College Time Management and Autopilot?

[Asten]

I'm trying to get on an "autopilot" schedule that Study Hacks talks about. It means doing one kind of work at a set time and/or a set location. That way, the work gets done without much thought. There isn't any fishing around trying to fit in different areas of your schedule every week, because you have to work on these things every week anyway.

I have a few questions:

A) How do you determine how long you work on a subject? To an extent that's based on what homework you have and the course--but how much is too much? How much time do you devote to yourself and your other pursuits? I've acquired a social life that's only going to get more social and have other things I'm interested in--working on a blog related to my courses, guitar, reading, therapy, etc.

B) If you go over your time limit for it... do you make yourself quit, completion and grades be damned, because going over it bites into that free time devoted to whatever? When do you choose to not quit?

Just for the record, I'm not worried about grades--I'm worried about learning the skills--whether I fail, get a C, or ace it. I became really good at taking tests and completing work at a time-wasting quality level a LONG time ago, and my straight-A's have been completely meaningless to me as a result. So I can take tests well? Big deal... that isn't the real world. I'm interested in the real world, because these skills are meaningful to me.

So an autopilot schedule means during those set-aside times I work on completing actual homework and, more importantly, learning the skills.. which usually happens BY doing the homework (I'm taking Figure Drawing, Intro to Programming, and Conversational Japanese).

Just looking for some advice. Time-management is something I've always been very bad at, and I'm trying to change that.