If you don’t plan how and when you are going to study, chances are that you are not making the most of your studies. Every second of planning will be to your advantage. There are no disadvantages when it comes to planning. The more you plan, the more prepared you are. The more prepared you are, the less likely that things will go wrong. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you are studying, where you study and when you study. Planning will help you make the most of your time (and of your other resources, such as money). Creating a personal study timetable means creating a schedule (or to-do list) for your activities for every hour of the day and for every day of the week. This schedule will include all the activities and responsibilities that take up your time, for example:

• Going through your study notes;
• Summarising your study notes;
• Going to the library to do extra research;
• Answering any assessment questions or tasks;
• Studying for exams;
• Doing projects;
• Spending time with your family and friends,
• Going to work;
• Travelling to and from work,
• Spending time relaxing;
• Doing any household chores.

For your benefit, we have included an example of a blank, personal study timetable in our Downloads section. Please download a copy of this personal study timetable, and, if you can, print out a copy for yourself.


How to Fill in a Personal Study Timetable

I suggest you look at the blank Personal Study Timetable that we have provided for you. Look at it closely. Notice how the Timetable shows every day of the week, as well as the different times of the day. Let’s start by looking at the column for Monday.

Imagine that on a Monday morning, between 6am and 7am, you have to get up and get ready to leave for work. You would then fill in the brief description of that activity in the relevant block.

For example:

You would then fill in the blocks for the rest of the hours of that day. Start by doing this for just one day. In our example, we are filling in activities for Monday.

Once you have filled in your activities and responsibilities for Monday, you can do the same for the rest of the days of the week.

No two schedules or timetables will look exactly the same because we all have different activities and tasks that take up our time. The most important feature of a personal study timetable is that your timetable allows you to plot (or schedule) your various activities for the hours of the day and for the different days of the week. With your personal study timetable, the objective is for you to look at, and, if necessary, fill in your timetable everyday!

You won’t always be able to stick to your schedule 100% every day – though of course you should try your best to do so. For example, your boss might phone you and insist that you go into work on a Saturday morning to sort out a crisis. A good idea is to schedule time for unforeseen (unplanned events) – however, don’t schedule more than 1 hour a day for these unplanned events - if you do that, you will be ‘eating’ into your time that should be spent on your daily priorities.

No matter how you design your timetable, you need to be able to make sense of the information in the timetable, and be guided by what your requirements for the day are.

Another tip regarding your personal study timetable is that you need to be honest and realistic when you fill it in. Be honest and realistic with yourself – you will know how much time you need to dedicate to your studies (and also to your other responsibilities). If you are struggling with working out how much time to dedicate to your studies, then please contact us and we will be able to help you with this – all our contact details will appear at the end of this Newsletter.

I really want to encourage all of you to try creating and using a personal study timetable. Don’t forget to make sure that your timetable includes reference to every hour (or half hour) of the day. This way, you get to see the broader picture of your day’s responsibilities.

At College SA we want to help you with all your studying-related questions and concerns. We want to do our very best to supply you with all the information that you need, as well as with plenty of encouragement to assist you in deciding what it is you want to and need to study. In order to do this, we would like to ask you a few, short questions. By answering these questions, you will be helping us in being the College for the people and the College for you.