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whether you're an undergraduate student
or a postgraduate student or a PhD
student one of the key most important
crucial things you have to do at
university is to manage your time and
tasks this video will take you through
some strategies and some techniques for
doing just that
first thing is to set up a weekly
schedule using a weekly planner now the
example I'm using is for students who
have set classes if you don't you can
still follow the ideas I'm talking about
the first thing to do is to input your
classes okay
now you may not have classes all day and
you may not have classes every day but
here's an example next thing to do is to
schedule breaks after each class okay
we put those in throughout the timetable
throughout the week making sure we have
a break after each class the next thing
I recommend you do is to schedule your
study times put these in scheduled as
formally as you would your classes their
frequent they're short and they happen
right through the week and you can see
they're happening after the classes and
after the breaks there's a gap okay
then we have our days like Friday in
this example and Saturday and Sunday
where we have longer periods of time
where we have to account for the
schedule ourselves do the same thing
scheduled study sessions and schedule
break sessions look at Saturday as an
example we might start with an early
session have a long break have a mid
afternoon session have a long break
Sunday we might have four study sessions
punctuated separated by breaks so here's
the tip schedule study sessions like
classes in a weekly planner so it's
scheduled and expected so talking about
these sessions a bit more we recommend
frequent regular intensive limited
sessions so the recommendation is short
intensive sessions one hour minimum two
hours maximum before a break if we
compared to situations a ten-hour
marathon study session versus an
intensive seven hour study session so
here's the 10-hour one here's the
seven-hour one which one do we get more
quality study time from let's have a
look in the longer one what we see is
because we're spending six hours and
study the quality study time will tend
to degrade as we get tired and cranky we
can't think straight in the more
intensive shorter sessions we are
maintaining quality study time at a
higher level more consistently through
the day so what we have here is less
total study time but more quality study
time and this is crucial in our study
sessions we try to set SMART goals s is
specific you know what you have to do M
is measurable
you can do it and you put a number with
it if it has a number with it it's
measurable a is attainable you actually
can do it R is relevant you should be
doing it it's related to an assignment
for example and T its time bound now I'm
suggesting that we're doing something
between one to two hours let's look at
an example researching for an essay and
we're going to allocate one hour for
this in that time we're going to try and
find 15 articles do we think that's
attainable 15 in one hour probably not
so let's amend it 5:00 in the hour that
we have is this attainable I think it is
if we're trying to find articles is it
relevant yes absolutely it's part of
assessment you don't have to write these
smart goals down but you can think about
them so let's think about how we
prioritize our assessment tasks how do
we do this one way is by date and as you
can see there we have four assignments
do chronologically from April to May
would go one two three four but is that
the only way we prioritize it isn't if
we think about the words and waiting
assignment two would become priority one
because it's huge it's worth 50% that's
half the subject mark notice this isn't
from one subject this will be from more
than one subject those percentages add
up to more than 100 but we still have to
do assignment 1 because it's due before
3 & 4 but we can see that assignment 4
has a higher priority than us home in 3
because it's bigger
60% 5,000 words it'll take more effort
so how do we prioritize we do this based
upon date and word count and percentage
value now the next crucial thing is to
think about our time management using
tools and we suggest you use a semester
planner you use this in the following
way you can plot your submission dates
for each of those tasks on your semester
planner then work backwards
and think about how long you would need
to take to do each of those and where
you need to start that's that small
first task then there's our second
bigger one then there's a third one and
our fourth one what you'll notice is
that 2 & 4 are started before 1 & 3
ok these planners are crucial so use a
process to produce written work 1
analyze a task know what you have to do
to brainstorm a plan
think about the sections you need 3
research read make notes in the plan you
might need to adjust or finalize the
plan for start writing 5 edit proofread
finalize leave at least one day to do
this 6 submit the work let's go back to
the semester planner now this is where
this becomes crucial because we can use
this to think about when we do parts of
that process we analyze the task we
brainstorm we do our reading and
research noting we do our writing we use
this data edit proofread finalize and
then we submit these semester planners
become crucial
tasks and time management tools you can
get them at stop 1 you can get them at
any library or you can get them at
academic skills so think about how
important your tasks are to really
really good prioritizing questions to
ask yourself are do I really need to do
this or what will happen if I don't do
this
so for example if you have a 50% task
which is due in two weeks what will
happen if I don't do this I will lose
half the marks for this subject ok
there's a really good movie on tonight
what will happen if I don't watch this
I miss that movie I'll catch it some
other night okay so prioritize ranked
your tasks by importance and value high
value high important tasks need to be
done low value low important tasks can
be done if you have time you need to
manage your reading the first thing you
need to think about is your purpose why
are you reading it what do I want to
know is it something topical or what do
I want to do am i reading this for an
assessment of a class preparation
relevance do I need to read it and at
university you really need to make these
decisions because you don't want to be
reading at 3 and 4 and 5 a.m. in the
morning so use text features to assess
relevance things such as the abstract
intro subheadings scan for facts figures
key words if the text is relevant read
it if not don't so we've talked about
managing your week and managing your
semester you also need to manage your
day so work out your best times to study
and work well and schedule study times
at those times that you work well create
daily to-do lists cross off the things
as they get done it's a really good
feeling remove distractions have breaks
they are very important
for more tips and resources search for
academic skills uni mail
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