Choose your planning tool

You might want to consider using your UMN Google calendar to manage your time. Since all UMN students have a Google account, sharing calendars with roommates & friends, and scheduling study groups, is easy. 

There are a lot of options for planning tools. The important thing is to find one that works for you. Here are a few to consider:

• Google calendar & tasks to manage your schedule and to-do's. 
• Weekly or Semester calendar templates provide another option for your schedule and tasks.
• Excel for schedule management.
• Apps such as Trello, Habit Tracker, TickTick: To-Do, etc.

Ease of mind and cognitive load

Creating and following a study schedule can lessen your “cognitive load,” which is a fancy way of saying because the tasks are written down, your brain doesn’t have to try to remember them. Thus your brain can focus on “learning” the content and getting stuff done.

Check out the Curve of Forgetting to learn a bit about how we react to (and forget!) the information coming at us.