This is meant for one-off items. If you’re a student, that can include home work or short reading assignments (long reading assignments might best fit under projects). If you’re a professional, it can be a list of quick actions, like following up on an email or making a cold call. In any case, these tasks are not part of a project.

To set a standalone task, just click the Menu button on the main page and select New Task. From there you can enter the task name, its status (incomplete, in progress, or completed), the class it’s for, when it’s due in class terms, the actual due date, and any notes. You can also set yourself a reminder for anywhere from five minutes to a week before the task is due. Finally, there’s an option to repeat the task daily, weekly, or monthly. And, of course, there is a field for notes.

To add a task to a project, click on the project and select Open. That will bring you to a screen titled “Tasks due for…” and then your project name. From there, hit the Menu button and you can add a task to the project. You can also edit the project details from this screen. If you choose Add Task, you’ll go through the same process as above, except your task will now be assigned to the project. Once you complete the task, just highlight it, press the trackball, and select Mark Complete. If you’re super-organized, you can also mark the task In Progress.

Viewing your schedule

The top navigation bar on StudentDocket gives you a number of options for viewing your projects and tasks. The default is the normal view, which lists your classes and the relevant tasks and projects for each. The clearest is timeline, which will list all of your projects and tasks by due date. It also lists your daily classes, with the appropriate tasks and projects listed below them.

In addition, you can view assignments due today, this week, and this month using the icons on the top navigation bar. Clicking the Menu button gives you a number of additional options, including the ability to view assignments due tomororw and in the next X days. You can also view by class, or you can view all of your assignments.

(Note that StudentDocket also tracks your past-due assignments, marking them in red.)

Finally, there are options for viewing completed items. You can leave these visible, as a reminder of what you’ve accomplished. Most people, in my experience, like to hide completed items, as to streamline their organizational process. No need for unused clutter if you’re trying to stay organized, right?

Getting StudentDocket

If you think that StudentDocket is the kind of software that can help you get and stay organized, you can get StudentDocket for $19.99. That link is for operating systems 4.1 through 4.7, non-touch. You can get it for the 4.7 Storm also.

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