at UWA. In this screencast we will give you tips to help you organise your time and study

more effectively, so you can get more things done, and maintain a good balance between

work and leisure. As Eisenhower once noted, even the best laid

plans sometimes go astray. But knowing how to plan effectively is an important life skill,

and as a student it will be essential to succeeding in your studies.

Leaving everything to the last minute might be tempting, but putting things off will only

cause you more stress and worry down the track. If you have a plan, you will feel more confident

and relaxed about everything up ahead, which means you'll be able to enjoy your time at

uni a lot more. So here are Study Smarter's top 3 tips for

managing your time and study at university. First, you need to step back and set goals.

Then you can start to prioritise and make plans. And finally, you need to work and persist

at it, because plans are no good unless you can put them in to practice!

Let's start with stepping back and setting goals.

Have you ever heard the story of the blind men and the elephant? Once upon a time, there

lived four blind men in a village. One day they heard about an elephant that had appeared

in the village, but they had no idea what an elephant was. They decided to go and find

out. When they got there, each one of them touched the elephant to see what it felt like.

"Oh I see- the elephant is like a large fan" said the first man, who touched the ear of

the elephant. No it's not! It is like a pillar," said the

second man, who touched its leg. "Actually, it's more like a rope," said the

third man, who was touching the tail. "You're all wrong. It is like a water spout,"

said the last man, who felt the trunk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and each insisted that he was right. A wise man

was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They

said, "We cannot agree about what the elephant is like."

And the wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one

of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the

elephant, and so experienced something different." And they finally understood.

The point of this story is that often you need to see things as a whole in order to

understand them properly, as seeing them as segmented parts can lead to misunderstanding.

And this is a good way of approaching time management too- instead of diving right in

and trying to sort out the smaller details, you should start by looking at the bigger

picture. So how can you step back and look at the bigger

picture here at university? You need to set some goals. To do this, write down a time

period, such as a semester, in the middle of a piece of paper. Then, jot down key words

to represent the major components of your life. For example, you might choose study,

work, friends, home and health. Your next step will be to set some goals.

A good way to think of goals is by using the ĹSMART' principle. Smart goals are specific,

and have a clear purpose. They are measurable and can be checked. They are achievable, and

don't have too large a scope. They're realistic, and based on the available time. And they're

timely, which means they are prioritised and relevant. Setting a goal to be a billionaire

by the age of 25 might not be very realistic, and setting a vague goal like ĹBeing happy'

can also be quite difficult to measure. So keeping this in mind, you need to write

down some goals that you have for each of the areas you have chosen. Remember, they

should relate to the specific time period. For example, if you're planning goals for

your very first semester of uni, one of those goals wouldn't be Ĺto graduate top of your

class'! Now you have some goals to aim for, you can

start to think about the specific strategies you might use to achieve these goals. For

example, if you had a goal to get high marks in all four of your units, then your strategy

might be to make sure you are studying the recommended 40 hours a week. Coming up with

strategies helps to make your goals seem more achievable, and gives you an outline of all

the actions you will need to put in place in order to succeed.

Pause this screencast and take a minute or two to plan out your own goals for this semester.

What are you hoping to achieve, and what strategies will you use to get there?

Now you have stepped back and looked at the big picture, it's time to start working out

the details. Our next top tip is to prioritise and plan. By learning how to prioritise and

plan out the time that you have, you will ensure that the most important stuff gets

done and you don't spend too much time on things that are less important.

Your first step is to gather your planning tools. In order to succeed at university,

you need to have good organisational tools. You can use a diary, a calendar, or even an

app on your phone to help you plan things. Most students at UWA use their Guild diary

as it outlines all the important days in semester, including the exam period and the study break.

A wall planner is a good tool for helping you look at everything all together. UWA students

can get a free wall planner from the Co-op bookshop on the Crawley Campus at UWA, so

make sure you pick yours up if you haven't already. Put it above your desk or your computer,

or wherever you can refer to it easily and often.

On your wall planner, you should mark down important events such as assignments that

are due, exams, university holidays, and any other things that you want to keep track of.

Use colour coding or marks to help you sort different events so that you can easily see

them at a glance. Once you've filled in your planner, you can start to identify when the

busy times and the quieter times will be, and you can plan ahead accordingly.

