Being a university student requires planning in order to maintain an overview. Losing this overview may make you feel that you aren’t keeping up with teaching and study activities, you can get a chronic guilty conscience and perhaps even stress.
When planning your time, it's important to be realistic about what you can achieve and ask yourself: What is a “good student life"? And what’s the most important priority for the student life you want? Sometimes, you have to make trade-offs between your appointments, or put more or less energy into different study activities.
Studying at a university involves many different activities, including activities in class, exams and preparation time. When planning the time you spend on your studies, you shouldn’t just think about reading and attending classes.
The study activity model below shows four different study-related activities that you’re expected to participate in as a student, and that you need to take into account when structuring your time.
The horizontal line in the model shows a distinction between teacher-initiated activities (above the line) and student-initiated activities (below the line).
The vertical line distinguishes between participants in the activities, with the left-hand side representing both student and teacher participation, and the right-hand side representing only student participation.
The study activity model | |
The course and exam | All types of teaching in which a teacher is present and you show up and participate actively. This includes supervision and student-teacher lessons. |
Compulsory study activities | The compulsory preparation that your teacher has set and which can be done individually and in groups. |
Independent study activities | Self-chosen preparation for teaching and exams, e.g. extra reading, literature searches and group work. |
Student-initiated teaching situations | Voluntary activities initiated and planned by students with a teacher present, e.g. debates, presentations and trips. |
Regardless of the form of the activity, your involvement helps to improve the quality of your learning. Read more about engagement and academic motivation here.
The model was developed based on the book Studieaktivitetsmodellen - erfaringer og refleksioner by Hanna Mølgaard and Ane Qvortrup (ed.).
Only you can prioritise what you want to spend your time on in order to put together the most meaningful student life for you. Below is advice on finding your priorities.
Get student counselor Lena Pradhan's three tips on how to gain an overview and control of your time.
Planning and prioritisation go hand in hand, but it can be difficult. You probably want to everything because it all seems important, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Prioritising is about creating space for your life outside your studies and about prioritising in the study work itself.
Your calendar is full of appointments, tasks and activities. But you probably also spend time on a lot of "stuff", like TikTok, online shopping or watching your favourite series. There must also be room for that as well. The goal is to be able to prioritise what’s important first and then jump to the "stuff" when it suits you.
If you find that the "stuff" is a time waster, read more about procrastination in Studypedia.
You have to weigh different activities against each other. Sometimes you will have to skip academic activities in favour of something important in your private life. Sometimes it will be the other way around. It’s hard to say no, but it may be necessary.
It can be difficult to say no because you’re afraid of missing out or you want to perform perfectly on all fronts of life. Read more about ambition and perfectionism.
When you prioritise your time, focus on what is urgent and what is important. It’s often best to prioritise the urgent tasks first, even if they seem less important.
For example, prioritise your activities by arranging them as follows:
Digital media and tools can be a resource, but also a distraction for you and your study habits.
Perhaps you recognise the situation where you just check a message or respond to a notification that ticks in while you’re in the reading room, in class or in your study group. These are examples of divided attention, where you’re not fully present in what you are doing. In other words, digital noise that disturbs your concentration and your learning process.
Advice on avoiding digital noise in student life | |
|---|---|
Track your consumption
| Your phone automatically records your screen time. Keep an eye on it and decide for yourself what you think is a reasonable amount. Furthermore, remember to be aware of when you're using your screen; while you should be studying or in your leisure time. |
Focus on one thing at a time | Your brain can only pay attention to one thing at a time. You’ll be distracted and overlook details if you try doing two things at the same time. Prioritise when you spend time on what. |
Avoid exacerbating your restlessness | It's common to feel restless if you're in a hurry, under pressure, or facing a demanding task. This restlessness is uncomfortable, and you may unconsciously exacerbate it with more activity, for example a social media fix, to make the feeling go away for a few moments. But this is the start of a vicious circle. |
Make space for contemplation
| Make a conscious choice – for example with your study partner – and put your phone away while you work. Arrange a short break, e.g. after an hour, for when you can check your phone again. Perhaps use the Pomodoro technique. It may feel difficult at first, but you’ll quickly feel the effect on your concentration. Try it! |
When your student-life priorities are in place, it’s easier to plan your time and create a balance between study time and time off.
Setting aside specific time slots for studying can help if you:
Have difficulty getting started with your studies
Have difficulty prioritising e.g. leisure activities, working out, friends and family
Are easily distracted by other chores and errands
It’s a good idea to have both a long-term plan (a semester plan) and short-term plan (a weekly plan). It can also be useful to make a specific work plan for one day at a time. Find out what works best for you.
Perhaps you work best in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evening. And perhaps you work best on certain types of study activities at different times during the day.
Once you know this, you can plan your academic activities accordingly with regard to teaching, student job, etc. This will make sure that you exploit your most productive hours, which can open up more space in your diary.
