Speaker 1: A lot of people struggle with making study timetables, let alone being able to follow the study timetable that they have made. If that's you, you're probably making your study timetable wrong. So these are the couple mistakes that you are probably making. Number one, you allocate a specific time for a specific activity. And if that time comes and you can't do that activity, you simply just give up on it because your whole timetable now is messed up. Secondly, you set a time limit for each and every activity. For example, you're going to set an hour to study something, but sometimes it doesn't take you an hour to complete that specific thing. And then now you end up with incomplete activities because you have to move on to the next thing on your timetable the next hour. Another thing is probably because you are not being specific on what exactly do you want to study. And the last possible reason why your timetable is not working for you, it is because you do not set goals that you have to achieve during your study time. My name is Andesoa, a UCT medical student, and today I'm going to show you how to make a study timetable that will work for you. Please be sure to like this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel. On this channel, I post study tips, med school vlogs, and everything in between twice a week, every Wednesdays and Sundays at 6pm. Now let's get into setting our study timetable. When setting a study timetable or planning any study session for that matter, you need to answer these three questions. When, what, and how long? When are you going to study? Firstly, we're going to look at availability. When are you actually available to study? So now take out your weekly planner or a piece of paper and write down all the hours you have in a day for each day of the week. And then you're going to highlight all the fixed activities. I'm talking about all the activities that you can only do at that specific time and you cannot move around. For example, school, work, and church if you're a religious person. Because those are the times when you won't be able to study. The second thing we're going to look at is when can you study best? It is not every time that you are available that you can study. So you have to pick a time frame when exactly can you study best. Is it in the evening, late hours at night, early hours of the morning? You know yourself when you can study the best. So you want to pick a time when your brain is the most active, when you have the least things to do. You cannot pick a time slot where you have a lot of chores and a lot of distractions around you. So this should be the time when you know that I can 100% focus on my studies. In my case, my best time to study is between 6pm and 12am. The next thing we want to look at is how long do you want to study? So this varies from person to person, whether you are doing a demanding course or not, how many courses are you doing, do you have any exams coming up, etc. So let's say I'm deciding to dedicate 4 hours to studying a day. Then now I know that between 6pm and 12am I should spend 4 hours studying. So this is what to avoid. Do not set your exact starting time or finishing time. Rather have a time slot that can fit in your study hours so that you have the freedom to move your study hours however it suits you. So for example, you can decide to study from 6pm to 7pm and then take an hour break and study from 8pm to 10pm, take an hour break and then study from 11pm to 12pm. Still you have your 4 hours covered. Instead of strictly saying you need to study from 6pm up to 10pm. So you need to take into consideration your breaks that you're going to take, things that might come up that you will need to attend to and maybe distractions. So doing things this way will allow you to have the freedom to be able to move around and still get you 4 hours of studying covered. So now that we've figured out our when, let's talk about what. What are you going to study? Are you going to revise today's work, focus on tomorrow's work or catch up on last week's content? It's up to you. So if you're in university, you want to check your weekly timetable and you want to see all the lectures that you're going to have for that week and all the topics that you will need to cover. So for each day you're going to decide what topics you want to cover. I personally prefer doing topics for the next day the day before and doing some revision and catch up work during the weekend. So for your study timetable, you're going to write down the topics that you want to cover each day. It is entirely up to you how many topics you want to cover each day, depending on how long you have set your study time to be and how many lectures you have to go through. So if you're a person who's doing multiple courses or you're in high school doing multiple subjects, then you're going to do things differently because you cannot study all of your courses or all of your subjects in that one slot. So you want to plan which subjects you want to study a day and how many times you want to study each subject. So this will depend on how you are performing in that subject and how much work does it require from you. Which means that the subject that is more demanding, you want to study it more frequently than the subject that is the least demanding. Also the subject that you are good at, you want to study it the least compared to the subject that is giving you a hard time. As I've said, how many subjects you study a day, that depends on how long is your study session. You can't say that you want to study for four hours, but then you are doing four subjects that you want to study. It is not going to be enough spending one hour on each subject. So rather increase your study time or decrease the number of subjects you are studying a day to fit your study time. And the second thing you want to do is decide which topic exactly you want to study. You can't just say, I'm going to be studying Maths, I'm going to be studying Life Sciences. Which topic are you going to study? So because in high school you might spend a week or two on a certain topic. For example, let's say you are doing Financial Maths. It means that you might spend the whole week of your study sessions studying Financial Maths when you are studying Maths. So it doesn't mean that now you have to study Financial Maths on a Monday and then study Equations on a Wednesday, study Geometry on a Friday. You can stick to that one topic because that is your topic of the week. Unlike students who are in university where every day it is a new topic. So you cannot afford to stick to one topic every day of the week. So which basically means that in high school you are able to say, I'm going to start a new topic on Monday, on Wednesday I'm going to complete it and then on Friday I'm going to do revision. You probably won't be behind in class, your teacher will still be teaching that topic. So now instead of allocating a time limit to study each topic, have a to-do list. This is a lifesaver. So you are going to focus more on finishing the task that you have, not the duration. So write down your goals for your study session. What exactly do you want to do? And as you go along, tick the things that you have done. Instead of allocating a time limit to do a specific thing, you have a list of things that you have to achieve by the end of your study session. This gives you so much flexibility because you can start with whatever you feel comfortable with starting with and you do not rush yourself or leave other things hanging just because the time to do them is over. So by the end of your study session, you need to review how your study session went. Were you able to complete all your tasks that you have set for that study session? Did you do all the topics that you were meant to do? If not, was it because there were a lot of distractions or your study time was not enough? These are all the questions that you should be asking yourself. After doing all of these evaluations, you're going to change your timetable until it is perfect for you. So on my next video, I'm going to be talking about how to study effectively in medical school and how to keep up with your lectures. So be sure that you tune in and you subscribe to my YouTube channel. If you are still struggling with making your own study timetable or you want personalized advice, you can book a one-on-one session with me by sending me an email. My email address is on the description box where I sit down and actually help you create your own study timetable. If you need any study tips or any academic advice, you can also book a session with me and I'll be able to assist you. Specifically, if you're a high school student or a medical student. I also have mentorship packages where I assist to those who want to score good marks in high school and those who want to study medicine by providing different support sessions. So you only pay once off. If you are interested in that, also send me an email so that I can mentor you.