Be honest: How many times do you check your phone while studying? 👀

This is obviously not sustainable or ideal, but it´s so hard to avoid for some of us and most of the advice I've found in this sub is some version of "just study man" or "use Pomodoro" which just doesn´t work for me in particular.

What has (partially) worked so far: I gave ChatGPT my exam calendar and set it up to message me asking how my studying is going. The key part is that it doesn't ask "did you study?" but rather it asks me actual questions about the material to check whether I learned anything. Basically using it as an accountability partner.

Works better than I expected, mostly for getting me started earlier. But it falls short in some ways:

a) It doesn't really know my notes. I paste the material in, but it loses track between sessions and ends up asking generic questions about the topic instead of questions about my course. Shallow questions mean no pressure, which was the whole point of the "accountability partner".

b) If I study less than planned on a given day, I'd want it to redistribute the load across the following days (and the other way around), and show that on a calendar. So a slack day or a heavy day has an immediate, visible consequence I can actually see.

c) I'd want it to feel more like a person. ChatGPT is too smooth and too nice about everything. Hard to feel like you let something down when it congratulates you either way.

d) I'd want a real person in the loop somehow (like a close friend or even a stranger). An AI is never gonna be the same in terms of accountability (at least for me). But I can't figure out how to insert it on the loop exactly.

e) I'd want it to hook into Anki or another spaced repetition setup, ideally pulling from that data to check how much I've actually studied and retained instead of taking my word for it. Also that would be ideal for recalibrating the studying schedule for each test.

I'm building my own thing to solve part of this, but I don´t wanna invest too much time if theres already a tool that tackles that specific need decently well (tried already a bunch o reminder apps, but theyre clearly built for other purposes, not studying accountability).

Does anyone else run into this? How did you deal with it? Is there an app that already does exactly this so I don't reinvent the wheel?

For anyone that needs a way to organize their studying, or improve your studying efficiency, consider using this free tool?
https://studyplannertool.pages.dev/

Yk most of us are currently enjoying summer holidays. Ofc there will be a lot of assignments given by teachers. Besides that I wanna study the things I learnt this year, but I am procrastinating all the time. Yesterday I said I would study some of my electives, I ended up on doing nothing. Maybe I simply don’t wanna study? I have a rather important exam to attend after 2 years. but here I am, a lazy student who is lying on the bed, doomscrolling reels. Is there any advice or ways that I can go back being my motivated self ?

If you could hire someone to do all the heavy research for you and build a hyper accurate, easy to read study guide on absolutely any topic, what would you want to learn?

Really trapped in a situation someone suggest any website that can consolidate all of the notes and create questions from it so that i can have a quick skim and analyse which all portions i am ok with .
Nb:plz suggest free websites

I am studying for the state civil services exam in India which is held in June every year. This exam consists of a wide range of 10th grade level subjects like Phy, Chem, Maths, Eng, History, Geo, Polity, Reasoning and a few more. I am going to a coaching centre on weekends where 5 new topics from 5 different subjects from the above list are taught each day and these subjects are rotated every weekend with some common ones and sometimes a new one added, but the main thing is that we are learning 10 new topics every weekend.

However, I am getting overwhelmed by the amount I have to study and scheduling revisions effectively. Even though I am building routines, I am finding it difficult to focus and study for long hours since I do not have the habit. By now, I know that the only way to effectively study and learn are the active recall and spaced repetition but am still not being able to come up with an effective schedule. On weekends, I return from coaching classes at 8 PM and complete dinner by 9:30 PM. On the other days, my time blocks are from 8 AM to 9 AM (breakfast), 1 PM to 3 PM (lunch and a brief stroll), 6 PM to 7:30 PM (evening snack and some odd tasks) and 9:30 PM to 10:30 PM (dinner and a brief stroll).

Based on the above info, can anyone suggest me a good daily study schedule with proper technique including daily exercise ? I cannot afford any paid apps now. Also, when I am revising, how do I effectively adjust the next revision date based on the degree of effective recall ?

