Remember...

Remember Richard:  Plan - Do - Review - Plan - Do - Review - Plan - Do - Review - ...

Make sure you exercise that simple rule and you will make sure you make the best of your gap year.  You can implement this cycle on a monthly, weekly and daily basis ( I even sometimes do it every couple of hours)

Even if you only spend 10min each day to sit down and plan what you want to acheive, and then review it that evening. For example:

Day 1:
PLAN:
Today I will do the following:

1. Clean up my work area
2. Build compnent three from page 47 of the Robot Bonanza book
3. program that timer that I thought of last night.  The rotating arm could really use that.

(Save the post and go off and DO what you said you would.  In the evening come back to the post and edit it:)

REVIEW:

Managed to get #1 ok, took a little longer than I expected but its so shiny!  Had trouble with getting the circuit to work for #2  I don't know enough about potentiometers at the moment...  Got the first half of the program for the timer done.  Looking snazzy.

That way when you plan for the next day you can look at the review and plan to learn about potentiometers and finish the timer program.

Remember also to keep your goals for each day SMART - Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Realistic and Timed.  You can ask Dad more about that.  So to make your Goals realistic and achaivable, its probably best not to have too many.  Set yourself a time limit (3hrs or 20min, by lunchtime etc) and make sure there is a way to tell you've acheived it (so measure how many pages you want have read etc) .

Looking forward to seeing how you get on!