Weekly Planning

STATS: 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. The average person spends 56 hours of the week sleeping. That leaves 112 hours. Subtract another 12 hours for class. (13.5 for first year students; more if you've got labs.) Subtract another 12-15 hours for meals. A few more for showers and getting dressed. Courses here are designed to provide you with 2-3 hours of outside work for every hour of class. At 2 hours per hour, that makes 24. At 3 hours per hour, 36. Do you have a campus job? Do you play a sport?

How are you spending your time? Print out a weekly planner, a worksheet that will help you answer that question. It's got 168 rectangles--one for each hour in the week. As you go through your week, fill in the weekly planner with what you have actually been doing: class, sleeping, meals, study, job, sports practice, exercise, party, hanging with friends, TV, reading for pleasure, performance rehearsals....

Once you know what you're doing, then you can start re-organizing when you do what you do, and how long you do it. Print another weekly planner so you have a clean one to write out an ideal schedule. (Caution: when you change your day-to-day schedule, you'll need strength to uphold that commitment. You will need to remind yourself of your goals and seek supportive friends, family, and faculty and staff.)

1. Print this page: 24-Hour Weekly Planner
2. Fill in courses. The time= the line above. (e.g., the line right above "6:00" and under the word "Sunday" corresponds to 6:00 am) Draw a horizontal line where the course begins, and another where it ends. (e.g., a course that begins at 8:30 would start on a line halfway down the 8:00 box.)
3. Fill in campus (or off-campus) job hours.
4. Fill in sports practices and meetings. (Don't know exact times? Estimate. Write in pencil. Write in pen and make 2 copies.)
5. Fill in club & organization meetings.
6. Fill in roughly when you eat. (Breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, dinner, snack)
7. Fill in when you sleep. (Again, estimate.)
8. Tally the hours of class each week. Multiply this number by two. Fill in that many study hours. Write "Study" in them. When are you most alert? Put them there.
9. The rest of the time is flextime. Do with it what you will. In a heavy week, you'll use some of it for working on papers or studying for exams. In a light week, it's all yours.