How to plan and structure your time
For some, planning and structuring their day is completely natural. For others, it is unexplored territory. Maybe you have never felt the need to plan your day or been able to see the point of doing so.
A bad conscience and a feeling of inadequacy is something that is most likely familiar to most students. But if you start planning ahead and stick to your plan, you will instead be able to tell yourself – every day – that you have done everything that you could.
When you start planning ahead you should soon start to see that it comes with a lot of benefits. It can for example help you with:
- Seeing the bigger picture
- Avoiding unnecessary surprises
- Getting more energy to do all of the other things that you want to do
- Minimize your bad conscience
- Prioritizing your tasks
- Prevent stress
Getting good at planning ahead takes practice, and you will be gaining a lot of experience along the way that will help you figure out what the best approach to studying is for you. Regardless of how you plan ahead, there are some general tips that can be useful to know up front. We will be presenting these to you below.
1. Be realistic!
When you are planning your day, it is crucial that you are being realistic. Being realistic means that you make a plan that it is possible for you to execute on with the time and the ressources that are available to you. Remember to leave room for other activities in your schedule besides your studies. Free time, friends, family, hobbies, time to relax and get everyday tasks done is important for your well-being as a student.
If your plan is too ambitious and unrealistic you will most likely find it difficult to stick to it; this can be tough and will often feel as a defeat.
Before you start planning, it might be a good idea to reflect on how you work best. This can help you be more realistic and plan according to your strengths and weaknesses as well as your personal goals for your studies.
If you learn that you tend to be more productive in the morning, then that might be a good time to plan your most demanding tasks, and then leave the easier tasks for later in the day.
Organize your study habits:
| Ask yourself | What is the answer? |
| What is my goal for the coming semester? | |
| How much time do I want to spend on my studies on a daily basis? | |
| At what time of the day is it best for me to work? | |
| When is it the best time of the day for me to read? | |
| When is the best time of the day for me to write? |
2. Prioritize your tasks
Another important element to planning is prioritizing!
No one can do everything all at once. That is why it is important that you prioritize your work. One way to do that is for example by making a list of all of your tasks in a table as the one below. You can use post-its to make it easier to move your tasks around and removing them once a task is complete. This way your progression will be more visible to you.
| Urgent | Not urgent | Completed | ||
| Important | ||||
| Not important |
3. Start using sub-goals and milestones
One way of making your studies more manageable is by working with sub-goals and milestones. This especially applies if you are working on a large-scale project.
One of the benefits of doing this is the satisfaction it gives to divide your tasks into smaller tasks and setting sub-goals for yourself. By doing so, you get a feeling of having accomplished something every time that you check a sub-goal off your list.
It is again important that the sub-goals that you set for a task has a clear connection with your overarching plan. Remember that your sub-goals should be manageable, realistic and specific.
Being a student is sometimes hard work. So remember to reward yourself when you reach a goal. You decide for yourself what the reward should be, as long as it makes you happy.
How to start planning
There are different approaches and tools to help you get an overview of your studies and start planning ahead. You can for example choose to do long-term planning or short-term planning.
Long-term planning
Long-term planning can be used for different things. You can for example use it to plan your studies in the Study Planner, or you can use it to plan your individual semester. And it will be the latter that we choose to focus on for now.
Long-term planning helps you get an overview of your entire semester; when do you have classes, vacation, exams, and important deadlines to keep in mind.
Some students at DTU do not have time off from classes to read up on courses prior to exams, which emphasizes the need for proper planning to make sure that there is enough time to prepare.
Short-term planning
Short-term planning helps you do the things you need to do on a weekly or daily basis. It can help you plan your study time, including classes and preparation, group work etc. as well as daily tasks and leisure activities.
We have now presented you with both long-term planning and short-term planning. There are different methods to planning, and below we will provide you with three different examples. One or more of them might work for you. Try them out for a while and see what you get out of it. If the method does not work for you, consider whether there are elements in the method that you can adjust to make it better suit your needs – or consider moving on to the next method.
