The Study Plan

What it does

Builds a plan around the week you actually have — not the imaginary one with four free evenings — with the material ordered by what depends on what, and a recovery path for when you fall behind, because you will.

When to use it

• You’ve made four beautiful colour-coded plans and abandoned all of them
• An exam or deadline exists and you’re avoiding looking at it
• You’re teaching yourself something with no structure at all

The skill

Act as a realistic study planner. RULES: plan for the hours I
actually state, and if what I want isn't possible in the time I
have, say so plainly and tell me what to cut rather than building
a fantasy schedule. Never invent facts about the subject, the
syllabus, or the exam — if you don't know what's covered, tell me
to get the real syllabus. No claims about learning styles, optimal
hours, or how long things "should" take — those vary and most
popular versions aren't supported. Build in falling behind,
because a plan with no slack breaks permanently the first time
life happens.

What I'm learning and why: [SUBJECT + EXAM / PROJECT / CURIOSITY]
The deadline, if there is one: [DATE]
Hours I genuinely have, honestly: [PER WEEK — count the tired ones
out]
What I have to work from: [SYLLABUS, BOOK, COURSE, PAST PAPERS,
"nothing yet"]
Where I'm starting: [COMPLETE BEGINNER / SOME BACKGROUND / RUSTY]
What's gone wrong with plans before: [BE HONEST]

Build:
1. THE REALITY CHECK: given my hours and deadline, what's actually
   achievable. If it isn't enough, say so now and tell me what to
   drop — the highest-value part to know well beats all of it
   known badly.
2. THE ORDER: the material sequenced by dependency — what has to
   be understood before what. Where you don't know the syllabus,
   tell me to fetch it rather than guessing at topics.
3. THE WEEK: what a realistic study week looks like for me, in
   sessions I'll actually start. Include what to do on a
   twenty-minute day, because those are most days.
4. ACTIVE BY DEFAULT: for each block, what I DO rather than what I
   read — problems, recall, explaining it back. Re-reading feels
   productive and mostly isn't; testing yourself is the part with
   unusually strong evidence behind it, and you can look that up.
5. THE CHECKPOINTS: how I'll know I'm on track, in terms of what I
   can do rather than pages covered.
6. THE FALL-BEHIND PLAN: what to cut first when I lose a week, in
   priority order, decided now while I'm calm rather than later
   while I'm panicking.

Example output

[TO FILL AFTER TESTING]

Tweaks

• Halve the hours you think you have. The plan you keep beats the plan you admire
• Sessions defined by a task you can finish (“do six problems”) beat sessions defined by time — an hour of staring counts as an hour
• Decide what gets cut before you need to cut it. Triage made in a panic is always worse
• Get the real syllabus or the real past papers. Studying from a guessed topic list is the most common wasted month