Another really important skill for managing your time is learning how to prioritise. Make

three columns on a piece of paper with the headings ĹHigh', ĹMedium' and ĹLow'. Now,

sort your tasks according to how much of a priority they are. Something might be a priority

because it is coming up soon, or because it is important, for example, an assignment that

is worth 40% of your mark. You can then put the highest priority tasks in to your planner

first, and use the leftover time to get anything else done.

Another good method of managing your time, especially in relation to a specific task,

is called Ĺchunking'. This means breaking down a task into components. For example,

if you had to write an essay, you would need to do some research, brainstorm your ideas,

plan out your structure, draft your essay, fix your references and revise and edit it.

Once you've broken down your task into these manageable chunks, you need to work out when

to complete each part by. An easy way to do this is to work backwards from your due date.

If you know your essay is due in week 12 and you have 6 weeks to work on it, you can set

a weekly deadline for each task. This will keep you on track, and make sure that you're

not leaving everything to the last minute. Do you want to know an easy way to do this?

Study Smarter has developed a tool to help UWA students plan out their assignment study

easily and quickly. Simply go to the Study Smarter website at this address, and clickon

the button that says ĹStudy Smarter Assignment Calculator'.

Then, all you need to do is type the due date of your assignment into the box at the top

of the pageů. And you'll get your own personalised study

plan, telling you all the steps you need to take, approximately how much time you should

be spending on each step, and when you need to get things done by! You can then email

the plan to yourself, or to your group if you are working on a group assignment. You

can also add the Study Smarter assignment calculator as an app on your mobile device,

so you can keep track of things on the go. Now you've looked at the big picture and worked

out the smaller details, there is one final step, and that is to keep working at it and

persisting. Hal Borland once said ôôKnowing trees, I

understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.ö Patience

and persistence are both important traits when it comes to time management, but there's

a difference between them. Patience is passive, whereas persistence is active. So being persistent

means you need to keep making the effort to put these techniques into practice, even if

obstacles occur or you can't see rewards immediately. A really important thing aspect of persistence

is knowing yourself- how you work, what your strengths and weaknesses are, what you are

good at and not so good at. Strategies that work for your friends might not work for you,

while other strategies might be much more suited to the way you work, and it's a good

idea to take this into account. There is no point trying to force yourself to do things

which aren't suited for you (although it's always good to try new things at least once

or twice, as you never know what might work for you!).

Some practical tips for getting your work done can be as simple as focusing on one thing

at a time, setting out regular study hours and sticking to them each week, removing yourself

from things that might distract you such as email or your phone, and delaying saying yes

or no to things if you're not sure whether you will be able to fit them in.

Procrastination is often a problem for students, and it can lead to what we call the procrastination

cycle. The procrastination cycle is when you're worried or stressed about the amount of work

you have to do, so you avoid doing it. This then increases your worry, which leads to

more avoidance, and so on and so on. It's not a good cycle to get into, which is why

having effective time management practices is so important. If you have a tendency to

procrastinate, then try to identify the triggers and come up with creative solutions. If you

can't stop checking your phone, then put it somewhere on the other side of the house.

If you get distracted by Facebook, ask your flatmates to change the wifi password during

your study period! Ok, so let's summarise some of the things

that you can do to help you manage your time and study effectively. Remember to always

prioritise, in order to sort the important tasks from the less important ones. Plan tasks

out backwards, and use the Study Smarter Assignment calculator to help you do this for assignments.

Put the most important tasks in your planner first. Be realistic about what you can get

done in a certain timeframe. Allow yourself a bit of wiggle room, as things don't always

go exactly as you plan them to. Know when you need to say Ĺno', and practise doing

it. Try to combat the idea that everything needs to be 100% perfect, as this can often

increase stress and anxiety and lead to procrastination or avoidance. And finally, know your own strengths

and weaknesses, and find strategies and techniques that work for you.

We hope you've enjoyed this Study Smarter screencast. Remember, you can manage your

time and study more effectively by 1) Stepping back and setting goals, 2) Prioritising and

planning, and 3) Working at it and persisting. For more study tips and advice, visit the

UWA study Smarter website.