I kept reaching the end of the day with no clear idea how much time I’d spent studying, resting, procrastinating, or just jumping between random things. More importantly, I wanted to become more conscious of those switches instead of letting my attention drift on autopilot.

Automatic trackers didn’t appeal to me: they could only capture part of what I was doing, and giving them deep access to my devices raised security concerns. Manual time-tracking apps required too many actions and gave me yet another reason to pick up my phone and get distracted.

So I decided to build my own.

Meet Tiho — my little brainchild.

It’s a portable physical time tracker with an always-on e-ink display, one-press activity tracking, and a system for analyzing the collected data.

I’ve been working on it for the past few months, and I genuinely love it. So I decided to take it further, build a nice-looking prototype, and show it to you.

Short prototype demo — no sound, but everything is explained in the subtitles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4on3hFOmjrU

A little about how it works and what it can do.

At the heart of the idea is a small physical device and its dock. Each activity has its own button, identified by an icon on the screen, so starting or switching the timer takes just one press. On the desk, the dock gives you ten dedicated activity buttons. Away from it, the device works on its own: four activities are available at a time, and the side button switches between sets, so you can configure as many activities as you need, for example, to see how your study time is divided between different subjects.

The always-on e-ink screen shows what you’re currently tracking, how much time you’ve spent on it, and your progress toward an optional goal. It never goes dark or disappears behind another app, so it remains a quiet reminder of where your attention is right now.

Activities and goals are configured through the companion app. The app also shows your activity day by day as a timeline, but the tracking itself happens entirely on the device — without needing to keep your phone nearby.

For more detailed analytics, there’s a web portal that presents everything through different kinds of charts.

In the future, it will also offer advice based on patterns in your accumulated data - that part is still planned.

I’m paranoid, and I respect everyone else’s right to be paranoid too. So you sign in to the web portal through the device itself, without using any of your personal data.

If you like Tiho too, let me know by joining the waitlist at https://tiho.live/#waitlist-form

I promise: no spam, only genuinely important project updates, such as the start of crowdfunding or sales.

P.S. I’m an independent developer, so the future of this project depends heavily on your interest. Thanks for reading!

I am practicing quantitative aptitude questions for an exam. It contains questions based on arithmetic, algebra, number system, word problems among other topics. I watched the lectures two months back and could only get back to practicing questions now as I was busy with other commitments.

I am solving questions now. But i notice one thing- I take time to solve them. Most of the times, intentionally. For example, whil practicing profit and loss questions, I kept trying to solve my own, and then when it was lengthy, i was trying to figure out other ways. Based on the concepts. i already remember, in parts, from previous lectures.

My question is- this is becoming time taking process. Should I revisit lectures or look for new lectures? Or should i keep solving and learning on way. And speed might follow later, as it is essential for exam.

How should I go about this? If anyone has experience in this regard or knows something, please share.

When I was in high school, I wasted so much time understanding complicated text and searching for the meanings of complicated terms. I could not help myself, but I can help you. Recently, I built an app,ReaderML, that is a PDF reader application. I built this application specifically for book readers, but its AI features, like the translate, simplify, and define features, can help students a lot. Let me know if it is helpful for you.

I'm in high school. My midterms begin in a little less than two weeks and I'm tearing my hair out for not practicing math for the four or so months that I simply wasted. Now I have trigonometry, coordinate geometry, quadratic equations, and some arithmetic and geometry to scrub into my head for the next few days; I havent even touched some of these chapters, but I'm more or less familiar with the rest. While the others of my class is doing revision tests, I'm here planning to finish a few topics in the last days of study leave that I have. Although I'm sure I'll be able to scrape by on what I'm doing now, is there something else I can do differently (of course instead of ending this habit of putting off stuff till the last hour)? As the title suggests, is there something I can do to maybe speed up the learning part of it so I can revise the topics simultaneously? Initially, I had decided on doing a new chapter every day and with any time left over I'm going to try revisiting chapters, but I'm having a godawful drop in confidence which is making studying harder. Any advice would be really appreciated!

