How to revise when you have no time left

The panic is usually a maths problem

You are not out of time. You just do not know the number. Ask someone how long they have and they say no time at all. Ask them the date of the exam and it turns out to be five weeks away.

Dread stays vague on purpose. It is easier to feel behind than to count. But a vague number grows every night you leave it alone, and a real one stops growing the moment you write it down.

So count it. Not the weeks. The days, and the hours you will actually sit down for.

Whatever the total came to, split it roughly in three. About half for learning things properly, a third for practising them under time, and the last stretch for review only.

The final week is not for new topics. If something is still unlearned by then, it is cheaper to make sure everything else is solid.

Your timetable died on Wednesday

Sunday timetables are beautiful. Colour coded, every hour spoken for, deeply satisfying to make.

Then Tuesday goes wrong. Something runs late, or you are just tired. By Wednesday you are two sessions behind a schedule with no room in it, so you throw the whole thing out and make a new one. That is another hour of not revising, and it will die on Wednesday too.

A plan you are allowed to miss is worth more than a plan you have to obey.

So do not rebuild. Push everything one day later and let the least valuable session drop off the end. Losing one review session costs you almost nothing. Losing the plan costs you the rest of the term.

Test yourself on the weak bits

Re-reading feels like working. You read the page, you recognise every word, and your brain reports back that you know this. But recognition is not recall. In the exam there is nothing in front of you to recognise, which is the first time you find out the difference.

The fix is quick and genuinely unpleasant. Close the book. Write down what you remember, or say it out loud to nobody. Then check. The gap you just found is the actual revision.

The spacing that works is wider than it feels. A day later, then three days, then a week, then two. You are aiming to meet it again just before it slips, not while it is still fresh.

Then point it at the right topics. The ones you enjoy are the ones you already understand. Going over them feels excellent and moves nothing. The ones you quietly avoid are the ones costing you marks.

Sit a paper, and sit it early, while a bad score is still useful. A bad mock in March is information. The same score in May is just bad news.

It is 9pm and you have not started

The hard part is not revising. It is starting. The evening goes in the gap between deciding to revise and actually revising. Rarely because the work is hard. Usually because the first move is unclear, and an unclear first move is indistinguishable from your phone.

So make the first move small enough to be a bit stupid. Not revise vectors. One question. Open the paper, do question one, and stop afterwards if you still want to. You almost never still want to.

• One question, not one topic
• Ten minutes, timer where you can see it
• Phone in another room, not face down
• Same desk, same time, no decision to make

And if tonight is the night before, learn nothing new. Read your own notes on the things you got wrong, then stop. Cramming trades tomorrow's recall for tonight's feeling of having done something.

Plan2Ace

Every line above works with a notebook. Plan2Ace keeps it going for eleven weeks.

It counts the days, moves the work along when you miss one, and brings back the questions you got wrong just before you forget them. Rather run it yourself? The method is the point.

A few more questions