Assignment Tracker

One table, five columns

Number, subject, task, due date, priority, status. Twenty rows by default; anywhere from ten to forty, and the sheet spills onto a second page rather than squeezing when you ask for a lot.

A key strip runs across the top: H, M and L for priority, colour-coded, and a status notation of an empty circle for to-do, a half-filled one for in progress and a filled one for done.

Why the status marks are circles

Because a tick box has two states and work has three.

An empty box tells you nothing about whether an essay is untouched or three-quarters written, and on a Sunday evening that is the difference between panic and a manageable hour. Filling the circle in stages takes no longer than ticking and carries the information that matters.

Priority, honestly assigned

The temptation is to mark everything high. Resist it, because a page of H tells you exactly as much as a page of nothing.

High means it is due soon or it counts for a lot. Low means it genuinely can slide. Most things are medium. If more than a third of your rows are high, either the term is unusually brutal or the marking is not being done seriously, and it is usually the second.

Filling it in

Enter everything the moment it is set, not the night before. That is the whole discipline and it is the part students find hardest.

Once a week — Sunday works — read down the due column, mark the priorities, and pick what you are doing first. The sheet earns its place in the fortnight when three deadlines land in the same week, which is visible here well in advance and invisible in a pile of exercise books.

Who prints it

Secondary and university students, mostly, tracking coursework across several subjects at once. Parents who want to see what is due without conducting an interrogation. Homeschooling families running several children on different work. Tutors keeping track of what was set and whether it came back.

Forty rows covers a term for most people. Print two if it doesn't.

Related

For a project with milestones and owners rather than a list of deadlines, the project planner. For scheduling the actual working hours, the daily planner.