As this school year ends, there is only one obstacle left between every student and a nice, long winter break: finals. With one week left before these dreaded tests, most students are scrambling to cover all the material. Luckily, every day of this week, there will be one article to give the necessary advice regarding different study techniques.

For today’s article, the topic will regard a method to help set up a study plan: the retrospective timetable.

The Prospective Timetable

Before knowing how to use a retrospective timetable, it is important to understand the prospective timetable first. A prospective timetable sets a plan for the areas of study before the studying process even begins. It is the most common type of timetable, but unfortunately, there are many problems that come with it. For example, if a few days of work are missed or the work for one day exceeds the expected amount, the whole plan can be sent into shambles.

Furthermore, this method does not take the mastery of a topic into account. For instance, imagine setting out a study day for each topic A, B, and C. If full mastery is already attained in topic A, you may end up wasting an entire day practicing something you already know. If Topic C, on the other hand, is something you need more time to work on, you may have lost this time by focusing on topic A. This leads to a third problem: since every day is booked with other material, it is hard to make up for lost time. While it is possible to adjust Topic A study days to accommodate for more Topic C study days, this change can prove extremely difficult once it is closer to finals. All in all, trying to fix a prospective timetable once it has been ruined can end up being more work than the studying itself.

The Retrospective Timetable

Fortunately, the retrospective timetable serves as a solution to this flawed technique. The goal of this planning method is simple: make it convenient as possible to record study progress while maximizing efficiency.

Rather than planning every day’s study session in advance, write out the topics and fill in the dates as you go. To do this, make a column of all the topics you need to do. Every day pick 1 or 2 topics to focus on. Write the date that you did each topic in the row next to the topic name. This way, during each study session, it is must easier to quickly focus on weaknesses and practice spaced repetition (more on that on a future article) compared to using a prospective timetable.

Additionally, after each study session, you can highlight the date based on your understanding after the study session. Use red for low understanding and green for full understanding. This will allow you to track your progress throughout your study sessions.

Conclusion

The retrospective timetable is one of the easiest ways to plan and track your study progress. Hopefully, it will provide great help throughout the finals studying period. Come back tomorrow to learn about the next topic: active recall.

For more information, watch Ali Abdaal’s video How to study for exams – The Retrospective Revision Timetable.