That said, you can't plan your timetable for classes yourself, and perhaps they don't fall at the best time in relation to when you perform best. In that’s the case, it's all about finding strategies to get the best possible out of the situation. For example, you can compensate by making sure that you prepare extra thoroughly at a time when you feel awake and efficient.
A weekly plan allows you to allocate time for teaching, preparation, group work, your student job, meeting with friends, and leisure activities. This will help you manage your time and priorities. It will also help you schedule your preparation and reading time, so you can more easily avoid study time and leisure time flowing together such that you feel you never really have any time off.
Plan your time at the times and with the activities that make sense for you. Some may prefer to study late at night and take time off at other times. There is no right and wrong: there should just be a balance between leisure time and study time.
You can make weekly plans for an entire semester or for specific periods, for example when you are preparing for an exam.
Talking to your fellow students about how they prioritise and plan can be a good help and source of inspiration. Remember that you may have different needs and ideas about what a good student life is.
If you need advice and help with your personal priorities and a weekly plan that works for you, consider talking to a student counsellor as well.
As you can see in the examples below, there’s not just one way to make a weekly plan. Consider how detailed and strict you want to make your plan. Try it out – and remember that a week won't always go exactly as you planned.
You can download and change the plan below to suit your preferred times and level of detail. For example, divide it into half hours or larger time blocks such as morning/afternoon/evening.
There may be a large gap between when you plan something and when it actually becomes reality. Here are some tips on planning realistically so that you can keep to your plan more easily - whether you are planning for one day, one week or an entire semester. Take what advice you can use.
Planning advices | |
Follow a fixed schedule
| Following a fixed schedule for your weekly activities will help you build up a set of habits and routines that will become a natural part of your daily life. For example, this could be reading before or after class or a fixed number of working hours every day during the exam period. Don’t forget to allow time for meal breaks, your student job and your social life. |
Coordinate with others
| Delegating some preparation between you and your study group can help optimise time. You can go through the material for each other so that you are all well prepared. When planning your daily and weekly activities, show consideration for the people around you, e.g. your study group, your roommate, your partner and your family. Taking others and their schedules into account will make it more realistic for you to stick to your plan. |
Be realistic
| Don’t be over-optimistic when planning your time. Plan your time to make sure you have time for the most important things. Make room for changes during the week so you don’t drown if something goes wrong, or if you fall behind your schedule. Be realistic too about when you get up or how long you spend in the gym, for example. |
Prioritise and set goals
| Plan the most important activities early in the day, and go straight to work on them. Then you’ll be off to a good start and you’ll get something done, instead of spending all day trying to pull yourself together. This can motivate you for the rest of your day’s work. If you have low self-discipline, it can be helpful to set specific deadlines for each activity. |
These sections are inspired by the book "Lær dig selv at lære. Opnå bedre koncentration, forståelse og hukommelse." by Bjørn Ringom.
To make the most of your study time efficiently, you can try dividing your time into intervals. An effective method is the "Pomodoro" technique, where you work for 25 minutes followed by a 5-minute break (25:5). However, you can adjust the method according to your preferences, such as 45:15 or 50:10. Regardless of the time interval you choose, the key aspect of the method is having a clear purpose for the allocated time.
You can also get advice on how to use your study time at The good preparation and Reading strategies.
The pomodoro technique | |
|---|---|
Get an overview | Get an overview of what you need to finish. Take a few minutes to think. Consider: What do I need to be able to understand about the material? Is it a difficult topic, or am I already familiar with it? What should the project contain? |
Make a decision | Based on your considerations, decide how you want to spend the next 25 minutes. Perhaps you can get straight down to business, perhaps you need to make further preparations. |
Work uninterrupted for 25 minutes | Set a stopwatch for 25 minutes and focus on what you've decided to do. If you think about other things while working on the task, note them down on a piece of paper. Return to this when you take a break. |
Take a break | After 25 minutes, take a 5-minute break. Draw a line on a piece of paper (so you can keep track of the total number of Pomodoros). When taking a break, try to do something that gives you mental breathing space. Exercise or do something practical. |
Evaluate | Think briefly about what you got out of the previous 25 minutes. For example, are you beginning to understand the material? Did you manage to narrow down your topic? If not, are there any gaps in your knowledge or things you could do differently to move on? |
Repeat - and take a longer break | Repeat steps 2-5 four times. Then take a longer break of 15-30 minutes and again exercise or do something practical. |
Do you find it difficult to put your phone away and get off social media when studying?
Try the Forest app to stay focussed on your work. With the app, a forest will grow on your screen that will become lusher the longer you work.
The Noisli app creates an atmospheric background sound or static noise to help you stay focussed.
The Focus-to-do app combines to-do lists and the Pomodoro technique to optimise your productivity.
