Time Management: Planning Your Schedule Strategy

Time management is the single biggest challenge that online students face. Technology is not a problem; technology, in fact, is easy... but time management is hard. You will be doing 6-8 hours of work per week for this class every week during the semester. It is a very steady workload, no midterms, no finals - but you do have to find 6-8 hours for this class every week.

Moreover, unlike other classes, you don't have a regularly scheduled meeting time for this class, which makes it very tempting to put things off until the last minute. NOT GOOD. Believe me: if you put things off until the last minute, this class will become extremely stressful. You can avoid all that stress by creating your own class meeting times.

To get started in making your plan, take a look at a typical work week for the class that you are in (every week has the same type of assignments):

• MythFolklore Week 2. As you can see, there are assignments due on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and on Friday (or over the weekend, based on what is best for you).
• Indian Epics Week 2. As you can see, there are assignments due on Tuesday, Thursday, and on Friday (or over the weekend, based on what is best for you).

Now you need to think about what will be the best way for you to manage your class time: 

WEEK AHEAD PLAN. With the week ahead plan, all your deadline worries are over! It's no extra work to get one week ahead; it's just a matter of buckling down at some point and doing enough work to get ahead. Then you can stay ahead for the whole rest of the semester, one week at a time - but one week ahead of the schedule. While the rest of the class is doing the Week 6 assignments, for example, you will be on Week 7, and so on. So, before things get busy in your other classes, why not just go ahead and finish these Orientation Week assignments and then finish the Week 2 assignments? Once you get that one week ahead, it's easy to stay ahead for the rest of the semester.

WEEKEND PLAN. For many people, doing online course work is easiest over the weekend. If you choose the weekend option, here is how you can do ALL the work over the weekend, with no work due Monday-Friday:
Week 1 Weekend (Jan. 19-20): do the Week 1 Friday/weekend assignments AND do the Tuesday-Thursday assignments for Week 2
Week 2 Weekend (Jan. 26-27): do the Week 2 Friday/weekend assignments AND do the Tuesday-Thursday assignments for Week 3 - but make sure you have 6-8 hours available over the weekend!

Week 3 Weekend (Feb. 2-3): do the Week 3 Friday/weekend assignments AND do the Tuesday-Thursday assignments for Week 4 - but make sure you have 6-8 hours available over the weekend!

Etc.

WEEKDAY PLAN. Some students have other commitments over the weekend - work, family, etc. - and you may want to not have any work to do for this class over the weekend. If that is the case, you can complete all the work for this class during the week without any need to work on the weekend. If you are going to do the Weekday Plan, I would urge you to work at least one day ahead of each deadline. That will reduce the stress and give you a little room to maneuver if anything unexpected comes up. So, for example, you would do the Tuesday work on Monday, Wednesday work on Tuesday, Thursday work on Wednesday, and then do some of the Friday work on Thursday, and finish up the rest of the week's work on Friday so that you can be all done before the weekend arrives.