There are many ways to make a day plan, but the purpose of doing so is always the same: to give you an overview of how to make the most of your day.
A day plan goes into more detail than a week plan and is ideal for setting specific goals for each day. In that sense, a day plan can be used as a to-do list where you check off each goal once you have achieved it.
Below you will find two examples of how to do a day plan.
- One way of getting an overview of how best to spend your day, is by making use of a circular model.
Start by drawing a circle on a blank piece of paper. Then divide that circle into 24 equally large fields to represent the 24 hours of the day.
From here you can start naming the individual fields to represent the different activities that you typically do in a day.
Be honest to yourself and consider how many hours you usually sleep, how long you usually spend on your breakfast and morning routine, how much time you spend on social media etc.
Once you have made your circular model, try making a new circle where you divide it in a way that represents your ideal day.
Compare the two circles and consider how they differ and think about how you might start working on changing your routines to match more closely the ideal circle that you have created.
- Another approach that you can consider giving a try is the to-do list. A to-do list also offers a way to get an overview of a set of tasks and can used as a way to monitor your progress throughout the day.
A to-do list is not necessarily divided into hours of the day – as we saw with the circular model - but can be more general.
A week plan might remind you of an old-fashioned class schedule; but do not let that scare you off. It actually has a lot to offer. A week plan is a way to get an overview of your entire week and the things that you need to get done.
At the same time, a week plan can help you make sure that your study time and your free time do not overlap, making you feel as if you never have time off.
When making your week plan, it is important that you set aside enough time for both your studies as well as your daily chores. Start by filling in your week plan with your regular activities such as classes, group work, preparing for classes, sleep and work. Then add your hobbies and interests, time with friends and family, grocery shopping, cooking, relaxation etc.
Then take a look at your plan and consider whether elements of your plan needs to be prioritized more or less. Remember again to be realistic in your planning and take care not to pressure yourself too much.
You can use the week plan as a tool throughout your entire semester or as a short-term tool for periods where you may need it more – for example exam periods etc.
Before your semester begins, it might be a good idea to contemplate what your overarching goals for the semester are. Aside from your own personal goals that you may set for yourself and what you aim to learn, overarching goals can often be one or more written or oral exams that you need to pass by the end of the semester. They might also include assignments that need to be submitted throughout the semester to be allowed to take the exam.
To get an overview of your goals for the semester, consider the following:
- Which courses do I need to take?
- What do the courses require of me? To answer this question, make use of the course descriptions for each course.
- How are the courses taught? And what kind of exam do they have?
- Are there any courses that require an extra effort?
Once you have an overview, you can start making your semester plan. Start by adding important dates like assignment deadlines, exam dates etc. that you know well in advance. Then start adding the periods where you do not have classes and times where you know that you will not be studying or working, such as a trip to a summerhouse, birthdays etc.
It is a good idea to note down all the deadlines as soon as possible. These will work as a framework for your planning and make it easier for you to see how much time you have at your disposal. This will also make it easier for you to predict whether you will have to put in some extra study time to reach your goals.
Before you start working on your week plan, consider our advise below.
- Aim to plan your semester in such a way that you put in an equal amount of effort throughout your entire semester. The exam periods at DTU are short but can feel intense. So to avoid feeling stressed during the exam periods, make sure that you pay attention and participate throughout your semester.
- Make sure to set aside at least one day a week for time off from your studies and work.
- Revise your semester plan along the way and assess whether or not things are going as you have planned it. Maybe talk with some of your peers and hear how they are structuring their semester.
- Talk with some of the older students in your programme – for example your vectors. They most certainly can share their experience with you.
- Be realistic! Think about how you can make time for all of the things that you want to do and consider if it is realistic for you to have a job or go on vacation during a busy semester or in the time leading up to a hard exam. A vacation is always more fun without a guilty conscience.
Download your semester plan and start to fill in your goals and important deadlines.
