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Time Management & Studying

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Time Management & Studying

As a college educator, I often receive questions about how to be successful academically – usually this is in terms of time management and study techniques. I’ll describe some universal time management and study techniques in a moment, but I first want to acknowledge that there can be some very real differences between what works for some and not others.

My wife and I are a prime example of this.  I recall during our undergraduate years (before online calendars and planners), how she would use a thick paperback academic planner with each month and week carefully outlined and color-coded with markers.  I watched as she spent SO much time preparing her planner for the week ahead.  Even though it just didn’t seem “right” for me, one day I decided to try her method – only to quickly abandon the effort…it was taking way too much time to plan my time!  Having said that, the information below is based on solid guidelines so give it a fair try, but in the end, adapt it to work for you.

Setting Up Your Schedule

Regardless of what you use, whether it is sophisticated organization software, an online calendar scheduling program, a paperback planner, or a single piece of paper with handwritten checkboxes and line items (my approach back in the day), take the time to outline your upcoming semester.

Start by being realistic.  And start by creating a schedule that is as balanced as possible.  Yes, you need time for personal care.  And yes, you need time for sleep.

The Academic Calendar

Go to your college or university’s website and look for the Academic Calendar, and then login to your student account and pull up your course schedule. These two items will likely give you the outline of the key dates you need to be aware of…like the semester start date, end date, official attendance date, major holidays, and the last day to withdraw.  Put these dates in your calendar, set a reminder, and keep in mind that these dates can differ depending on the length of the term.

So if you are taking a 16-week and an 8-week course, it is very likely that many of these dates will be different, and you need to know that. Maybe you decide later in the term that you will withdraw from one of your classes…you still have time right? The last day to withdraw from your 16-week course is two weeks away, so you stop attending the class and no longer submit work. Oh, but this is your 8-week course, and the last day to withdraw has already happened. Oops! Have all of this written out ahead of time and set advance reminders – here is where color-coding can come in handy…consider using the same colors for classes in the same term.

The Course Calendar (Check the Syllabus)

Now that the infrastructure of your semester is in place, let’s take a look at the syllabus for each of your courses. The syllabus includes many items you should be familiar with, but specifically for what we are focusing on now, each syllabus should provide an overview of course requirements and a course calendar. The course calendar should fit into the academic calendar you looked at earlier. So all of the class times and due dates should be in accordance with the official college or university’s academic calendar.

Go through the course calendar in each syllabus and make note of all the due dates…mark them in your calendar and set reminders. This is another place where color-coding can be useful…perhaps you should use the same colors for assignments in each class. Admittedly, this task can be tedious, but having a visual of what is due and when can be a game-changer for some students.

Work and Personal Time

With the academic dates in place, be sure to write in your other scheduled responsibilities, like work schedule and long-term personal plans. Understandably, some of this is not predictable – that’s okay. This part of your schedule can be adaptive. Just be sure you have adequate personal time scheduled for each day, week, and month. Maybe you have one hour of “me time” each evening, then a social event for a few hours each weekend, and then a day trip out to see some family every two weeks…whatever it looks like, get it on the calendar and treat it like any other important event, because it is.

Double and triple-check what you wrote any time you transfer dates from an official document to your own planner.

And about that sleep you need?  Create a bedtime routine, set bedtime reminders, and stick to it!  Sleep is that important.  In fact, among many things, sleep is critical for memory consolidation…and retaining new information and recalling memories later is what you’re reading this for anyway, right?  How much sleep?  It varies, but most adults would benefit from about 8 hours each night.  If you are a teenager, then aiming for 9-10 hours of sleep each night would be optimal.

Obvious and Unnecessary?

A lot of this might seem obvious, maybe even unnecessary.   But before you dismiss this entire section about setting up a schedule, let me share something I see semester after semester, year after year…students fail when they don’t submit the work.  Sounds simple, right?  A common reason students tell me they don’t submit the work is because they were unaware of the deadlines – even though the deadlines have been available in multiple locations all semester long!  Yes, it is possible for a student to submit all the work and still fail the class…but that is the exception to the rule in my experience.  In other words, what I tend to see is if students submit all of the work, even if they don’t do as well as they would like, they are far more likely to still pass the class than if they submitted nothing at all.  Know the deadlines and submit the work.

Establish Your Study Space

There is a lot of variety in the layout of study spaces, and it is VERY easy to convince yourself that studying sprawled out on a couch with your favorite show on in the background is optimal for you…but consider the reality of how our brains work when it comes to acquiring new information.  Even in those suboptimal conditions I just described, the fact that you would still be studying is a win, but your efforts would be far more efficient and effective by dialing down the distractions and letting yourself focus.

