How to Do It

Planning and getting organised is not just about knowing what you’ve got to do and by when.  It’s about being honest with yourself and taking personal responsibility for your work.  When you’re planning, the following advice will help:

1. Plan in advance (yearly planner) so you can:

• spread your workload, rather than trying to cope with loads of deadlines at once
• have a chance to speak to others/teachers if problems arise
• have the time to be able to complete a task well even if things happen that slow you down
• reassure yourself that you will have the time to get everything done, rather than worrying about whether you will or not
• structure your workload to take into account other activities and to avoid periods when there’s too much to do

2. Be honest with yourself about how much time it will take you to complete a task. 

Trying to pack too much in will only lead to problems.  If you do this, not only are you more likely to miss deadlines/hand in rushed work, but you could end up feeling that it’s impossible to get things done and give up altogether. 

3. Prioritise

Often, through lack of planning, students end up having to focus on the urgent rather than the important (i.e. when they should be focusing on important, key units of work, instead they find themselves rushing to complete work they have left too late).  Both pieces of work will suffer!  Using your long term planner, prioritise which work needs to be your focus at which time.

4. Use your NTPs

Not only are you being asked to cope with much more demanding work, but you also have NTPs which are there to give you time for personal study.  If you think of them and use them as “free periods”, you will find life much more difficult than it should be. 

5. Be very careful about how much time you give to part-time work, if you give any at all. 

The truth is, it probably will get in the way of your courses.  A good rule of thumb is that you should be spending about two hours a night on school work and more at the weekend.  If your part-time job gets in the way of that, you may need to think again about your employment.

6. Don’t waste time. 

If you’re going on a long train journey, it might be the perfect time to get through a few chapters of a course text.  If you know you’ll have to spend some time waiting for a lift from school, you could be looking at your notes and jotting down your ideas for an essay. 

7. Don’t procrastinate

This means, don’t decide to do something irrelevant just to avoid getting on with work (e.g. reorganising the books on your shelves into alphabetical order, cleaning the kitchen floor…).  It’s tempting, but destructive in the end.  The best way to deal with this is simply to start the task you’re avoiding, even if it’s just jotting down a plan, writing the title at the top of the page or creating a to do list of what needs to be done.  That small act is usually enough to get you going.

8. Avoid prioritising lots of short tasks as they come in over long tasks. 

Though this can be part of good time management, it can also turn into a problem.  If you’re put off by the size of a task, and end up doing loads of shorter tasks first as a way of avoiding it, you’ll end up with no time to do the big one properly.  If a task is big, and you find that daunting, simply cut it up into chunks.  A major investigation, for instance, could be cut into the following sections:

1.         Identify task and formulate hypotheses (if relevant).

2.         Create a list of likely research sources and plan where and when they can be accessed.

3.         Do the research.

4.         Decide on the content, structure and style of your investigation.

5.         Write the abstract/introduction.

6.         Write a draft of the first section.

7.         Write a draft of the second section

Etc…

Then, you only have to begin the first small chunk of the process, and you can tick each one off your list as you complete them, which reassures you that you’re progressing, and is actually quite satisfying to do. 

9. Avoid prioritising lots of “easy” tasks as they come in over harder tasks. 

Again, easy to do, but an approach which will leave you least time to tackle the hardest tasks.  If you think a task is going to be too difficult, call in help!  Talk to your friends and set up study groups so you can work on it together, or talk to your teacher and ask for some advice.  The earlier you do this, the easier the task will actually be!

10. Plan some rest time. 

Don’t be tempted to force yourself to keep working for days and days without pause.  Your brain needs some rest to function well.  If you find yourself struggling to concentrate after a while at your desk, it could be because you’ve been working too long.  Take a break.  Make a cup of tea.  Take the dog for a walk.  It varies from person to person, but taking ten minutes break each hour can help you work more effectively in the long run.  You can even build in the odd day off from doing any work at all (if you’ve planned things properly).  Be careful, though, that your ten minute breaks don’t turn into hours (see “Procrastinating” above)!

11. Be Flexible  

Inevitably, things will happen in real life that mean your plans don’t work.  Don’t panic!  Simply think again about where you can make up the time so you can still hit deadlines.  And remember, some parts of the year will be far more intense than others.  This is quite normal.  You will get to the end of such times, especially if you’re well organised and have planned a way through it, so don’t let it put you off!