These tapes were developed by the Academic Skills Center at Dartmouth College in cooperation with Instructional Services. Funding was provided through a Hewlett grant. Academic success depends on effective time management. Each student has the same amount of time each day to learn and take advantage of the many opportunities that college provides. If you want to be a successful student, you can make a difference.
Manage your time in two important ways. Manage your time and manage your goals. This video will discuss and demonstrate both of these time management techniques by presenting specific tools and strategies to help you make the most of each day and each week of the term.
And do I have to plan my study time? Oh, of course not. I don't have to plan my study time.
That will just happen. It doesn't just happen. That's the problem.
Like when my time was pressured or when I knew I was going to do something, I turned a long-term project into a short-term project. Unless you have a clear sense of how you are going to use your time daily and weekly, then you'll never, ever get to a point where your long-term goals in college will be absolutely satisfied. To manage your time, you can use three effective tools.
A term calendar, a weekly schedule, and a to-do list. Successful time managers in college know why they're here. know what it is they want to accomplish, and they keep some kind of time schedule or time schedules. The first tool in managing your time is a term calendar. Using your course syllabi, write in the major academic events of the...
term, such as quizzes, exams, projects, term papers, and other writing assignments. You can also indicate big weekends and other important personal events, but the term calendar should primarily indicate academic events and deadlines. It definitely has helped me in terms of looking in the long term.
Like if I have, the first day I get my syllabus, I write down all my due dates, my deadlines, when I should start planning, where I should be by one date, or whatever else. It doesn't mean I follow it, but it does give me, it helps me academically in the sense know what's coming and nothing comes as a surprise, versus in the past I think I'd say, I've got a midterm tomorrow, brilliant, you know. Your term planner can also be used to provide intermediary checks to see how you're making progress towards large projects or papers. Break down these projects and assignments into smaller tasks and give yourself deadlines. For example, a term paper can be broken down into selecting a topic, conducting research, preparing an outline, and writing a first draft.
By putting these smaller tasks on your planner, you can check your progress towards the final draft. goal. Post your term calendar on your wall, near your desk or bureau.
Make a point of looking at it once or twice a day to keep track of what's coming up and how much time you have to prepare for it. It was always important to have have a point of reference. So I'd be sitting at my desk typing and I'd be able to look up to my left or to my right and see up on my wall these different things. So I'd have my weekly planner, then I'd have my yearly planner, what are my academic year planner, well what are the courses I need to take and I would have them down so as I took them I could check them off and say well I've accomplished this.
And you don't know when you check those things off on a planner like that you feel like you've done something major. You're like yes I've done it you know. The second important tool to manage your time is a weekly schedule. A weekly schedule will allow you to see how your time is being used, and more importantly, what time you have available for learning and other activities.
As a full-time student, your academics should be your full-time job. So how many hours a week do most people put into full-time jobs? 40 hours a week. When?
Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, 9 to 5 types of jobs. Okay, how much time do you as a student put in Monday through Friday, 8 to 5? How do you utilize that time?
To make a week. schedule, start with a grid that indicates each day of the week and each hour block of each day. Fill in your fixed commitments, such as class times, labs, meals, exercise or sports, and meetings. Besides giving you a clear understanding of how much of your time is taken up with classes and other commitments, making a weekly schedule also graphically reveals what time is available to you each day to study, to do errands, and so on. When you make your weekly schedule, you may be surprised to see how much time is available during the day, in the morning and afternoon.
That's the time that's most often wasted by college students. I sat down actually one day and just wrote down what I did for, every single 10-minute increment for 12 hours and just found that I wasted so many blocks of 10 and 20 minutes that I had about 4 hours extra in a day. The third time management tool is a to-do list. Before going to bed or during breakfast, list that day's activities, tasks, or meetings on a small piece of paper or a 3-by-5 card.
When you've completed the task, cross it out. One easy way to start is to do things like to-do lists. where it's not specifically scheduled, but it's very intentional. What do you want to accomplish today?
And then at the end of the day, you can look at that list and say, did I do it or did I not do it? And so it keeps a student on track in terms of daily approach to their time management. The next step in making your schedules is to decide specifically how you're going to use your available time each day. These strategies can help you schedule your time each day.
Use daylight hours. There are quite a few studies that show that when students spend an hour studying during the day, that is to say an hour before dinner, they are more productive, they have better concentration, more learning occurs than later in the day after dinner when they're that much more tired, when it gets dark outside, when they're more subject to emotions. other, let's say, non-academic concerns.
Schedule study tasks which require greater concentration and mental effort, such as reading and problem sets during the day and early evening. Use late evening hours to review. Schedule some time for every one of your classes during the week. When is it that you're going to put in some time on your chemistry, your English, your government classes, so that you are not only keeping up with those classes on a regular basis, basis, especially if they're challenging courses, then you need to keep up and review on a very regular basis, but to practice that information also, because that's when you learn.
You learn over time by reviewing and practicing what you hear. you're in class and what you read in your textbooks. Keeping up with your classes and building an active review and practice will help you learn the information over time instead of cramming for your quizzes and examinations at the last minute.
