Managing Your Time – The Essential Guide

Successful students know that University isn’t just about knowing how to write an essay or pass an exam – but balancing your academic work life – lectures and seminars, presentations and research, coursework and revision – with part-time jobs, your fitness, friends and family (oh and occasionally some fun).

So how do these top students stay on top of some many things competing for their timeWell there are a few simple techniques they use, and today we show you how:

Get time under control

To manage your time successfully, you need to get informed about:

• What you have to do (e.g. assignments, seminar reading, paid work)
• When they have to be done (e.g. deadlines, lecture & seminar times)
• How to fit them into the time you have (dividing up available time)

Remember much of the information you need will also be accessible online, on Blackboard or via your Dept’s website. If you can’t find information about deadlines, referencing etc, ask your tutor or your dept secretaries. Don’t guess – guessing wrong could cost you marks.

Plan to meet your deadlines

If you only had one academic assignment to complete in a term, planning to meet your deadline would be relatively easy! The key to meeting all your deadlines is to keep yourself informed about what, how and when you have to do things, and to have systems to keep everything under control. These need to be simple so that you’ll actually use them.

The simplest system is to make an A4 plan to pin up somewhere you will constantly see it.

Start by entering deadlines for your assignments so you can see when your busy times will be. include seminars and presentations you need to prepare for.
In the ‘Remember’ column, add any events which you need to take into account when planning, e.g. family birthdays, social events, Hall formals, sports fixtures etc.
Decide on the major tasks you need to complete for each of your deadlines, and roughly how long you need to spend on each.
Fit them into the ‘Targets’ column, working back from the deadline.

To help you work out the tasks you need to do, and how much time you can allow for each, try this interactive assignment planning tool from the University of Kent – ASK.

There are many electronic tools you can use to help you plan your time:

Yourmobile phone will usually have a calendar function, you can use it to store memos (even record short voice messages to yourself) and to set up reminders with alarms for tasks and lecture times.
Anonline web-based calendar like Google Calendar can be accessed at any computer, or via a smartphone. Or if you have your own laptop, use something like Microsoft Outlook.
iPhonesand iPads have their own built-in calendars.
Even simple tools like the alarm function onyour watch can be set to remind you about meetings and events.

There are also an ever-growing number of online tools and apps that can help you to plan and use your time more efficiently.

Remember the Milk is an online task manager – you can get the basic version for free. It also comes as an app for smartphones, and for iPads.
Another excellent online organiser that can also be downloaded as an app is Evernote. This allows you to collate notes that you make anywhere, at any time and in a variety of ways. If you use it to capture a quote from a text, don’t forget to add the bibliographic details for your referencing.
To keep on top of your Library activity, download a free app called BookMyne. You can use this to search the Library catalogue, place a hold or renew your loans – you can even set it up to tell you when your books are due back.

The simplest way to get a clear visual overview of the time you have and the tasks you need to fit into it is to have something like a wall planner that you can fix up somewhere you will see it every day (e.g. above your desk).

Making a study timetable

One of the biggest time wasters is when you spend time trying to decide whether to study now or later. If you schedule your study times in advance, you won’t be wasting time each day deciding whether and when to study. Book study times into your timetable with lectures and seminars, as academic commitments.

Make a week plan with columns for each day of the week, and rows for ‘Morning’, ‘Afternoon’ and ‘Evening’. You can download a Word template for a week plan here.

Enter lectures, seminars and other fixed academic commitments.
Add regular commitments like paid work, club meetings, sports fixtures and training.
Mark up times which you are going to commit to as study sessions. A good target to aim at is five two hour sessions a week.
Plan to be flexible – if something else comes up, you can trade a study session with a free session.

You will probably have busy weeks when you need to add more sessions, and quiet weeks when you can claim time back.

Choose your best times to study – most people have a time of day when they are more focused (often in the mornings), and a time when they find it hard to concentrate (often after lunch). Trying to process or write a complicated text when your brain isn’t working well is a waste of time, and can be depressing and discouraging. Work out your best thinking times, and use them for tasks that need more concentration.

“Timetables don’t work for me”. You may find it works better for you if you keep an overall tally of the hours you spend studying in a week. add more study times, or give yourself more free time as necessary.

Getting organised and informed

If you’ve taken the trouble to plan your time, you won’t want to waste it because you can’t find the things or information you need.

Have a simple filing system – if it’s complicated, you won’t use it. One way is to use a box file for each module to keep lecture notes, handouts, notes from reading, photocopies, even small books. Stick lecture/seminar times, rooms, and deadlines inside the lid.

Social bookmarking can help you keep track of the hundreds of useful websites you’ll come across so you can find them quickly when you need them – you may not need help with finance or a guide to referencing now, but when you do you’ll be pleased you know how to find it. Social bookmarking allows you to save useful website addresses on a web server so that you can access them from any computer, to add new ones when you find them, or go to sites you’ve already marked. This is better than saving them to My Favourites as that only saves them onto the computer you are using at the time. You can usually organise your bookmarks into categories (e.g. general University websites, course-related websites, websites for your own interests) and you can share them with others, for instance if you were working on a group project. There are various social bookmarking sites that you can sign up to for free. Two of the most popular ones are Delicious and Stumbleupon.

Decide on your spaces for study just as you decided on times for study. Find a place that works well for you. If you can, keep it as a space just for studying, so you can have all the necessary things close at hand. If it’s somewhere where other people might interrupt, it helps to have a way to let them know that you are working now but will be free later.

Finally – remember that things usually take longer than you think! If you find you don’t need all the time you’ve allotted, it’s extra free time.