How to organise your time for revision.
How to organise your time for revision.
Easter is almost upon us – and the Easter break is a fantastic opportunity to pack in some heavy-duty revision before – gulp – the exams!!!! So don’t waste it. Use the time. But that doesn’t mean you have to go into isolation and have your meals passed to you under the bedroom door. Here’s the secret: get organised!
You’ve already made yourself a space where you can get down to work. What do you need to organise next? Your time.
It’s a weird thing, time. There’s never enough of it when you need it, and there’s too much when you don’t. But time can be beaten! Time can be tamed! This, friends, is what businesspeople call “time management”.
Start by keeping a time diary, just as people starting a diet keep a food diary. You can download the one on the website or create your own. Choose two or three different days, and keep a log of exactly what you do and how long it takes. Be absolutely honest – e.g. 10.05am got out of bed; 10.52am actually made it downstairs. And be detailed: include time spent texting, gaming, on Facebook, in front of the TV etc.
Step two is to use the Activity Summary to estimate how much time per week you spend on each activity and to judge for yourself what you could cut down on and what you think you should increase.
Step three: choose two 2-hour time slots per day for your revision. I would suggest 10 am to midday, and 2pm to 4pm. Over the next two weeks treat those two daily sessions as sacred, and make sure everyone else does too. There’ll be time for texting, for TV, for seeing your friends, for helping around the house. But those two two-hour sessions – they’re your future.
Space organised, time organised – you must be beginning to feel like Doctor Who!
Your next challenge is to decide on the best way to use this new-found time for maximum effect. We’ll go into this in more detail in the next blog. For now, I’ll just say be honest with yourself, and take control of your own learning!
Next time – Audit your learning: what do I need to learn, and how can I do it?