Making time to study productively

IDEALLY, studying is something you do fulltime. But these days, few of us can afford to go through our adult working life without a bit of skills upgrading now and again. If you want to take a course but aren’t sure if you have the time, use this education scheduler.

Figure out your classes

Find out how many seminars, tutorials, labs and other meetings you have to turn up for. Add up these hours and then figure out how long it will take you to get to class and back again. Write this as a separate number.

Estimate study time

A typical course has a textbook and exercises that lay out learning objectives. Estimate how long it will take you to read the book and complete the exercises.

If you’ve been away from school for some time, or it’s a new subject to you, be safe and double the estimate. Add this to your total.

completing assignments

One way to estimate the work needed is to see what is required and to relate each task to your own work.

An undergraduate research paper of 3,000 words takes about 20 hours whereas a postgraduate research paper of 5,000 words will take about twice that length of time.