Whether you love timetables or hate them, follow them minute by minute or just as a general guideline, timetables are essential to know what you are doing with your time. I love timetables because they are so versatile, you make them yourself to fit your needs. Timetables are one of the best ways to organise your time.
There are a number of ways you can timetable:
Digital vs. Paper
I was one of those people who used to handwrite all my notes... except for when it came to my timetables. Digital timetables are the way to go because they are more effective: they are flexible, they give you choices, less timeconsuming to make and easy to print off so you can have a paper copy if you need it!
Even if you choose to write your plans into a physical planner, doing the first drafts and notes that will help you created an effective timetable digitally will help you figure out deadlines and tasks.
Monthly vs. Weekly vs. Daily
This choice is definitely a personal one. You need to think about how far into the future you can realistically plan and how in-depth you can plan and generally speaking, these two things go hand in hand. Realistically if you want to create a timetable for the next month or you probably won't be able to plan in-depth because things pop up in your life that you cannot control. If you want to plan monthly then consider just setting deadlines or timetabling in a way that allows you to be open and flexible. However, you want more of a strict schedule go for a weekly or daily timetable.
Online Calendar vs Microsoft Word/Excel
For those people who want a strict timetable to include everything, they could possibly need to do in a day a time blocking technique on a digital calendar would work best as you can schedule in everything down to the minute and your timetable can be with you across all devices and will be updated with each change (as long as you have wifi). This means that changes can be made as life rarely follows a minute by minute schedule, things will naturally pop up.
However, this technique can be time-consuming and for those who still may want a more rigid timetable that they don't have to follow 100% of the time because they aren't getting notifications every 30 minutes a time blocking technique in excel or google sheet may work better. A timetable spreadsheet would include
Steps to create my timetable
1) Write a list of everything you need to do
Write all your tasks down to help you see how much you have to do and how long you might need to plan for. This step can be done digitally or on paper as this is a preliminary step.
2) Categorize
Categorizing your to-do list is allows you to see how much you have to do for each subject or topic. However, you can also categorise by importance i.e. must do, should do, could do, so you know where to start and which tasks to put into the timetable first.
You might want to group smaller tasks together to save time. Grouping the tasks means you won’t be wasting a whole slot on a five-minute task. Tasks taking less than 15 minutes should be grouped with another similar task if possible.
3) Figure out how long each task will take you
This step will help you know what you have time for when making your timetable. The time you put down doesn’t have to be 100% accurate but roughly jotting down next to each task how long you think the task will take will help a lot when it comes to making your timetable.
4) Create your timetable
If you choose not to use an online calendar you need to create your timetable. The date/day needs to go across the top row and the time down the first column in regular intervals (in 15 minute, 30 minute or hour intervals) starting at whichever time you want.
5) Put the events in first
Things you can’t move such as classes, jobs, extracurriculars, meetings and social plans. Put these in your timetable first so that you can put your tasks around these events.
6) Place your tasks into your timetable
Finally, put the tasks into your timetable by literally plucking things off your to-do list and placing them on the timetable where you think they will fit best. While making your timetable you might end up shuffling things about but remember to tick things off your to-do list once they have been placed into the timetable and remember to leave gaps for study breaks!
Helpful Resources
Check out this Ted Talk to watch a funny video on procrastination and why deadlines are important.
Studytuber's videos on planning can be really helpful! Eve Bennett, Unjaded Jade, Lydia Violeta and Jack Edwards are amazing YouTubers to start with.
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