Theory

1. Introduction to the weekly schedule: setting goals

Prioritising. What are the most important things to you?

Do you still remember the ABC system? Let’s revise just to be sure.

 Group A goals are things that ‘create meaning’: you reach goals and lead the life that suits you.

• Group A goals: choose four to six key things here, such as your most important courses towards the major and your most important leisure time goal. These are the key tasks that will help you reach the results, goals and future you aspire to. Use your prime time and most of your energy on these, working on them at the effort level of 80 to 100%.
• Group B goals: Necessary, often routine tasks, with less impact on results. Use only a moderate amount of time and energy on these with an effort level of 60–80%. While these necessary routine and auxiliary tasks can be interesting but they are less crucial for your goals.
• C goals: things you do if you have time. If you are in a hurry, you can leave these out. Input level 0–60%

Click on the arrow to move on.

2. Breaking down your goals

In the ABC exercise, you broke down your goal into smaller weekly tasks.

Remember these: Break tasks down into small enough parts to make sure you get them done. A reasonably sized task would be, for instance, one hour of work at a time. This way, you will get positive experiences as you get things done.

Break the goals down into weekly tasks by asking yourself: what do I have to do to meet this goal?

• For example, if your goal is to pass a mathematics course, your weekly tasks will include going to lectures, getting the study materials, doing the homework, going to math exercise classes, practising with your friends, asking for advice, finding any missing pieces of information online, and going over the areas you don’t know well enough yet.
• If your goal is to get fit, your weekly task is to exercise 4 times per week.
• A 5-credit course studied at a steady pace over a period of six weeks has a fairly high weekly workload. It will take a total of 135 working hours to pass the course. This spread over six weeks equals more than 20 working hours per week, which you should record in your weekly schedule. 

3. Tips on making a weekly plan

Making the weekly plan

From here on, set aside some time each week for making a weekly plan. Write down your goals for the week, break them down into concrete tasks and enter these into the calendar. Some tasks, such as attending a class, may be put on the calendar directly. The timing and the amount of time required for other tasks cannot be precisely known in advance. Write these down under the ‘Main tasks of the day’ heading for each date. You can directly copy lectures and assignments from MyCourses to e.g. Google Calendar.

• Check your calendar daily.
• In the morning, think about the main task of the day.
• Check your list of goals weekly (put a printout of it on the wall).
• Identify the most important goals.
• Make sure you have a clear image in your mind of what you want to get done and what the day’s main task is; also, keep in mind what else you intend to do during the week.

‘Recognise your prime time and defend it ruthlessly’

Every person has their own ‘prime time’ or best time of the day. Identify which time that is for you and use it to accomplish the most important things. Just be firm and say no to other things during that time. Eliminate disturbances. Turn off your communication devices also. If you are interrupted in the middle of a difficult task, it takes 15 minutes to recover and get back to what you were doing.

Recording your independent study time on your calendar

In higher education, studying takes place for the most part independently. Write down explicitly the amount of time you will use to prepare for classes. You will get more out of a class when you acquaint yourself with the material ahead of time. Write down also the amount of time you will spend reviewing the lessons afterwards, e.g. on the day after class. This will help you considerably when you are studying for an exam. In the review, you might summarise the main points of the class in a visual manner, for instance.

4. Monitor your use of time

Monitor your use of time

Tips for the future: 

• For a few weeks write down what you actually did during that time and how much of it was used for studying. You might find out that you did not, in fact, put so much time into studying as you thought.
• Evaluate your success: how well did you actually keep to your plans? Where were you successful? Where did you waste time? Are there ‘time bandits’ – things that take up considerably more time than you realised? What was challenging? Was your plan realistic and doable? If you deviated from your goals, did you do it consciously or inadvertently? What should be changed? What things took place differently than you expected? Was your plan too detailed? Did you pack too much into it?
• Students who monitor their use of time for four weeks during their first year of studies tend to get through their studies at a faster-than-average rate. 

You can now get started with the actual scheduling (go back to section 2 to see the exercise).