Why planning helps
Planning is not extra work, it takes pressure away. When you spread your studying over a few days, you remember more and your evenings are calmer.
You can start right here: no prior knowledge needed.
Why
Lotte has a geography test on Friday and starts on Thursday evening. Why does that go wrong so often, even when she works hard that evening?
Your mind nearly always thinks a task will take less time than it does. You picture how it would go if everything ran smoothly, not the exercise you do not understand, the message from a friend or the training that runs late. So the last evening gets far too full.
Researchers found again and again that material you spread over several days sticks better than doing it all at once. Each new day you pull the material out of your memory again, and that very act of recalling makes it stronger.
So a plan is not a punishment. It shows what is coming, so you can choose for yourself instead of having to rush.
See it
The same 6 hours of study, in one evening or spread out. Slide to choose over how many days you split it and see how heavy each evening still is.
Description of the picture
A slider chooses over how many days, from 1 to 6, you split 6 hours of study. Each day has a bar that gets shorter as you take more days, with a sentence about how heavy each evening is.
Get it
Planning starts with three questions: what has to be done, by when, and roughly how much time will it take? Write it in your planner. Then your head does not have to hold on to it all the time.
Then add a margin. You nearly always estimate too tightly, so give yourself a bit more time than you think you need. If it goes well, you simply get some extra free time.
Finally, spread the work over several days. Every evening gets lighter, and every time you come back to the material, you recall it again. That is exactly what makes it stick.
Know what has to be done and by when, estimate the time with a margin and spread the work over several days.
Worked example
Yusuf has to study 6 hours for his history test. He has 4 evenings left. How many minutes does he study each evening if he splits it evenly?
Turn the hours into minutes.
$6×
60= 360$ Divide by the number of evenings.
$360:
4= 90$ That is an hour and a half each evening, instead of six hours on one evening.
- Answer
90 minutes each evening.
Do it
Choose a level. You get a new exercise every time, checked on the spot.
Do it tomorrow
Tomorrow, write next to every test or task in your planner not just the date, but also how much time you think you need. Add a little extra straight away. Check afterwards whether your estimate was right.
One small habit. Try it for a week and see what it does.
Pitfalls
Wrong: I work best under pressure, the night before.
Under pressure it feels as if you get a lot done, but what you cram into one evening you also forget quickly. And if something goes wrong, there is no time left.
Right: Study in smaller pieces over a few days and keep the last evening for a short review.
Wrong: This will only take half an hour.
Nearly everyone underestimates tasks, because you mainly think about how it would go if everything ran smoothly.
Right: Look at how long a similar task took last time and plan with a margin.
Wrong: A plan has to be perfect, or it will not work.
Something always goes differently than planned: a training that runs late, a friend who drops by, a task that is harder.
Right: Make a simple plan and calmly move things along when you need to.
In real life
- In June you have exams in nearly every subject. If you know early which subject falls on which day, you can spread your studying over weeks.
- Youth club on Saturday and training on Wednesday are fixed. A plan shows which evenings are left for studying.
- Practising the times tables in Ruit works better in five short bits over the week than in one long sitting on Sunday.
History
In the late seventies, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky gave a name to something nearly everyone does: underestimating how long a task will take. They called it the planning fallacy.
At the table
Which task did you recently think you would finish quickly, and how long did it really take?
A question to talk about together, for parents and children. There is no wrong answer.