How long is your piece of string?
Obviously everyone is different, but I’d work on round about a year to complete the ATPLs. For me, that involves reading notes on the train to & from work, doing a 2-3 hours work 4 nights per week & all day Sunday. This leaves me Friday nights clear for letting off steam / drinking beer / kicking the cat, & Saturdays free for sorting out the rest of my life.
HWD’s advice is pretty much spot on. Don’t get hung-up on sections of the coursework that don’t ‘click’ straight away – move on to the next subject and come back to it later. (I struggled with gyroscopes & long-range plotting, and they were both non-events by exam time).
Would also agree (with hindsight) that making copious amounts of notes doesn’t serve much purpose – I have a whole file full of notes which I’ve never looked at since writing them. Equations are a different matter, and I would definitely write them down and memorise.
Just as a general point, it’s easy to be intimidated by the sheer volume of coursework, and it’s perfectly normal to feel ‘behind the curve’ all the way through your studies. You just have to trust people who have been through it before when they say that the brush-up course will do it’s job, and it will all come together on exam day. (Who knows, you may even find the exams are quite straightforward, because your school have deliberately over-prepared you by throwing all the nastiest questions at you during the brush-up).