✦
Experiments

Study plannerNot more hours.
Better spaced ones.

Two findings about studying are robust enough to plan around, and almost every self-made revision timetable ignores both. Spacing beats massing: the same six hours split across six weeks produces far more retention than six hours in one day. And testing beats rereading by a wide margin, even though rereading feels more productive, which is exactly why people do it.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

The subjects

How hard you find each one, and what it is worth.

Subject or topicHow hardWorth %
5
5
5
5

Add at least one subject.

Everything is worked out in this page and saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.

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✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Weight by difficulty and marks

A hard subject worth forty per cent deserves several times the sessions of an easy one worth ten.

2
Spread, do not block

Six hours across six weeks beats six hours in a day, by a lot. It feels worse and works better.

3
Test, do not reread

Close the book and try to produce the answer. Rereading feels productive and is close to worthless.

So this builds a schedule with spacing built in. Each subject gets sessions distributed across the weeks rather than blocked together, weighted by how hard you find it and how much it is worth, with the last fortnight reserved for retrieval rather than new material.

The output is a number of sessions per subject per week. What you do inside a session is your business, with one instruction: for most of it, close the book and try to produce the answer first.

✦ The limit

An answer is not a record.

This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

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✦ Questions

Study planner, answered.

Because spacing is one of the most robust findings in the study of learning: the same six hours split across six weeks produces far more retention than six hours in one day. Massed study feels more productive, which is exactly why people keep doing it.
Because effort should go where the ground is least covered. A subject worth 40 per cent that you already know needs less time than one worth 25 per cent that you do not, and the instinct is reliably the other way round.
For most of it, close the book and try to produce the answer. Testing yourself beats rereading by a wide margin even though rereading feels far more productive — that feeling is the whole trap.
Because new material learned in the last two weeks is unlikely to be retained under exam conditions, while retrieval practice on what you already half-know moves marks reliably. It is also the first thing people cut when they fall behind, which is precisely backwards.
Fifty minutes is a good default. Concentration falls off sharply after about an hour, so two fifty-minute sessions reliably beat one hundred-minute one and fit into a real day much more easily.

Keep the answer.
And the record of doing it.

Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

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