You have so many competing demands on your time: School, coaching, homework, assignments, reading etc. There seems to be a perennial shortage of time. How can you come to grips with all of it?

Time really can’t be managed. You can’t slow it down or speed it up or manufacture it. It just is. Time management is MANAGING YOURSELF when following some basic time management principles

First thing is to determine how you are spending your time now. Capture the last entire week on a piece of paper and see the timetable you followed. Count the total number of hours spent in self study during the entire week.

Once you have completed such an analysis you can begin to change the way you manage yourself in relation to time.

Some time saving tips

1. Identify “Best Time” for Studying: Everyone has high and low periods of attention and concentration. Are you a “morning person” or a “night person”. Use your power times to study; use the down times for routines such as laundry and shopping.

2. Study difficult topics First: When you are fresh, you can process information more quickly and save time as a result.

3. Use Distributed Learning and Practice: Study in shorter time blocks with short breaks between. This keeps you from getting fatigued and “wasting time.” This type of studying is efficient because while you are taking a break, the brain is still processing the information.

4. Make Sure the Surroundings are Conducive to Studying: This will allow you to reduce distractions that can “waste time.” If there are times in your hostel or apartment when you know there will be noise and commotion, use that time for mindless tasks.

5. Combine Activities: Use the “Two for one” concept. While sitting in school, finish readings of the textbooks whenever you get time. If you are spending time at the barber’s shop, bring some numerical to solve. If you are traveling to or from the institute in a public transport, bring your notes to study and memorize.

Goal Setting

Ask any successful person, the secret behind his success, and very likely the answer will be “goals”. Goal Setting is extremely important to success.

The personal goal chart is a strategy for setting realistic goals for studying and carefully evaluating the ways by which those goals will be achieved. It takes into account one’s motivations for fulfilling particular goals. It is said that “desire to learn” gives “success” and “success” gives “desire to learn”… so it sounds circular!! But once you get into this circle nothing can stop you from achieving what you want. You might have heard that “nothing succeeds like success”. What that means that it is important for one to get some success to achieve more of it.

Long term plan (Annual) should be made with a view of exams, holidays and school. It creates a overall structure under which smaller milestones are set. In absence of a long term plan,  you suddenly find shortage of time when your exams and tests are close by and you have no alternative.

Deciding on a short-term plan calls for daily and weekly planning. These plans are the most effective because they are more realizable as compared to long-term plans.

You can also make achievable short plans like:

“Completing 25 questions on determinants this Tuesday evening”,

“Revising volumetric chemistry on Monday”, etc.

Related Topics:

1. Tips for IIT JEE Success #1 – Motivation
2. Tips for IIT JEE Success #3 – Develop a System- The Ultimate Weapon
3. Tips for IIT JEE Success #2 – Study Hard & Smart

(a). The psychological help: The thing that separates the two ‘helps’ is that this one has at least some acceptance. Almost no one likes to hear ’spiritual lectures’.

You have to know the following sequence -
Thoughts -> Words -> Actions -> Behavior -> Habit -> Personality -> ‘Who you are’

So in a way, we are saying that what you have thought of, will eventually become ‘who you are’. There are just some steps involved in the process that I have written down above. Hence, when you say ‘I do not feel like doing something’, then you are already in stage 2 of the process of becoming ‘who I really am’. Which means you have already thought that ‘I do not feel like it’. Meaning that ‘I have actually made up my mind. And you just listen to what I have committed to myself in my mind, which is, that I do not feel like it’. Well, in this case I really cant do much to help you, can I. Nor can you yourself do anything about it. I hope you got what I am trying to say here.

I am not trying to play with words here. Just trying to help you out a little, to make you realize that your just saying something starts to put shape to what you want to become. The moment you say ‘I feel tired’, you begin to become tired (I mean how can you become tired when you have not moved too much of your body the whole day, and have just been thinking and solving problems). I know so many students who say they get tired by studying. How can you?? How can your muscles get tired or be out of oxygen, when all you were using was your brain?? So in reality, when you said ‘I feel tired’, you wanted to quit doing whatever you were doing, because now you have got ‘bored’ of doing that thing.

But not that you have said that ‘I feel tired’, you will begin to get yawns, your muscles will begin to ache a little and you might want to lie down, or even sleep. “Your body will do what you want it to do”.

Has your brain or your body ever “disobeyed” you?? They just cannot. They are not programmed that way. Then how are they? Well, they will always help you and follow your instructions. ALWAYS. So you will ask, ‘But even when there is exam tomorrow, I feel sleepy, so my brain is not helping me!!’. I will then tell you that you yourself have told your brain to feel sleepy. It is you who thinks!! Its not your brain that thinks. Your brain is what you use to think. Let me explain… does your hand move on its own? Or do you make it move? In the same, how can your brain do anything on its own. It looks like its functioning on its own, but in reality it is you who is asking it to do this, or that.

‘So what do we do if we cannot really control our brain like we can control our hands and legs? What if we just keep thinking compulsively. Thoughts just come in and we do not have a way to close the door?’ … Try N.L.P. (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Read about it in the book ‘Unlimited Power’ by Anthony Robbins.

This is one of the things that I do… I visualize situations in my head. Suppose that I have a big headache. I will create an image in my head of all the bad, red, hot, angry, negative things in my head and collect them all in a box. I then start shrinking the box in size, and imagine complete peace and blackness outside the box as it shrinks. The peace increases in size and the box reduces in size progressively, till it disappears.I keep doing this again and again for 5 minutes. And the headache goes away. This simple technique actually works every time in all situations. So you could be in a situation where you are feeling lazy, and all you have to do is close your eyes and imagine a situation in which you have been selected in IIT. You have secured a rank of 340 and have just gone for counseling in IIT-Delhi. And you have been awarded the stream of your choice, ‘Computer Engineering’. And you are so happy and enthusiastic with joy that you have never been in life … Just imagining this situation is enough.  The next time you feel lazy, imagine a similar situation, but cook up a different future story, otherwise you will start feeling bored of the same old story.

Related Topics:

1. “I do not feel like studying… please tell me how i can concentrate” – II
2. Tips for IIT JEE Success #1 – Motivation
3. Is coaching essential?

This is complicated even more by the fact that every chapter requires different amount of time. Even different subjects require different amounts of time in theory and problems.

The different questions that come to the mind of the student are:

• How much time should be spent in reading from the textbook?
• Are the notes from tuition/coaching enough? Can I manage without reading the textbook?
• Is there anything to read from the textbook in Mathematics?
• How much time should I spend in solved examples given in the IITJEE course material>
• How much time should be allocated to a certain topic?
• How much time should be spent on a problem that is not getting solved before looking at the solution or asking for help?
• How much time should I spend in testing at home?
• How should I calculate the total time required?

We have tried to answer these questions by giving an indicative time plan.

List of chapters (with recommended time slotted)

This is just a recommendation. Students can make changes to the study plan based on their proficiency in the subjects. The actual time spent by the student can vary by 10% – 15% depending on the student’s personal style of study. Please consider that the time given here is the minimum that a student needs to spend. The total time spent in studying for IITJEE across 2 years should not be less than 10% of the given.

Related Topics:

1. IIT JEE Study Planner: Annual
2. IIT JEE study Planner: Daily timetable
3. IIT JEE study Planner: Weekly timetable