How to Organize Your Digital Workspace

When Susan was working on our latest chapter, How to Organize Your Digital Workspace, living with her was like riding a roller coaster…

One moment she’s had a breakthrough and really cruising!

The next moment, she’s discovered a problem that negates all of her work. She’s back to ground zero. 

The next moment she’s got things cranking again!

…only to discover another critical flaw in the system…

This was supposed to be the shortest chapter in our “Study Skills for Virtual Learning” course; instead, it was one of the most challenging! 

What appeared to be “so simple” turned out to be very complex, with a lot of “hidden” barriers. 

I could understand her frustration.  But I could also see the value of her efforts…

“Sue, look at how much friction you’re uncovering? This is friction that millions of students -and their parents and teachers- are experiencing every day! Only, they are experiencing it in micro-moments that they may not even recognize. They may not even realize the collective impact of these bottlenecks.

“But you are taking the time to figure it all out. You are creating a system that will not only work, it will work efficiently. Once you get this figured out -and you will- you will save a lot of people a lot of trouble! 

“Just think about how much this will help our own kids?!”

Lately, every weekend has included some type of organizing/regrouping session with our kids as we continue our journey with hybrid learning. We continue to notice areas of potential improvement; organization of the digital workspace was certainly one of those areas!

Let’s face it, we adults never had the luxury of someone sitting down to show us how to organize our computer for optimum efficiency. 

As adults, nearly every “hack” we’ve identified was accidental… often learned the hard way. 

Plus, we were introduced to “computing” gradually. We could afford to limp along and hunt-and-peck for things. Little-by-little, we were able to piece our own “processes” together.

Now that our kids/students have been THRUST into full-time computing, we are discovering how difficult it is to reverse engineer our own piece-meal systems! 

Nor do we have the bandwidth to figure out how to coach our kids through all of this! 

—

I saw the hiccups Susan encountered. (We worked together to “two-man-saw” some of the solutions.)

I also see my own kids literally slink out of their chairs every time we try to help them organize! (Seriously… just like the “high-chair” days!)

But Susan finally found success. She then broke the process down to a simple few steps and captured them in short videos.

And my kids do NOT argue with videos! (Even videos of their own mother.)

So, this weekend’s agenda was to watch Mom’s videos on How to Organize Your Digital Workspace.

They did.

Now, they have clean (computer) desktops, shortcuts, and proper pins in place.

Afterwards, I noted with 99.3% sincerity…

“Sue, you realize… without those videos, we would have spent a LOT more time nagging them to listen to us, than all of the time it took you to make them in the first place…?” 

If you’re ready to teach your students how to organize their digital workspace, we’re here to help!  We can guide you to explore the curriculum (for a sneak peek, click HERE), arrange for a trial, schedule a brief call, provide a quote, or all the above.  Simply contact us with any questions or requests you have.

Sincerely,

Brian Winter, M.Ed.
Co-Founder of SOAR^® Study Skills
Exhausted Father of Two Students in Virtual Learning