Be very specific about when you will spend time studying for each class. Decide what time you will begin and when you will end. Human beings are incredible creatures of habit. And the more we have a routine and a habit... doing something a certain way, the more likely it is that we're going to follow through on it.
So we have a routine that every Monday at 2 o'clock we go to the library and do readings. When 2 o'clock comes and a friend says, oh, can you meet me here instead, you're going to think twice about doing that. Schedule some time, even 5 to 10 minutes, between classes to review for the next class, go over the class notes you just took, practice or memorize factual items. Again, a lot of learning can occur in 5 or 15 minutes.
minutes. The small pieces or chunks of time in a student's day are extraordinarily valuable. Many students think they need at least an hour, hour and a half, two hours to do their learning.
Well, those blocks of time are available to them, fine, but many students only have one or two of those. But what they do have, and again this is the great value of seeing it on paper and it being revealed that, well, here's a 45 minute chunk that I wasn't even aware of between this class and that class. Usually about 20 minutes or 30 minutes that I could use. Schedule some kind of active exercise at least three times a week.
Time management, exercise, and mental alertness all go together. They're not separate entities as far as I'm concerned. You can't study.
if you're not mentally alert. Exercise definitely contributes to how alert you are mentally. Establish a consistent sleep schedule. Sleep research tells us that if we wake up consistently every single day, day at the same time, our sleep the night before is going to be much more effective.
We're going to reach what sleep researchers call the REMs, the deep sleep, the restful sleep. We're going to have more of that. Also get the sleep you need.
Some students need eight hours of sleep, others only six. Get up early enough so you can eat breakfast every day. This simple activity puts you in a good sleep.
structure into your day and gets you ready for the day ahead. Breakfast is a valuable meal to sustain your energy throughout the day. Also, breakfast time can be spent planning your day and the goals and tasks you want to accomplish.
Schedule some time each day or during the week that's just for yourself. My time for me is very important and I make sure I have that time every day. That's sometimes one of the things that I put on my list is because sometimes you forget. Sometimes you're running. running around place to place and you're really busy and you forget to make some time for yourself and to preserve your sanity.
Learn to say no. You can't do everything for yourself, much less for your friends and even family. It sounds selfish, but your academic goals should come first. The best weekly schedule is one that's personal and flexible. Your calendar should reflect a balance of academic...
and personal or social life, with academics first, of course. And scheduling your time allows you to be more flexible because you know where your time is and how it can be used to get things done. In some ways, it's a psychological issue that they see this thing called time management as literally confining themselves, when in fact, many students who do manage their time well talk about how... Managing their time is liberating, that it allows them to think much more clearly, much more creatively about their time and how it can best be used. There's no magic to goal setting.
Goal setting is hard work. Successful students in college, and this is true for successful professionals, they have a very clear idea of what it is they want to get accomplished. Good time managers set goals for themselves and use time management tools and strategies to achieve their goals. An effective goal setting tool is to write out your long range goals on paper or on your computer.
You might want to write out your goals on paper or on your computer. You might begin by asking yourself and answering two important questions. Why am I attending college?
And what do I hope to achieve by the time I graduate? Write out as many goals as you like initially. Then review them.
and choose your five most important goals. This goal-setting exercise may be easy or difficult for you, depending on how much you've already thought about why you're in college and what you intend to get out of it. The important point to remember is that you're more likely to be a successful student if you have a clear idea what it is you want to achieve or accomplish.
In setting your goals, pay attention to these strategies. Your goals should be as concrete as possible. specific and measurable as possible. For example, achieve a B-plus average and attend every class are specific measurable goals and you clearly know whether or not you're achieving them.
Your goals should be realistic. Good goal setting forces you to think seriously about what you really are capable of doing. Set goals that will challenge, not defeat you. Discuss your goals, especially your academic goals. with a mentor or advisor such as a faculty member or a Dean for me conversing with somebody and talking about not only what I'm doing but what they've done is very helpful to me in setting goals because I see new strategies and new ways of going about it hearing yourself talk about your goals will help you understand what's important for you and the mentor ...or advisor can guide you as to how you can most effectively accomplish your goals.
Your goals should reflect a balance in your academic and personal life. You know, the students who come to me and say, Bill, I work all the time. study all the time.
I'm always at my books, dah, dah, dah, dah, and I can't understand why I'm not successful. Well, part of the reason they're not successful is they're always at their books. They're always studying. They don't have a whole life. Leisure, exercise, activities.
of one kind or another. Information and satisfaction coming in is as important to time management as production that goes out. While you're in college, your academic goals should be at the top of your list.
Other goals may include volunteering, exercise or athletics, joining different organizations, or making new friends. As with your other time management tools, post or place your goals in a location in your room or in your notebook where you can you can easily and quickly review them. Revisit your goals at least once a term. Your academic goals may change as you move through your college experience, but what's important to remember is that you'll be able to manage your time well if your goals are clear, concrete, and important to you. You can successfully manage your time by planning your term and your week using the specific time management tools of a term calendar, a weekly schedule, and a daily to-do list.
Manage your goals by writing them out and discussing them with a mentor. Both strategies will allow you to make more effective use of your time and get more out of your college experience.