The start of a new academic year harkens the prospects of shiny new stationary and piles of planners just waiting to be fully utilized.

Even now as someone with a full-time job (but especially when I was on college), it required a quality assortment of tools and resources to keep my life together.

The real art was balancing to make sure that my tools didn't contribute to my anxiety.

I had a few methods of considering the overwhelming nature of so many tools was to allocate purpose for each one. This helped because I would never feel like I never know where to access or put down certain information, and I never felt like I was wasting time copying the same information from one place to another.

It took some time, but in the course of a few years of trial and error, I've figured out some of the best tools to keep your academic, professional, and social life in order. I've included some details about what apps and brands I use, but what you use will differ based on your device and personal preferences.

And I completely understand that these ideas may not work for everyone. When it comes to personal organization, different methods work depending on lifestyles and even how your brain works best. The amount of tools here might also seem overwhelming, but if even one of them could simplify your life, it might cause a little bit of ease.

Any tool or organizer is supposed to make your life easier and not harder. If it seems like the tools and requiring organization tools to keep track of them, then they may be taking away rather than adding to your life.

One thing is true. Finding the tools or set of tools that bring order to your life should take away some of the pressure of relying on your brain with something that a computer can handle. Then, you're free to think about the bigger picture and what you hope to accomplish.