How to make a study schedule you’ll actually stick to

Why make a study schedule?

I’ve noticed that whenever I make a study schedule, I get much better test scores. Why is this? Making a study schedule will help you with your revision because it gives you clear cut goals on what to achieve in a single study session. This will definitely boost your productivity and help you with exams because you’ve worked out what you have to do, meaning you don’t waste time at the beginning of a revision session deciding what to do.

Not only this, but creating a study schedule will help stop you from becoming overwhelmed with your workload and panicking as it divides what you need to study into simple tasks, leaving you the simple job of following through on your study plan.

List what you have to study

I mean this in two ways – first, list the revision methods you want to use, be it doing practice tests, writing active recall notes (we don’t do passive recall notes here, please leave your useless study methods at the door), or doing a Quizlet about a million times. I usually do this on my Notion, but you can use whatever application suits you.

Then, list the subjects and units you want to study and their units. Here, I’ve used Google Sheets to create a list of the subjects I have to study for World Scholar’s Cup and how many units are in each subject, which means that I can work out how many things I have to study overall and find the daily average.

Sort out what you do, and when

This is the most difficult part – creating the actual schedule. For every day, work out how much free time you have and how much work you think you can do. In this case, my winter break just started therefore I have loads of free time to cram before WSC so I can afford the luxury of delaying my revision a little.

As well as this, I’ve started my revision with my weakest subjects first, meaning that if I run out of time, I’ll still have studied what I’m worst at. I’d advise you do the same, as well as do spaced revision if you have more time – giving your brain time in between revising the same subject helps you practice active recall, which is by far the best study method out there.

You can do this in Google Sheets or Excel or whatever suits you, but I personally prefer spreadsheet programs because they help me visualise how much I need to do everyday, which simplifies the tasks and tricks my brain into thinking there’s less to study than there actually is – this is super useful for getting motivated.

Track your progress

To finish off my plan, I like to transfer it into my Notion so I can easily track how much I’ve done and how much I still need to do in my main organisational app. Usually I input the study method as well, but that isn’t applicable because I’m just making notes for WSC. I also like to write in how long each section will take me so I can input this into my Google Calendar for later. Make sure you add a filter to hide the tasks once you’ve finished them otherwise you’ll clutter up your table!

You don’t have to add your plan to notion since it might seem like an extra and useless step, but I use Notion as my home base for all organisational things, so I like to have it in there. Also, I have to admit that I do get a little bit of serotonin from inputting my tasks as done more than once – it seems inefficient, but it can give you more gratification and a sense of accomplishment so that you study more!

Block out time to study

When you get to this point, having worked out an estimate for how long a task will take you is very useful as it’ll help you block out time to revise. I usually don’t put in breaks in between my tasks as I’d rather over-estimate how long it takes me to revise something and take the remaining time as free time, which also motivates me to finish the task faster. However, if your task doesn’t have a well-defined end point, then it would be better to schedule breaks so as to not make you want to end your studying before you’ve covered all the material. As well as this, if you think you might compromise the quality of your work if you rush to finish, then put in breaks – remember to do what works for you!

After this, just remember to follow your schedule! If you think you might fall behind, leave a few extra timeslots where you can do catch-up work you might have missed.