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Creating Your Programming Study Plan

Preslav Mihaylov on February 09, 2020

If you've read my last article and taken action, you should now have plenty of time allocated for you to study throughout the week. Now it's time t...
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albertoroldanq profile image
Alberto Roldan • Edited

Hi Preslav,

Congratulations for this great article, I think it can be a good guideline for those who want to set goals and keep the path.
I only want to suggest that instead of using a sheet template I think it could be more interesting to use a free platform such as Asana (which is not very difficult to learn how to use) in order to plan goals and monitoring progression because it will be also a way to get use to a currently very used tool in professional environments.

What do you think?

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Duc Nguyen

Is anyone here using Notion? Spreedsheets are good but when it comes to personal planning & project management I use Notion. I may try to re-create this spreedsheet in Notion and hope I can share the template soon.

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Preslav Mihaylov

I hadn't heard of Notion before and I just googled it. It actually looks promising. Typically, when I create sheets, I like adding a lot of custom views/stats/graphs/etc.

To what extent can you re-create the things in the sheet?

I'm curious to know how it looks like in the end. Would be happy to see your Notion sheet if possible :)

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hellovietduc profile image
Duc Nguyen

Hey,

I have completed my recreation of your spreedsheet in Notion. Here's a link to it.

Notion lacks some math functions and a few features in formatting columns, but overall it works. I hope it's useful.

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pmihaylov profile image
Preslav Mihaylov

Thanks! It looks nice. I like the new addition of "Phases". I might actually reuse that in a future upgrade of the plan to incorporate more long-term planning.

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Preslav Mihaylov

Hello Alberto,

I've used Asana in the past (and similar task tracking tools) and the problem I have with all of them is that they are inflexible and non-customisable (especially the free versions).

For example, the velocity statistics I've created is something I at least haven't discovered in Asana.

So I know that dealing with Excel or Google Sheets can be a bit tedious, especially at the beginning, but if you learn a bit of spreadsheeting, this can enable you to create pretty much anything you like, without relying on third-party tools.

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Mark Lopresto

I believe a spreadsheet is a great way to project plan, and starting with them now can prepare you for professional environments.

I like dedicated project, and task, managers and have tried to implement every one at my work. However, my company is set on using Google Sheets for everything. Rather than fight this, I now create custom templates for project management, milestones, and issue tracking with Sheets.

It’s not my ideal tool, but I believe many companies probably use Google Sheets, or a similar spreadsheet tool, to plan.

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hellovietduc profile image
Duc Nguyen

Hi Preslav,

First of all, thank you for another awesome post. I've just discovered your blog lately and your posts have been helping me a lot.
While recreating your spreedsheet in Notion, I found something confusing in the Project sheet. The Inital Estimate and Final Estimate columns are in hours, while the Days Left column is in days. Should it be Hours Left?

Again, thanks for your amazing posts.

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pmihaylov profile image
Preslav Mihaylov

Hi Nguyễn,

I'm glad you found this useful!

The "Days Left" columns are intentionally left in days, as my study hours per day varies. Especially when the deadline gets near, the weekend days I track carefully as I use those to do some final crunch hours.

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jhakumarashish profile image
Ashish Kumar

Hi,

Thank you for shared this post.

This plan is very use for me, but progress column isn't updating.

Please suggest me.

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pmihaylov profile image
Preslav Mihaylov

feel free to share your own template with me (preslav@pmihaylov.com) and I will look at what the issue is

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SidneyBuckner

I have a great YouTUbe Video with a similar Study Plan Device. Check it out here:
youtu.be/Ko8vTY830fg