Difficulty: Planning and Organisation

8 Keywords: Planning, Organisation, Time Management, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Brain Injury, Stress, Illness

LearnHigher webpageThe University of Reading LearnHigher website offers planning and organisation advice when studying.

Planning and organisation can become issues when students are stressed, ill, or have a traumatic brain injury or a range of specific learning difficulties or differences such as dyslexia and dyspraxia.

Students may need to embrace a toolkit of ideas to help with their studies and when on placement or starting work.

Time management tips (from students) can help everyone, but for those who may have had absenses from studying or are coping with constraints, such as part time work or certain disabilities, making the most of study time can be a challenge. For instance it may take much longer to search for items on the web when using a screen reader or magnification software.

"A study from the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London suggests that your IQ falls 10 points when you're fielding constant emails, text messages, and calls, the same loss you'd experience if you missed an entire night's sleep and more than double the 4-point loss you'd have after smoking marijuana. On average men fared worse than women because, researchers say, men have more difficulty multitasking.   YogaJournal, p. 22, 12/2005 "

And ...

"People who multitask are less efficient than those who focus on one project at a time, says a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology....Managing two mental tasks at once reduces the brainpower available for either task, according to a study published in the journal NeuroImage.

Sue Shellenberger ( from the Wall Street Journal), Star Telegram: "Multitasking Makes You Stupid, Studies Say," 12/2/2003"Taken from Time Management Statistics 

There is a video on Time Management from the University of Hull hosted on YouTube.

SCIPS - Characteristics of Organisational Difficulties Impacting on Learning and Teaching

Tasks