Assignment Planner
Pick the kind of assignment, the day you start and the day it's due, and get a dated plan: each step from understanding the prompt to submitting, with its share of your time, a finish-by date, a practical tip and the right tool for the job. Export it to your calendar or print it. Free, no sign-up.
The due date always counts, whatever the weekday — it's the day you hand in.
Choose a start date and a due date to build your plan.
How to Use the Assignment Planner
- 1. Choose the assignment type. Research papers, essays, lab reports, presentations and literature reviews each get their own steps — a lab report starts with your data, a presentation ends with rehearsal.
- 2. Enter your start and due dates. The start date defaults to today. Add a name if you want it on the printout and in your calendar.
- 3. Untick the days you won't work. Weekends, a part-time shift, a travel day — the plan only schedules work on the days you leave ticked, though the due date always counts as hand-in day.
- 4. Use the plan. Each step shows a finish-by date, its share of the time, a tip and a link to the matching CitationEasy tool or guide. Add it to Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar with the .ics file, print it, or copy it as text.
How the Planner Divides Your Time
Every assignment type has nine steps, and each step has a fixed share of the working days between your start and due dates. The shares are a teaching assistant's rule of thumb, not a law: drafting gets the largest single share, research and reading come next, and the finishing steps — citing, proofreading, submitting — are short but never skipped.
| Step | Research paper | Essay | Lab report | Presentation | Literature review |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Understand the task | 5% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 5% |
| Research, evidence or data | 20% | 15% | 20% | 15% | 20% |
| Notes or background reading | 15% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 25% |
| Outline or plan | 10% | 12% | 8% | 12% | 10% |
| Draft (slides for a talk) | 25% | 28% | 30% | 23% | 20% |
| Revise | 12% | 15% | 12% | 10% | 10% |
| Cite and format | 6% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 4% |
| Proofread (rehearse for a talk) | 5% | 8% | 8% | 18% | 4% |
| Submit or present | 2% | 2% | 2% | 2% | 2% |
In a lab report the second row is analysing your data and the third is background reading. A presentation trades most of its proofreading time for rehearsal.
Days are whole days, so the planner rounds with the largest-remainder method: each step first gets the whole-number part of its exact share, and any days left over go to the steps with the largest fractions. The totals always match the days you have, and no step is ever more than a day away from its exact share.
Worked example: a three-week research paper
You start on Monday 5 October 2026 and the paper is due on Monday 26 October, and you'll work every day. That is 22 working days, counting both ends. Drafting's exact share is 25% × 22 = 5.5 days, research gets 4.4, revising 2.64 and submitting 0.44. Taking the whole parts first hands out 19 days; the three left over go to the largest fractions — revising (0.64), drafting (0.5) and submitting (0.44).
| Step | Working days | Dates | Finish by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Understand the assignment | 1 | Oct 5 | Mon, Oct 5 |
| Research | 4 | Oct 6 – 9 | Fri, Oct 9 |
| Take notes | 3 | Oct 10 – 12 | Mon, Oct 12 |
| Thesis and outline | 2 | Oct 13 – 14 | Wed, Oct 14 |
| Write the first draft | 6 | Oct 15 – 20 | Tue, Oct 20 |
| Revise | 3 | Oct 21 – 23 | Fri, Oct 23 |
| Cite and format | 1 | Oct 24 | Sat, Oct 24 |
| Proofread | 1 | Oct 25 | Sun, Oct 25 |
| Submit | 1 | Oct 26 | Mon, Oct 26 |
With fewer working days than steps — an essay set on Monday and due on Tuesday, say — some steps get no day of their own. The planner stacks them on the same day as a neighbouring step rather than pretending the time exists, and tells you so.
Making the Plan Work
- Give yourself a buffer. Enter a due date a day or two before the real one. Illness, a crashed laptop or another deadline will eat into the plan at some point; a buffer absorbs it without touching revision.
- Protect revision. When you fall behind, the temptation is to cut the revising and proofreading days. Squeeze research or drafting instead — revision is where most of the marks are won.
- Treat finish-by dates as checkpoints. If a step finishes early, start the next one. If it runs late, check whether the remaining steps still fit and re-plan from today.
- Pair it with focused sessions. A finish-by date tells you what to do this week; a Pomodoro Timer gets the next 25 minutes of it done.
- Ask early. Questions about the prompt are easiest to answer in the first step, not the night before the deadline.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is an assignment calculator?
- Many university libraries offer an "assignment calculator": you enter a start date and a due date, and it breaks a paper into stages with a target date for each. This planner works the same way for five assignment types, shares the days with the largest-remainder method so the dates always fit, and adds a calendar export and a tip for every step.
- How far ahead should I start a research paper?
- As early as the assignment allows. The planner works with any window, but once you have fewer working days than steps, steps start sharing a day — and in a tight plan research and revision are the first things to suffer. With three weeks or more, nearly every step gets at least one day of its own.
- Can I leave weekends out of the plan?
- Yes. Untick Saturday and Sunday (or any other day) under "Days you'll work on it" and the planner shares the steps across the remaining days only. The due date always counts, even when it falls on an unticked day, because that is the day you hand the work in.
- How do I add the plan to Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar?
- Click "Add to calendar (.ics)" to download a calendar file with one all-day event per step on its finish-by date. In Google Calendar, open Settings, choose Import & export, then Import. In Outlook, choose Add calendar, then Upload from file. In Apple Calendar on a Mac, use File, then Import. Importing into a new, empty calendar lets you delete the whole plan in one go if your dates change.
- Why does a step say it shares its day with another step?
- There are more steps than working days, so that step rounded down to zero days. Its finish-by date is the same as a neighbouring step's: do both that day. Starting earlier, or ticking more working days, gives every step its own time.
- Are the percentages right for my assignment?
- They are sensible defaults rather than rules, and courses differ. If your research paper needs a long data-collection phase or your lab report has little analysis, pick the closest type and treat the dates as checkpoints, moving work earlier or later as you go.
- Is anything I type saved or sent anywhere?
- No. The plan is calculated in your browser and nothing you enter is uploaded or stored. To keep it, add it to your calendar, print it, or copy it as text.