Step 3: Start Writing Out a Plan

Now that you have your study materials and priorities together, it's time to start fitting all of these pieces into a cohesive plan. I've created a spreadsheet template for a study plan, which you can find attached as a file to this lesson. Take a moment to download and open the file.

Filling in the Materials and Topics

In this step, we can start filling out the following five columns in the spreadsheet:

• Topic: In this column, list the problem areas that you identified in Step 1, one area per row.
• Reference Material: List the reference materials you've gathered in Step 2. You can include links to online materials, or the chapter and section of a textbook, or any other specific references. Try to break this list down into specific page numbers or sections, rather than just writing down an entire book or resource.
• Relevant Practice: This column is similar to what you did for reference material, but in this case it's for the questions and practice problems you gathered in Step 2.
• Priority: In this column, place the priority that you have noted for each topic. In the template I've provided, I created a numerical scale, 1 - 5, with one being the highest, most important priority. So, you can write the priority in this column. In most spreadsheet programs, you can sort rows by a particular column, so you can have the list show the topics in order of importance.
• Notes: Here, you can put down any miscellaneous notes you need to remember for the topic.