Study Plan Sheet
Work the hours out at the start, when you can still do something about them. Then log what you actually manage — the gap is the useful part.
BFCBrilliance · bfcbrilliance.com/tools/study-time-planner
The plan
- Subject
- Exam date
- Days remaining
- Pages of material
- Minutes per page (TIMED)
- Passes planned
- TOTAL HOURS
- HOURS PER DAY
- Session length
- Sessions per day
Daily log — the gap between planned and actual is the signal
| Date | Topic | Planned hrs | Actual hrs | Pages done | Behind by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The arithmetic, and what it can't see
- Total hours
- pages x min/page x passes / 60
- Hours per day
- total hours / days remaining
- Sessions
- total minutes / session length
- One pass is
- reading it, not learning it
- Normal shape
- 2-3 passes: read, work, review
- Reading prose
- about 238 words per minute
- Studying a technical page
- 5-10 minutes, sometimes more
- ⚠ Time yourself
- on ONE real page of the ACTUAL material
- ⚠ SPACING beats total hours
- same hours, spread out, retain better
- ⚠ It cannot see
- which topics carry the marks
Before the plan is a plan
- Minutes per page TIMED, not estimated
- Passes decided — one is reading, not learning
- Hours per day checked against a real day, with everything else in it
- If impossible: material, passes or days changed DELIBERATELY
- Sessions spread across the days, not stacked at the end
- Past papers checked for where the marks actually are
- Hardest material scheduled EARLY, when there is still time to react
- Review passes scheduled, not left to whatever time remains
- One rest day accounted for — a plan with none is a plan that breaks
The unwelcome number is the useful one
A plan needing nine hours a day for three weeks is not a plan. The whole value of doing this arithmetic is doing it early, when material, passes or days can still change. Almost everyone surprised by an exam was surprised by this calculation — most of them simply never ran it.
Spacing is free and the calculator can't show it
The same hours spread across two weeks retain far better than the same hours crammed into two days. It is one of the most robust findings about learning, it costs nothing, and no arithmetic on this sheet expresses it. If the hours fit but they all sit at the end, the plan is worse than the number suggests.
Not every page is worth the same hour
This treats all material as equal and it is not. The topic carrying a third of the marks deserves more than a third of the time, and the syllabus and past papers are what tell you which one that is. Use the calculator for whether the plan fits; use the paper for what goes in it.