© 2018 Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University, Kingston, http://sass.queensu.ca. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.
Student Academic Success Services:
Learning Strategies and the Writing Centre
Weekly schedule template
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
7:30-8:30
8:30-9:30
9:30-10:30
10:30-11:30
11:30-12:30
12:30-1:30
1:30-2:30
2:30-3:30
3:30-4:30
4:30-5:30
5:30-6:30
6:30-7:30
7:30-8:30
8:30-9:30
9:30-10:30
10:30-11:30
11:30-12:30
12:30-1:30
Note. If the hours on this template don’t suit your habits, create your own similar template and use our process (see over for instructions).
© 2018 Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University, Kingston, http://sass.queensu.ca. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.
Student Academic Success Services:
Learning Strategies and the Writing Centre
How to create your weekly schedule
Step 1: Fixed commitments. Enter all your fixed commitments into the schedule—when you need to be in a certain place at a certain time. This can
include classes, team practices, club meetings, your work schedule, family dinner, and other appointments.
Step 2: Health habits. Next, enter your health habits into the schedule—when are you going to eat, sleep, and be physically active? Be realistic: you
may take a shorter lunch, but need an hour at dinner to walk to the cafeteria, eat, chat, drink tea, and walk home. Also, block off 7-9 hours each
night for sleep—getting enough sleep allows you to be a happy, functioning, efficient student!
Step 3: Estimate hours of homework. Estimate how many hours of homework you’ll need to stay on top of your courses and meet your goals.
Write down all the things you need to do on a weekly basis for each of your courses. On average, for most courses, you will need to plan 8-10
hours per course per week, including time spent in class, labs, reading, homework assignments, group work, etc. In any particular week, you may
find some courses will need more, and others less. School is a full-time job!
Step 4: Assign homework to blocks of time. Input these hours of homework into your weekly schedule. Look for blocks of time (1,
2, or 3 hours)
that are open in your schedule: these may be your homework times. Using a coloured marker, outline the blocks during which you can commit to
doing homework, aiming for the hours you estimated in Step 3. Be specific. Assign a specific task for
a specific course to a specific block. For
example, “on Tuesdays from 9-11 a.m., I do my weekly readings for PSYC 100.”
Step 5: The rest of the schedule. The schedule is flexible, so add in whatever elements you want:
• Add time on Sunday night to look ahead at the upcoming week and make a new to-do list and weekly schedule.
• Some people like to identify more hours for study than they need, to give themselves flexibility to choose when they study. Others build in
a 2-3 hour reserve bank of time that they use only if they don’t do homework during a scheduled time and need to pay themselves back
for the missed time.
• Schedule other life activities: grocery shopping, laundry, hanging out with friends, calling home.
Try this method of designing your weekly schedule, and if you find that it’s not for you and you are looking for alternative ways of managing your
time, or if you would like to talk with someone to help you refine your weekly schedule, you can book a one-on-one advising appointment with a
learning strategies advisor by visiting http://queensu.mywconline.com.
