Time management and planning
tutor: Mike Horne FGS
for the Centre for Life Long Learning
some suggestions:
Study skills are there to help you make the most of your learning - time management is an important part of this because often we have only a limited amount of time available. For the purposes of this web-page about time management I have assumed that you are studying over a ten week period because this makes it easy to split the time up into percentages. If you are studying over different periods of time then get your calculator out !
It is important to consider a few things about your learning preferences and learning style - this will affect your time management plans ... [note - link to be added here!]
Here are some tips for managing your time :-
Simple tips:-
Buy a diary or year planner and use it!
Keep to your schedule and tick things off when you have done them.
Create more time for yourself by starting early - get a copy of the syllabus and reading list before the course starts and do some background reading.
Study sessions -
Each study period should have an aim or purpose - for example don't just passively read a book, instead search for the answers to some questions you have set yourself.
Break big tasks into little chunks. They should be realistic and achievable in the time you allocate.
Keep to your schedule - if you plan to study for 50 minutes then do it for 50 minutes, not less, not more.
Don't study for too long at a time. Your mind needs to be fresh, so take a 10 minute break every hour and a half hour break every 3 or 4 hours (particularly if you are using a computer). Do something completely different or nothing at all during the breaks.
If you are studying more than one topic at once then mix them up to keep them fresh and so you don't spend too long on one at the expense of others. Remember it is far better to pass all of them rather than to do brilliantly in one and fail the others!
End each session with something positive - don't end it on a problem.
Planning an assignment -
The assignment could be an essay or report or a presentation ... it will involve researching the topic before writing it up.
So the order that you will do things in is
Fine, but how do you ensure that you get this done on time? By planning backwards. You know when you need to submit it. Put that date in your diary. Allow yourself a week to proof read it with a fresh mind, so you will have your final draft ready by week nine (of the ten). [note - this also allows yourself an extra week to work on it if things have not gone to plan!]. Allow yourself two weeks to draft and write it - so you start writing in week seven - put that in your diary. Allow yourself five weeks to do the research, and if possible split that into a logical series of tasks - put those dates into the diary. Have one week to do the literature search - week two. And in the first week you will brainstorm what the assignment is really about, make a plan and test the feasibility. There you have it - a ten week schedule in your diary that you will try to stick to, with achievable chunks that you can tick off as you do them!
OK - you might not like my way of splitting up the ten weeks - so change it to suit yourself. And also you will probably overlap some of the tasks, nut you can still schedule them. Perhaps you will want to take three weeks for the literature search and overlap it with 6 weeks of research, which overlaps with two weeks for writing the first draft. Fair enough, if that suits you then do it! Just make sure that you put it into your diary or on your planner.
You could devise a checklist to help planning written and presentation work - here are examples of an essay checklist and presentation checklist.
Revision -
If your course is exam based the temptation is to spend the majority of your time studying because that is fun and hope that you will remember it at the end of the course when you will do a bit of revision just in time for the exam.
Well there is some bad news - we don't remember things very well. To put it bluntly if you don't use it you lose it!
Some research [note the bit of bad academic writing here because although I use the graphs of this to demonstrate the point I don't know where the come from!] has shown that - about an hour after studying our understanding has increased because we have been making associations between what we have just studied and what we already knew. But after a day we have forgotten about 75% of it. By the end of the week we have forgotten about 90% of it. By then end of the month about 95% of it and after 6 months we have forgotten most of it!
But by making good notes as we study and reflecting on it at regular periods we can boost our memory. So an hour after the study period we can read through our notes. A day afterwards we can read through again and perhaps add some things or condense them. At the end of the week we can review our studies and perhaps condense them further. At the end of the month ... you are probably starting to see a trend here!
By reviewing and revising as we go through the course the "end of term revision" is not such a shock because we have created a good set of condensed notes that will jog our memory . And because we have reviewed the studies recently our memory is running at 50 + % not 5% ! Sorted!
Start now!
"Even the longest journey starts with the first step"*
Be prepared to break these rules!
If you are on a roll and can't stop thinking about a topic - sometimes it is good to stick with it and use that energy.
Inspiration can strike at unexpected times, have a notebook handy! For example if you wake up at 3 in the morning and cannot get something out of your mind, lying awake trying not to forget it will not work, turn the light on, write it down in the note book and then you will find you can get back to sleep without worrying about forgetting something important!
Things often take longer than you expect - if possible allow some extra time in your planning to take account of this.
Shit happens! Things crop up that may mean that you have to change your plans or even abandon part of your studies. You will not be the first person this happens too! Just reassess the situation and change your plans accordingly.
* taken from the Monkey TV Series!
updated 6/6/2006
copyright Mike Horne - 2019
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