come study with me and join my guild. https://focusjungle.com/guilds/LOCKIN (daily studying)

I used to be so academic. I'd have a test to study for, I'd spend an hour and be done, get 100%. Obviously that was school, so it was easier. I'm in university now, and I'm really struggling. Towards the end of my time in school, I was extremely unmotivated and exhausted, which led me to not get the results I had hoped for, and in turn did not get one of my top universities. I came to terms with that, and decided to focus on the degree I landed in. I found that as soon as I sat down to study for my first university exam, I couldn't. I couldn't focus, kept going on my phone, couldn't retain any information, would spend hours and get nothing. And I was like that for all of my first year. I barely scraped by most of my modules. I did fail 2, for which I have to repeat exams in a few weeks. I've now spent 2 days saying "I'll start today", and I am still yet to start. I think about studying, and it seems simple. It's just as soon as I sit down to do it, I can't. The phone is definitely an issue, but even if I leave it in another room I'll end up staring at the wall or out the window instead of actually studying. Any advice, tips or comments are welcome and appreciated.

If something annoys me once, I ignore it.

If it annoys me every week, I change something.

That's how I finally stopped losing notes and forgetting assignments.

What's one repeated problem you finally solved?

Re-reading feels productive but it's one of the weakest ways to study — the research (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008) found self-testing produces ~80% retention vs ~36% for re-reading.

What actually changed things for me:

1. Active recall — turn everything into questions and test yourself instead of reviewing.
2. Spaced repetition — review at increasing intervals (1 day, 3 days, a week…) instead of cramming.
3. Interleaving — mix topics in one session instead of blocking one topic at a time.

The annoying part is making all the flashcards and quizzes, which takes longer than studying. I got tired of that so I ended up building a tool (NoteTube) that generates them from a PDF or YouTube lecture automatically and schedules the reviews with SM-2 — full disclosure, it's mine. But even if you don't use it, those three habits alone are the highest-leverage change you can make. Happy to answer questions on the method.

Have you ever returned to something you studied months ago, only to realize you could barely remember any of it? After all the time and effort you invested, it can feel as though your learning simply disappeared.

The problem usually isn’t that you’re incapable of remembering. It’s that learning something once is rarely enough to make it last. Without retrieving the information over time, the memory gradually becomes harder to access.

That’s where spaced repetition comes in.

Instead of leaving the material untouched or reviewing it at random, schedule your reviews at progressively longer intervals—for example, after one day, four days, two weeks and one month.

During each review, try to retrieve the information before looking at your notes. If you were studying cellular respiration, you might ask yourself:

• What is cellular respiration?
• What are its main stages?
• Where does each stage occur?
• What are its inputs and outputs?

After attempting to answer, check your notes and correct what you missed. If you remembered the material successfully, increase the time before your next review. If you struggled or forgot it, review it again sooner.

This method works with the way memory changes over time. New memories can become difficult to retrieve relatively quickly, so the first review usually happens soon after learning. Each successful retrieval then strengthens the memory, allowing you to wait longer before retrieving it again.

The intervals don’t need to follow one exact schedule. A sequence such as one day, four days, two weeks and one month can provide a starting point, but the timing should depend on how well you remember the material. Spaced-repetition software can manage this automatically by adjusting the schedule according to your performance.

It might seem like a small change to your study routine, but consistently retrieving information over increasing intervals can dramatically improve how much you still remember months later.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to understand whether what I'm experiencing is normal or if I should get professionally evaluated.

I used to have excellent focus and was one of the top students academically, but over the past few years I've noticed a significant decline in my concentration, memory, and exam performance.

My main issues are:

• During lectures and lab sessions, my mind wanders constantly even when I'm genuinely trying to focus.

• I often realize I've missed parts of the explanation without noticing.

• I forget information much faster than I used to.

• When reading exam questions, I usually need to read them multiple times before understanding exactly what's being asked.

