Creating the Perfect Study Timetable

To achieve great results in your studies, a strong study timetable is required. Here is everything you need to know to create your perfect timetable!

What to include:

Study Related Activities

• Daily study time: 90-120 minutes (not including school work)

  • This includes tutoring homework, reviewing mistakes and any extra materials.

• A weekly review session to go over all mistakes made for that week’s topic. This is important as it helps consolidate your knowledge.

Non-Study Related Activities

• Fixed commitments and extra-curricular activities are extremely important to keep a balanced life which will ultimately help you study better.

• Remember to schedule breaks between study sessions - a tired mind cannot retain information as well as a brain functioning at full capacity!

• Schedule at least two sessions per week that are simply dedicated to doing the things you enjoy! Think of these as a reward for following your schedule!

Common Study Timetable Pitfalls

Making the timetable too full

Often, students try to include too much in their study timetable, making it difficult to commit to and creating feelings of discouragement or guilt for not completing every item.

Students must be realistic about the amount of the work they can complete in set time frames and include sufficient breaks to ensure they do not feel overworked or stressed.

It is important to remember that even if you ultimately don’t achieve everything that is scheduled in your timetable, you will still probably achieve more than you would have if you didn’t make a study timetable!

 Not having a trial/adjustment period

Another common mistake which students make, is expecting too much of themselves too quickly! When creating a new timetable, students should slowly increases the amount of work they are doing rather than going from 0 to 100.

They should try the timetable out and see if they need to increase or decrease various activities based on how they felt. Timetables will also be most effective if students are as specific as possible with their descriptions for each time slot. For example, writing down “Review mistakes from mathematics homework” is much better than just writing “Maths”.

Giving up too quick!

It might sound obvious, but study timetables only work if you stick to them! Often students state that they attempted to use a study timetable, but it did not show any improvement in results. However, many of them did not follow their timetable for a time period longer than two weeks. It is important to remember that timetables can only provide the best results if you follow them consistently over many months.

Published 26th June 2019, last edited 17th February 2022