Prompts · Learning

A study plan for the time I've actually got

Works backwards from the date, and tells you what to drop when you fall behind.

Fill in the blanks

Already filled with an example

Your prompt

Updates as you type

I'm studying AQA GCSE Biology paper 1: cell biology, organisation, infection and response, bioenergetics.

Deadline: 14 May, so about ten weeks
Time I honestly have: an hour most days
Where I'm up to: fine on cells, shaky on bioenergetics, I've been avoiding required practicals entirely

Build a plan working backwards from the deadline, not forwards from today.

- One line per session: the date, the topic, and what I'm actually doing in that hour. "Revise photosynthesis" is not a session. "Do the 2023 paper questions on photosynthesis, mark them, list what I got wrong" is.
- Put the thing I've been avoiding early, while there's still time for it to be hard.
- Leave the last stretch before the deadline for practice under real conditions, not new material.
- Assume I'll lose some sessions to life. Build it so that's survivable, and say which sessions are the ones I can afford to lose.

Then, separately: a drop list. If I fall a week behind, what comes out first, second, third. Ordered, so I don't have to decide in a panic.

Keep the whole plan on one screen. A table is fine.

Open in ChatGPT Open in Claude

What you get: Dated sessions with a real task on each, and a ranked list of what to cut when you slip.

The drop list

Every study plan gets broken in week two. The difference between a plan that survives that and one that gets abandoned is whether you decided in advance what to sacrifice. Deciding it while calm, rather than at 11pm the night you realise you're behind, is the whole point.

Insisting each session names a task rather than a topic is what stops the plan turning into an hour of rereading notes.

Try one of these next

Explain a contract I'm out of my depth in

Plain English, clause by clause, and the questions to take to someone qualified.

Learning

Explain it at the level I'm actually at

Not the textbook version. The one that starts from what you already know.

Learning

Find the exact bit I've misunderstood

It asks you questions until it finds the broken piece, then fixes only that.

Learning