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Step Four...Organising Yourself and Your Time
The most practical aspect of organising yourself to get the best out of your course, is
managing your time and setting priorities in a way that fits in with your lifestyle and
commitments. Studying involves regularly setting aside time to work and one way of
creating that time is to draw up a timetable of your typical week.N.B. Make sure that you set aside enough time for your regular commitments such as
work, family, leisure and social activities. Now you can see where it might be possible
to find time for study and you can plan the best use of that time.
Making a Weekly Timetable
Fill in your commitments and activities for each day so that you can identify the times
available for study.
| Morning | Afternoon | Evening | |
| Monday | |||
| Tuesday | |||
| Wednesday | |||
| Thursday | |||
| Friday | |||
| Saturday | |||
| Sunday |
To be effective in the way you use this time, you should list the tasks on a grid which
shows which are important and which are urgent so that you can select those which
will have priority and you can get the most important ones done first. Life, however, is
not always orderly and you will need to be flexible in your time-tabling so that you
can deal with the unusual or the unexpectedly difficult. Try to put the tasks you have
to do in this grid using the criteria ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ to decide which box to
put each one in.
Guidelines for Organising Your Learning Time
• Make a timetable for the week.
• Try to work out how long different tasks will take and match them to
appropriate time slots.
• Plan your most demanding activities for the times when you work best.
• Fit short tasks into spare moments in the day.
• Be realistic. Don’t try to achieve the impossible.
• Prioritise important and urgent tasks.
• Be flexible. Allow extra time for emergencies. Don’t leave important
assignments until the last minute.
• Decide where you are going to study. If it affects other people, make sure that
you get their co-operation.
• Organise your files and notes so that you can easily look back at work you
have completed.
• Find a safe place to keep your books, files and equipment.
From Waterford Institute of Technology’s WIT Adult & Continuing Education
Study Guide
