So since exam season is always around the corner so a lot of students sit down and write this really big ambitious study plan and they feel really good about it for about two days and then the whole thing falls apart. And then instead of just fixing the plan they start feeling bad about themselves and that is where the real problem starts.
In addition, a lot of people have reported that the guilt of missing targets is actually worse then the missing itself because once you feel behind you start avoiding the whole thing entirely and that is kind of a spiral you don't want to get into.
Hello guys! What's up? My name is Prince Upadhyay and welcome to MegaMocks, your go-to place for exam prep tools and study strategies. So let's start with the topic...
Before we get into how to actually fix this I want you to know that this particular problem is not about discipline at all. I used to think it was about discipline and that I just needed to push harder but honestly that is not what is going on over here. The reason is simple, most students are not setting bad goals because they are lazy, they are setting bad goals because they are planning for the best version of themselves and not for the real version.
When you sit down and make a plan you are rested and you are in a good mood and you are imagining yourself focused and motivated and you know kind of ready to go. But real studying happens — and this is the part nobody talks about — when you are tired from school and your concentration is not that great and there are a lot of things happening around you and all that. So since you planned for the best version of you so the real version of you will always fall short and that is not a discipline problem that is a planning problem.
A lot of people just completely forget how much time the rest of their life is actually taking. So think about it this way. School is six hours and travel is two hours and meals are maybe an hour and a half and then there is basic personal time and all of that and you have already used up close to ten hours. Sleep is seven to eight hours on top of that. So you are left with maybe six hours at the absolute maximum — and actually I remember when I first did this calculation for myself I was genuinely surprised because I had been writing ten hour study targets and thinking I was being reasonable — and then from that six hours you have to account for breaks and the fact that your brain just does not focus at 100% for every single minute.
The first two hours you study in a day are honestly the best two hours. By the time you get to hour five or six your brain is making a lot more mistakes and you are not actually retaining as much as you think you are and all that. So since a lot of students don't account for this so they plan for ten hours and then wonder why they feel like they studied a lot but don't actually remember anything.
The first step is to go backwards from 24 hours. Take out sleep, school, meals, travel and any family commitments and whatever is left is your realistic maximum and then you discount that by about 20 percent for transitions and breaks and just being human. Whatever number you land on that is your ceiling and your actual daily target should be a little below it.
The Daily Study Target Validator is what I use when I want to check if a plan is actually doable or not. You put in your exam date and your remaining syllabus and your planned daily hours and how many days a week you have available and it tells you whether the whole thing adds up and if there is a gap it also tells you exactly what you can do about it which is really useful honestly.
I generally use one specific approach for this which is the 80 percent rule and honestly this particular approach has made the biggest difference. What you do is you plan for about 80 percent of your maximum capacity. So this means on a really good day you will finish early and feel great about it and that particular feeling builds momentum. And on a hard day where everything is going wrong you can still hit the target and you don't fall into that guilt spiral. Planning for 100 percent and delivering 80 is demoralising and that is the cycle most students are stuck in.
You have to include at least one lighter day per week and a couple of revision only days before your exam and these are not wasted days these are actually the days where a lot of the learning gets solidified. So since the brain needs recovery so any plan that has zero rest days is a plan that will eventually break. Okay?
For most students who are doing serious exam prep the realistic daily target lands somewhere between 3 and 6 focused hours. Below 3 is probably not enough to make real progress and above 6 hours of genuinely focused work is really hard to maintain for more than a few days and all that.
The more important thing is not the number it is the quality and the consistency of it. Four focused hours every single day for three weeks is a lot better preparation then ten exhausting hours for two days and then a week of burnout.
Sometimes you do all of this math and you realise that even with a realistic plan you do not have enough time to cover everything and honestly that is really useful information to have. Why? Because now you can make choices about what to prioritise instead of discovering the problem three days before the exam when there is nothing you can do about it. This particular moment of realisation is uncomfortable but it is much better then the alternative.
Better to make those choices consciously with 3 weeks to go than to discover the problem the week before the exam when nothing can be done about it and all that.
A realistic plan you keep is infinitely more valuable than an ambitious one you abandon on Day 3.
Check if your daily study plan is realistic for your exam date and remaining syllabus.
Open Daily Study Target Validator →