Want to plan but struggle with timings for things?

Do you want to plan but struggle working out timings to be able to plan efficiently?

This is one of the things that I always have and always will struggle with, but, it’s something that can be improved with practice. The more you do, the better you get at it.

What you’re going to need before you start trying to plan is:

• a list of the things you need to do

• a list of deadlines

• a calendar app / physical calendar

• a good cup of tea.

You’re going to want to put in appointments, classes and other things you can’t move about into your calendar first. And colour code them. I use a lighter yellow for classes, darker yellow for assignment deadlines and other academic things. If you’re going to be using public transport I would add a section for time travelling as well, make a note of the bus or train times (the one you intend to get and the time if you miss that).

Those are the things you plan around when trying to make a proper schedule. If you’re out three times a week for class from 9-1pm with no breaks then mark it down. See the time you have left in the day. These are also the things which give you example times to help if you struggle with estimating time taken.

If you know by the end of your one hour class you can’t pay attention but right up until that 50 minute mark you’re super focused then you may want to try scheduling in 50 minute blocks to do your work. But if you find after half an hour your attention goes elsewhere then try it for half an hour.

Look at the time you have between those fixed tasks on your calendar, then use that knowledge of how long you can focus to separate your time into chunks that you can work in. So, in the example above you finish class at 1. You have another 6 hours in the day you know you’ll have the motivation to work before dinner time, so separate that out. Travel time home and some time relaxing and unpacking your bag brings it to 2pm. Five hours left: if you work in 30 minute chunks then give yourself maybe 10 minute breaks for every half hour then half an hour break after four chunks.

How to estimate time when you can't do it well

First of all work out what’s required – write all of this down. Put these in order of what you need to do and any important deadlines (e.g. I need to work on X today but I have dinner with family at 5pm).

After this guess how much time it will take (I always round up to the nearest 10 minutes). I do this by looking at the task and if it’s something like writing a section of my essay I’ll think about how much work I’ve done in class in the past. So one point on a rough draft will take 30 minutes for me, without research. If I want to add in research I’ll add another 20 minutes to find the articles/ books and then the part I need as well as including it in my writing.

Therefore each main point of my draft will take 50 minutes if I’m starting out researching.

If you struggle with this then make 3 guesses for time: best case, worst case and most likely case scenarios. So that point would take me 50 minutes most likely, but best case is 30 minutes and worst case is around 1h 20.

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Hey! Tara here and thanks for checking out my blog. I update every Tuesday with posts about studying tips, advice and I also talk about productivity and organisation too. If you want to keep up to date with my latest blog posts I’d love it if you subscribed to this blog.

#organisation #timing #planning #studyblr #studying