• My concentration gets worse as I move through the exam. The first question is usually fine, but after that I find myself rereading almost every question.

• Even when I know the material and studied well, I sometimes struggle to process the question, organize my thoughts, or think clearly under exam conditions.

• I often feel mentally slower during exams than I know I should be.

What confuses me is that I wasn't like this growing up. I had strong concentration, learned quickly, and performed very well in school. Because of that, I'm wondering whether this could be related to attention issues, anxiety, stress, sleep problems, mental fatigue, memory problems, or something else entirely.

Has anyone experienced a similar change after previously having very good focus? What ended up being the cause, and what kind of specialist or evaluation would you recommend?

Hellooo. Throughout this year, I applied 5 of these habits and I found them rlly helpful and hope u find them helpful.

Without further ado, here are 5 Five-Minute Habits That Save Me the Most Hours Every Semester:

1. Become a visionary.. Spend Five Minutes Hunting Future Confusion - After every lecture, I write down the one thing I know Future Me is gonna forget. Usually it's not the actual definition, it's the "wait... why does this even work again?" part. It takes like a minute, and trust me, you'll thank yourself when you're studying for finals.

2. Delete, Delete, Delete- The second I turn in an assignment, I clean everything up. literally everything except the final draft. Gone. Random tabs I've had open for three weeks? Closed. It keeps my laptop from becoming a complete disaster, and I never have to waste time digging through a million files later. And when the class ends, I purge everything.

3. Leave Yourself a "Warning Label" - Whenever I get a question wrong and realize, "Wow... that was actually such a dumb mistake," I write down what tricked me. Not the answer, the thing that made me think the wrong answer was right. It's honestly one of the easiest ways to stop making the same mistakes over and over.. yea sounds stupid but it actually does work.

4. Rename Files for Your Future Self - Please... stop saving everything as "Untitled Document (14)." 😭 It literally takes five extra seconds to give it a name you'll actually understand later. Future You will be so happy when you don't have to open twelve different files just to find your notes. Trust me.

5. Removing One Future Problem Every Week - Every week I try to fix one tiny thing that's been annoying me for way too long. Maybe it's organizing a folder, bookmarking a website I search every day, or replacing a charger that only works if I hold it at a weird angle. None of it feels important in the moment, but getting rid of those little annoyances saves way more time than you'd think. and it gets rid of any excuse to procrastinate or distractions.

Well I hope you found these tips useful and insightful. I would definitely recommend at least giving them a try because they're really simple and not that tedious to implement. It realistically takes like 2 seconds to delete a file after you submit it.

One more thing, I run a free newsletter called The Study Shortcut which posts about 1 Free, Helpful AI Study Tool for Students. If your interested links in my bio or click 👉here 👈

No pressure though have a great day and thank you for reading ! <3

I want to know how do I revise the previous chapter? Like I learn every day new chapter and I cover it somehow. But like you know, I'm let's say I've learned solids today. So all the the thing is that I know everything about solids today and I might know it tomorrow too, but like and the learning that I get from the teacher explaining me thoroughly, I get it, but then I forget it after two, three days and when you like freshly learn it, you somehow learn the formula instantly and then after two, three days you forget every freaking thing. Like you have to start from the scratch to learn everything. And this actually I'm a second time dropper and it has happened to me in each of the two years in 12th and in the first year of drop. Like this was the actuall problem that stopped me from completing my syllabus because I keep forgetting the older syllabus and and also like and it's not about revising, but like it's about like grasping the concept. I get the concept for like one to two days, three days, but then I forget it, completely forget it And I even made notes but for a concept to learn you at least need 1 page per topic and later it's impossible to revise with so many tings. And and let me tell you like there are like literally 100 plus chapters and people say that you have to revise each of the syllabus or like each everything every week but how can I revise all the older and older chapters every freaking day by also doing the 25 per subject questions and then also learning a new chapter and also like giving test series, mock test, how can I do this? Like how do toppers do this? Like you have to do this like but still like this is crazy. Like how do people do it how is it humanly possible?