First and foremost, get yourself a calendar, such as Google Calendar or Outlook (part of Office365). Make sure that you record all your commitments such as supervisions, lectures and extra curricular activities. Then use another layer in the same calendar to record things you would like to work on, but which are more flexible; so if you plan to work in the library for 3 hours and read certain books, block out that time. It might be helpful to have another layer to your calendar for things like washing your clothes or going shopping. It helps you see how busy your day will be. paper diaries are fine, but you run the risk of losing them. Back them up weekly by scanning or taking photos of pages.

Use another tool for things that can't be achieved in one go, that are more of a project such as writing an essay or a dissertation. You need help listing all the things that need doing, setting and keeping to due dates, ranking tasks and adding contextual information.

Project management tools

Trello, Microsoft to-do, Monday, or even just a Gantt Chart in Excel

Ideas boards

Jamboard, Miro, Padlet

Research journal for ideas and reflections

OneNote, Obsidian (good for research notes too), WordPress (private or public blog)

Break your tasks down into manageable chunks. Putting ‘Read book’ on a to-do list isn’t very helpful. This is your aim. You need to identify the steps that will get you there. These are objectives and you should make them SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

By taking this approach, the above task becomes: ‘Read chapters 3 & 4 between 5 and 6pm on Tuesday evening to learn the details of the case studies used by the author. Make brief notes in Zotero’. That way, you know exactly what needs doing, are more likely to be able to get the job done and know what remains  to do if you run out of time.
Write out some SMART objectives for tomorrow.  Revisit the 'How to' video for more information.

How do you know how long something will take you to do? This is one of the biggest problems when scheduling time for something on your 'to-do' list. It can be dispiriting if you are constantly taking longer to do something than planned. The best way to find out how long you need to block out in your diary, is to keep track using a grid or an app:

• Input the type of task (be specific, make them SMART)
• Record the start and stop time
• Quantify the work by recording the number of words written or pages read.

This will give you baseline data to allow for good, bad and ugly days! Keep recording it for a few days/weeks (depending on the intensity of the task). This will allow for variation:

• Optimistic Estimate – your best recorded time (To)
• Most Likely Estimate – your most commonly recorded time (Tm)
• Pessimistic Estimate – your worst recorded time (Tp)

Then, to estimate length of task that accommodates variation, plug these numbers in the formula below:

• (To + 4Tm + Tp) / 6 =  time estimate

This way, you are less likely to underestimate how long something will take and block out the appropriate amount of time in your calendar. But remember that sometimes things do take longer than planned and that is OK. Build an hour into the end of the day as a buffer so that it doesn't matter if you overrun a bit.

Create a clear file structure online or on paper. Anticipate what you might create.

Online

• Created top level folders and then subfolders. Having a empty folder is less of an issue than putting everything in one long list and planning to put it in order later. 
• Rename downloaded files straight away and use dates where practicable to divide up work.
• Come up with a naming convention so you spot files easily e.g. prefix for document type e.g. report, notes, essay_meaningful document title_version_yymmdd
• Version control is particularly important now that Microsoft Office automatically saves everything. If you know that you are about to embark on a major set of revisions, save a new version before you start working on it.

On paper

• Try to have different notebooks for different tasks or elements of your course e.g. one for each paper you are taking or one specifically for meetings with you supervisor. Alternatively get a notebook with built-in dividers.
• Use the first pages of each notebook to create a contents page
• Number every page in your notebook
• Date everything and give it a clear title
• Enter these into the contents pages as you fill up the notebook
• If you use loose-leaf, then take a similar approach to your folders.