Planning your time

Drawing up timetables 

Everyone knows that timetables work, but not everyone makes them. Often that's because it's discouraging when you find they're too difficult to keep to. The key is to be realistic, and leave a bit of room for flexibility.

There are three kinds of timetable that are especially useful for students: weekly, termly and project.

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Making a weekly timetable

If you are taking a taught course, you probably already have a timetable of lecture, seminar or tutorial, and lab times. (If not, you can download a blank timetable grid in Word here.) Add any other fixed commitments like paid work, or regular sports events. Decide which of the times you have left are going to be study periods.

The number of study periods you need to include will depend on your course - if it's mostly independent study, you will need to book in more periods than if you're working in the lab most days. As a guide, universities generally say that you should consider full-time study as if it were a paid job with flexible hours. So it's more important to keep a tally of the number of hours you study, than it is to stick to a Monday-Friday 9-5 routine. That means if you work best in the middle of the night, work then and sleep in - providing it's not the night before a 9am lecture.

Setting study periods in advance has three advantages. It means not wasting time on deciding whether to work today or not. It helps you to avoid distractions by giving you a set time when you know you will be free. Above all, it means you don't fall into the trap of feeling that you ought to be studying all the time - so you don't start resenting study.

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Making a termly timetable

Use a simple grid with columns for Week numbers or Dates, Deadlines, Targets and Things to remember. (There's one here to download as a Word doc.) List fixed academic deadlines first - coursework submissions, exam periods, presentations, supervisions meetings etc. Add things you need to remember in the last column - family birthdays, sports events, extra work commitments etc.

You should be able to see now when your busy and quiet times are. Break down your big tasks into smaller steps and add in targets, for instance: 'Start reading for essay 1', 'Finish literature review', 'Proofread chapter'.

There's a simpler grid here arranged by module and week. It's up to you to choose the type of plan that suits you best.

One of the reasons timetables don't work is that we plan our time too rigidly and leave things till the last minute. When you're planning your workload always make sure that you build in some contingency time - extra time in case something goes wrong (your printer cartridge runs out, you can't get the book you need from the library, you come down with a belated case of Freshers' flu....). So set your own deadlines a few days before you actually have to hand work in, and work to them. If you finish early, you've got more play time!  

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Working out priorities

Often the thing that stops you working is not knowing where to start. How do you decide what to do first?

Try listing all the study tasks you would like to fit into your schedule. Rather than listing "Write essay", break this down into the steps you need to take and think about which of these needs doing first. Then put them in order of importance.

Bear in mind not only when tasks should be done, but also how significant they are. For instance, reading to prepare for a lecture is unlikely to be more important than finishing a piece of assessed work. You can test this by asking yourself, "what would happen if I didn't do this?"

If you are feeling overwhelmed by work it can help you feel calmer if you get one small easy job done and finished. However, beware the classic trap of doing all the easy jobs first, then not having time for the more daunting tasks.

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Making a project timetable

Most coursework assignments are completed over a relatively short time. Dissertations and major projects are likely to be more spread out, perhaps even over more than a year. It's easy to keep telling yourself that there's plenty of time, right up to the moment when you realise that there isn't!

To plan a project timetable, you first need to decide on the tasks needed to complete the project. Then build them around any fixed deadlines (e.g. presentations on proposals or early results, draft chapters, final deadline etc).

A typical list of tasks might be:

*    Investigate background/existing research on topic

*    Decide on themes to focus on and methods to use

*    Gather information (by primary research, reading etc)

*    Write first draft

*    Edit and write final draft

*    Proof read and finish (check references, layout, binding etc) 

A schedule might look like this:

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