How to plan and Strategize your Studies

If you are preparing for any entrance exam, board exam or university exam, then you need to be able to strategize well. It is better to have a systematic study plan than to randomly go about studying.

Step 1: Create a Plan

This is an important step, to begin with. Setting a schedule also gives you a proper idea of how much you can achieve in the coming days.

How does a Timetable help

Let us take an example to understand this. Recently, a student asked us how could he complete the chapters Modern Physics and Optics in a few days. We replied with a timetable as follows.

Day 1: Theory/Concepts.
Day 2: Practice Questions/Problems/MCQs.
Day 3: Practice Weaker Areas.

Do you see the benefit here? As soon as you look at the timetable you feel that this task is actually easily achievable. You feel assured that this is how you can complete your syllabus. Thus, a timetable serves as good guidance for you.

So, the next time that you are scratching your head over a particular chapter/topic, create a systematic timetable as above so that you can be assured and guided by it.

Let us now learn how to create effective timetables/schedules so that you can achieve better results. Keep reading to know how to strategize and execute your studies.

How to set a schedule

In order to set a schedule, you first need a Goal. A goal can be something like “studying modern physics and optics”, “revising all formulae and reactions”, etc.

Next step is to know the amount of time that you have in hand over the next few days//weeks/months depending on how big our goal is. If your goal is really big (like cracking an Entrance Exam), we recommend you to break it down into monthly, weekly and daily goals.

Once you have gathered all of this information, you can now decide how much time to allocate for each task in your goal. You should further divide your daily goals into 25-30 minute slots.

A good example of a timetable is the one that we discussed above in this blog. You can follow the template because as you can see in that example, within 3 days, you will have mastered modern physics and optics, as you have understood the theory, practised MCQs and moreover practised your weaker areas as well within 3 days.

You can Checkout ready-made monthly schedules for JEE, NEET here :

JEE Monthly Timetable
NEET Monthly Timetable

Step 2: Execution

Now that you have completed setting up a timetable, you are assured that you know a way to achieve what you need to. Now comes the interesting part – Execution!

Setting a timetable is easy. Setting a good timetable is hard and Executing these timetables is even harder. The poorly designed timetables are just like fantasies that never come true. Many students would have set up beautiful timetables by now, but a few succeed. Execution is all the difference here.

We have already discussed how to set up a good timetable. So, now let us see a guaranteed method of executing a timetable.

Plan the Execution as well

Not only do you need to plan your timetable, you also need to plan your execution. You should decide favourable time slots in which you would be studying. You should be very much prepared to face the day as it comes and stick to the timetable in all possible manner. You can also postpone certain topics for health/other reasons. In such a case, you should increase your speed or number of time slots and compensate for every loss incurred in the timetable.

Keep your plan B ready

You never know how good or bad your day will be. There is no guarantee that you will get the time that you have set aside for studying. Thus, you should have a plan B ready.

Mostly, plan B would be something like increasing the number of time slots to cover up the missed timings. There are many more random things you need to take care of each day.

Read More: How to Execute your Study Schedule

Motivate Yourself

Simple observation says us that students are most motivated when the set a timetable. Then, it decreases as they start executing the plan. So, there is a simple trick to remain motivated at all times.

1. Remind yourself of the time when you had set up the timetable. The motivation level will come back!
2. Ask yourself the very purpose behind setting up the timetable.
3. Remind yourself about your goals, ambition, career, etc.

Read More: How to stay Motivated at all times

Remember, everything in life is a Choice. Choose to Work!