I recommend you study at a desk or a table in a private space – your brain will become conditioned that when in that location, it’s time to get to work.  Make yourself turn off the television, silence your cell phone, and put away any electronic device that serves as a distraction.  If there are others in your environment, work it out to where your study time is reasonably undisturbed. Okay, so quiet is good…but now it is too quiet.  In this situation, it’s okay to put some music on to help drown out external noises, or even your own internal sounds – but experiment with different instrumental-only styles…anything with lyrics can pull your mind off track.

Study Techniques for Written Material

There are several systems that you can use to master the content you are reading.  You may be interested in learning more about the SQ3R, REAP method, or the PQRST – all of which are acronyms for steps to be taken while studying written material.  There is no doubt that these approaches will take some time to get used to, and may even make your study sessions longer at first, but if given the chance it will become more automatic, and you may find that you understand more of what you are reading and can recall more effectively.  Without further ado, the basic idea is this…

Preview / Pre-Read / Survey

Let’s assume you are beginning a new chapter in your textbook.  Start by previewing the content to get a general sense of what the chapter is about.  This means looking at the titles, headings, subheadings, bolded terms, and illustrations.  Go back and read the introduction to get a more specific overview…I find that also reading the chapter conclusion, and especially the longer chapter summary (if present) is a great way to get a general idea of what to expect. Remember, this part of the process isn’t going to give you everything you need to know.  It helps you organize the information to plan your study sessions, and it provides a “warm-up” by activating existing schema so that what you read can more readily integrate with your current knowledgebase.

By the way, this works well when opening your textbook for the first time too.  Before delving into the contents of each chapter, take some time to review the expanded table of contents and see the overall organization of the textbook and the class.

Remember to space out your study time – marathon study sessions are not as effective as distributed study time.

Ask Questions About the Content Highlights

While you are previewing the chapter as described above, ask questions pertaining to the topics.  For example, specifically think about what the main points might be – use the headings as a basis for your questions.  What is it that you already know about the topic?  By doing this you are trying to look at the information from different angles and make it more meaningful to you.  Another reason this is an important yet often overlooked step is that it forces us to engage more with what we are reading, which is then built upon in the next step.

Read the Content

Now it’s time to read!  This is where many students start, but by going through what I discussed above first, you are now in an active mode of learning.  And it is very important that you keep it that way while you read.  This means keeping your questions in mind and working to find the answers to them while you are reading – even expanding on the questions as you uncover more important details.  This sounds like a lot of work.  Yes, it is.  That’s what learning is.  It isn’t a passive activity.  It takes effort and concerted thought, which illuminates why it is so important to be in a distraction-free, optimally-designed study space.

The information below about note-taking works well with this process too.  Use them in conjunction.

Recite / Summarize

As you start to conceptualize the information in more depth, take the time to mentally process what you are reading.  Think through the questions you previously posed, and answer them in your own words without looking at the material.  If you are lacking elements of the explanation, you know you need to go back and pick up those details.  You want to practice this way because it uses the same mental processes you will rely on when applying the information in the future, like when you take the exam, or when you use the information in your career or personal life.  Recite the information out loud or write it down – the whole point is to force the retrieval process instead of just passive exposure.  I discuss the importance of writing out notes in the next section.

Taking Notes

Similar to the reading comprehension methods of studying written materials, there are several techniques for note-taking.  Effective strategies for note-taking were very elusive for me personally – when reflecting on the notes I had hand-written in class I would notice several issues…not only could I barely make out my “chicken scratch”, but everything was a jumbled mess.  And when I say a jumbled mess, I mean there was no real order to the actual phrases I was writing, and there was no real order in the location of the information on the page…it was literally all over the place.

That approach was almost useless…the one thing it did for me is why I strongly encourage all students to handwrite their notes at some point.  The process of handwriting notes makes us process the information more deeply, and studies suggest this is more effective than typing it.  I get that over time some students have gotten used to one method over the other, and that it is now an engrained part of their note-taking process.  It’s also understandable that typing notes by computer can be necessary for some classes when the faster speed of typing is the only way to get all of the information down in time.  Okay, but at some point, write it out.  Even if you never go back and review those handwritten notes, take the time to write them out by hand and see if that makes a difference for you.  Now, onto the format of note-taking!

Cornell Notes System

A very popular method of note-taking is called the Cornell Notes System.  When using this method you divide your notebook page into three sections: notes, cues, and the summary.  Each section has a different purpose and is explained in the video below. This is a system that helps us stay actively engaged while we record the key information from the lecture, though it is also useful when writing your own notes when reviewing written sources.

 

Outline Method

The outline method is a familiar approach for many students.  Using a hierarchical system, start with the main ideas and then indent the supporting ideas beneath them.  You can use a number and letter system to help keep the main ideas and the supporting subitems beneath them…by using different variations of number and letter styles your notes could have multiple sublevels, which is very useful in subjects with a lot of depth and details.

When I’m using this approach I tend to use bullet points in the place of the numbers and letters.  It still allows the creation of a hierarchy by using indentions and different bullet point styles, but it removes the need to ensure everything is in an ordered hierarchy.

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