Time spent planning your learning can greatly benefit your studies on two levels. Firstly, you are more likely to avoid last minute rushes and to participate in a wider number of activities if you have developed a realistic overview of your commitments. Secondly, if you approach a piece of work in a planned way you are more likely to carry out each stage efficiently and effectively, producing higher quality pieces of work.
This unit will help you look realistically at your priorities and organise your time effectively.
Being aware |
Being realistic |
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What broad activities take up your time? It will be useful to develop an overview of all of your time commitments. You may like to make a list of all of your main activities. This should include your:
Consider all of your activities that take up time. Once you have an overview you will find it easier to move on to the next stages of prioritising your workload and drawing up work plans. |
How can these activities be broken down into tasks? Once you have listed all of your main activities, you might find it helpful to analysise each of them task by task. What will you need to do to fulfil all of your commitments? More information on task Analysis:
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Once you have developed a clear idea of your key activities and their related tasks you can begin to make plans.
A plan or timetable needs to suit your personal needs. It is pointless spending time and money on producing a plan in glorious technicolour if it doesn't suit your preferred way of working. Many people find it useful to plan their time on a variety of levels:
When making your own plans, you may find it useful to consider your regular or timetabled commitments. For example - every Tuesday you have a seminar.
Identify all such regular commitments and put them into some sort of plan. With a clear picture of these fixed points you can arrange the rest of your activities around them.
Once you have written a task sheet, detailing all of the tasks in the order in which they will need to be done, you can develop an action plan by assessing how long each task will take and giving each task (or stage) a deadline for completion.
Action plans can cover a range of time periods from a matter of hours to weeks, months or years. They only take a few minutes to construct but will be invaluable in helping you plan your time. Your ability to break down a key activity into tasks, and subsequently to accurately estimate the time needed to complete them, will develop with time. However, you should always be realistic; be wary of allowing too short a time which will only result in your missing deadlines, or too much time which is simply a waste.
Mindtools have more in depth information on action planning.
Actions |
For consideration |
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Prioritise your workload
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Relate individual tasks to each other and put them in the wider focus of all your commitments and responsibilities. |
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Be aware |
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Be organised and know what is urgent and important. | |
Where does each task fit? Is it urgent and important? Or important but not urgent? Now apply this to your planning sheets, tackling urgent and important things first and allocating time ahead for important but non-urgent work. Your ability to prioritise time will be helped by the process of subdividing activities into tasks and drafting action plans. |
A clear focus is important for your motivation, so is some indication of when you will be finishing.
Finally, you should assess how effectively you are fulfilling all of your commitments at all stages. Once you have developed an initial overview of your activities and tasks you will need to reassess them as your priorities and commitments change. If you have produced an action plan for a project, keep this with you and tick off areas of completed work.
The next page shows a time management checklist to help your planning.
Question / task |
Think about |
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Establish your regular commitments | What will you be doing each week? |
Put this information into a weekly plan | Photocopy enough of these to last a term |
What broad activities are you involved in? | Study? Spare time? Eating, sleeping, shopping? |
What tasks are involved? | Break down the major activities into their constituent parts |
Establish priorities | What is urgent? What can be done over time? What is routine? |
Relate tasks to time | What types of tasks are they? Do they need consecutive time? Can they be done in small breaks? Where do you need to be to complete the task? |
Make work plans | Plan each week – be prepared, get an overview Plan each day – be active, use checklists |
Stick to these plans | Make sure they're realistic Try not to develop a backlog |
Get motivated | Be focused – always know what you want to achieve |
Stay motivated | Introduce variety – don't slog away at one thing. Take real breaks but avoid distractions |
Complete tasks | You'll feel better in the end |
Reward productivity | You've earned it! |
Day_______________________ Date_____________________
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To do list
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Time |
Study Tasks |
Personal Tasks |
Other |
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09:00 |
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10:00 |
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11:00 |
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12:00 |
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13:00 |
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14:00 |
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15:00 |
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16:00 |
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17:00 |
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18:00 |
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19:00 |
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20:00 |
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21:00 |
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22:00 |
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Firefighting
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Quality time
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Distractions
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Time wasters
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You have now completed this unit. You will now be able to avoid last minute rushes and participate in a wider number of activities because you can develop a realistic overview of your commitments. You can also approach a piece of work in a planned way and therefore are more likely to carry out each stage efficiently and effectively, producing higher quality pieces of work.
Now you should think about how you spend your time, make a note of how much time you spend on:
leisure activities
study activities
sleep
work
family time
Look out for time management sessions from your Learning Development Centres!