The Importance of Preparation and Time Management: U2’s Guide to Academic Success in 2024
1st Class Cambridge Law graduate and U2 Law tutor, Ben (regular writer for the online law journal, ‘Keep Calm Talk Law’ and ex-President of Selwyn College Law Society), emphasises the importance of preparation and suggests strategies for managing one’s time through a successful academic career…
Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, once said that by “failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. It has become a common adage, but it is a statement which could not be truer: the importance of preparation cannot be overstated.
It is my strong belief that there is nothing that cannot be achieved if you prepare for it adequately. Whether it is an exam, a musical performance or sports competition, a lawsuit or a political campaign, success can be achieved with the right preparation. Preparation allows you to relax, thrive and be confident, as if you have prepared properly you will know that you are going to succeed.
Closely linked to this general notion of preparation is that of “time management”. It is a phrase that was hammered into me at school and one which I have since adopted as something of a mantra. Managing one’s time is essential for good preparation. And good preparation, as we have established, is essential for success.
Preparation is everything
Exams
Most of you reading this blog will be focused on succeeding in exams and in academia. Each subject has a syllabus, and each exam paper will address issues on the syllabus. If you can prepare by knowing everything on the syllabus, you will know that you won’t encounter a question that you cannot answer in the exam and therefore can feel confident that you are going to succeed. This has always been the attitude with which I have prepared for exams, and it is fool-proof.
Of course, learning everything on the syllabus is easier said than done. But we can break it down further. Understanding the syllabus consists of two core elements: learning content and practising using it to answer questions. The learning is laying the foundations and practice is building your masterpiece.
Breaking the challenge down like this allows you to prepare effectively. Taking a step back and asking yourself how you can prepare best not only allows you to make progress with the final task but also reduces stress. If you can see how you are going to achieve something, the prospect becomes less daunting.
Once you have identified that there are going to be two core phases to your preparation for exams, you can then plan when, how and for how long you are going to do them.
Inspiration from Sport
Lessons can be learned and inspiration taken from great sports people and teams, and the lengths to which they will go to prepare.
A good example is the Team Sky (or Ineos as they are now called) cycling team which has dominated the Tour de France in recent years. Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome have become household names in Britain, after achieving greatness in their sport, but the strategies employed by their coaches and support staff – led by Sir Dave Brailsford – were key to that.
The theory of marginal gains led them to look for the smallest of ways to improve their performance, whether it be the exact number of calories that they are eating, the weight of their clothing or the amount that they sleep. Everything is planned down to the finest detail, and the results are there for all to see. There is no doubt that their preparation is the key to their success.
In truth, examples of the importance of preparation can be seen wherever you look in sport, be it in rugby teams like the All Blacks or Saracens, Manchester City FC under Guardiola or athletes such as Sir Mo Farah, Tom Daley, Anthony Joshua, Dina Asher-Smith or Katarina Johnson-Thompson.
I have always used the ideas of sporting preparation in everything I do, whether it be sport or academia. Elite sport gives us a visual depiction of how preparation leads to success. Exams are no different.
Inspiration from elsewhere
If sport isn’t your cup of tea, you can look elsewhere for inspiration. Great musicians, performers and artists all represent the same idea. No one gets anywhere without preparation, practice and dedication to their task.
Time management as the key to good preparation
In our modern society, we all live such busy lives that it can seem difficult to fit everything in. This is accentuated at academic institutions where we are bombarded from all angles to meet deadlines and carry out a multitude of different tasks for different subjects all at the same time.
However, if you start preparing early enough and start managing your time effectively from the beginning, you won’t have this problem. Once you have broken down your task into the necessary steps and produced a plan of action, you then need to estimate how long that is going to take. This is something only you can know, depending on how fast you work and how much there is to do!
Once you know how long each part is going to take, you can work back from your final deadline to work out when you need to start – or to see how long you have.
I always found it useful to physically write out my schedule. I would recommend buying a desk planner (readily available on Amazon) which is essentially an A3 Calendar that lies on your desk. You can then in-put what you are going to do on each day, and at what time, to get everything done in time for your final task (exam, performance etc.). A diary would also serve this purpose, but I found the desk planner useful as it was a visual representation of the amount of time I had.
Don’t forget to schedule in time off for breaks and for doing other things. It is tempting to get sucked into being absolutely focused on one thing, to the detriment of everything else. Try to avoid the temptation. By scheduling in other activities and breaks, you’ll be sure to stay on top of your work whilst also staying relaxed and happy!
If you can manage your time like this, fitting in everything you have to do within the time you have to do it, you will be able to prepare effectively and be on the road to success!
Top Tip: Online tools for time management are your friend
Time your revision sessions to maximise concentration
Memrise and Quizlet allow you to memorise on the go, entering the information in itself is a good revision tool
A team of Oxbridge graduates pioneered an interactive revision platform for KS2/3, GCSE and A-Level called Seneca. A great & fun way to test yourself before your exam!
Memrise: Great for learning languages.
Quizlet: 90% of students who use Quizlet report receiving higher marks.
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