Study Planner
Turn a pile of courses and exam dates into a day-by-day study schedule that actually fits your life. Enter your subjects, exam dates, and how many hours you can study per day — the planner distributes the workload across your real calendar, reserves a final-review day before each exam, chunks everything into Pomodoro focus sessions, and tracks your progress as you tick sessions off.
Build your study plan
Add one row per course. The planner does the scheduling math instantly — no signup, everything stays in your browser.
Courses
How the schedule is built
The planner is deterministic — the same inputs always produce the same plan, and every number below is computed live, not guessed:
- Counts your real study days per course, from the start date up to (not including) the exam day, on your selected weekdays only.
- Reserves the last study day before each exam as a 45-minute final-review day — active recall only, zero new material.
- Spreads the remaining hours evenly across the other study days, so every course gets a steady daily dose.
- Balances shared days: when two courses need more hours than you have, every allocation scales down proportionally and the day is flagged overloaded, with the unmet minutes shown honestly.
- Chunks minutes into focus sessions (25-minute Pomodoro by default: 5-minute breaks, 15 minutes after every fourth session). Leftover minutes roll into the next day — never lost.
- Labels late-window sessions as review passes and assigns each course a primary technique based on how many days it has.
Study techniques the planner uses
Each course is automatically assigned a primary technique based on its preparation window. Here is the full reference:
| Technique | What it is | When the planner assigns it | Session recipe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spaced repetition | Reviewing material at expanding intervals instead of cramming | 21+ study days | 3 passes: learn, then review, then final review |
| Active recall | Retrieving answers from memory without peeking at notes | 8–20 study days | Close the book; write down everything you remember, then check |
| Interleaving | Mixing subjects within a day instead of blocking one per day | Every multi-course day | Alternate courses between Pomodoros |
| Pomodoro | 25 min of single-task focus, 5 min break | Every scheduled day | 4 sessions, then a 15-minute long break |
| Elaborative interrogation | Asking why and how facts are true | Concept-heavy courses | Write 2 why-questions per topic and answer them |
| Feynman technique | Teaching the idea simply, as if to a 12-year-old | Heavy-load flag (over 4 h/day needed) | Explain aloud; wherever you stumble, relearn that gap |
| Practice testing | Timed mock questions under exam conditions | Final third of each window | Past papers, timer on, no notes |
| Sleep consolidation | Protecting sleep so memory consolidates | Every night | 7–9 hours; review the hardest topic right before bed, never all-night |
Worked example 1: a balanced two-course plan
Maria starts on 2026-10-12, can study 3 hours a day, Monday to Saturday, in 25-minute Pomodoros. Calculus: exam 2026-11-11, needs 24 hours. Physics: exam 2026-10-26, needs 12 hours.
- Calculus window: 26 study days. The last one (2026-11-10) becomes the 45-minute final-review day, leaving 25 new-material days: 24 × 60 / 25 = 57.6 min of new material per day.
- Physics window: 12 study days. Revision day 2026-10-24, leaving 11 new-material days: 12 × 60 / 11 = 65.5 min per day.
- Shared days: combined demand is 123.1 min against 180 min of capacity — it fits, so nothing is scaled. Day one produces 4 focus sessions plus 15 min of breaks.
- Technique assignment: Calculus (26 days) gets Spaced repetition with 3 passes; Physics (12 days) gets Active recall + interleaving. Each keeps its own final-review day.
Worked example 2: an overloaded week (the honest warning)
Dimas starts 2026-10-12 with only 2 hours a day, weekdays only. Chemistry: exam 2026-10-19, needs 10 hours. Biology: exam 2026-10-19, needs 8 hours. History: exam 2026-10-21, needs 6 hours.
- Daily needs: Chemistry 150 min, Biology 120 min, History 60 min — combined demand 330 min versus 120 min of capacity.
- Proportional scaling: the planner scales every allocation to 36.4% — Chemistry 54.5 min, Biology 43.6 min, History 21.8 min per day — and flags the day overloaded with 210 min unmet.
- The verdict: 5 overloaded days and 870 min unmet in total. That number is the honest signal to add daily hours, add weekend study days, or trim each course to high-weight topics only.
Practical tips
- Plan backwards from the exam, not forwards from today — the planner already does this; resist the urge to front-load easy topics.
- Protect the revision day. No new material the day before an exam, ever. Active recall and timed practice only.
- Two sessions beat one double session. Spacing works within a day too — split a 2-hour block with a real break.
- Hardest subject in your freshest hours. Put the heavy-load course first in the day, not last.
- Re-generate weekly. If you fall behind, update the hours and regenerate — the math re-balances everything.
- Sleep 7–9 hours. Memory consolidates overnight; an all-nighter trades tomorrow's recall for tonight's illusion of progress.
- Phone in another room during Pomodoros. One glance costs far more than the seconds it takes.
Frequently asked questions
What is a study planner?
A study planner turns your courses, exam dates, and available hours into a concrete day-by-day schedule. Unlike a blank printable template, this planner does the math: it counts your real study days, balances the load across subjects, reserves review time, and chunks the work into focused sessions you can actually tick off.
How does this study planner build my schedule?
In six deterministic steps: it counts study days per course from your start date to the day before each exam on your selected weekdays; reserves the last study day before each exam as a 45-minute final-review day with no new material; spreads remaining hours evenly; scales allocations down proportionally and flags overload when demand exceeds your daily hours; chunks minutes into Pomodoro sessions with proper breaks; and labels late-window sessions as review passes.
How many hours should I study per day?
For most students, 3 to 4 deeply focused hours beat 8 distracted ones. The planner accepts any number you enter, but it flags any course needing more than 4 hours a day as heavy load and suggests compressing it with the Feynman technique instead of just adding hours.
What is spaced repetition, and why does the planner use it?
Spaced repetition means reviewing material at expanding intervals rather than cramming it once. It is the most evidence-backed technique for long-term retention. The planner assigns it automatically to any course with 21 or more study days, scheduling three passes over the material: learn, review, then final review.
What is the Pomodoro technique?
25 minutes of single-task focus followed by a 5-minute break; after four sessions, take a 15-minute long break. The planner chunks every study day into these blocks and totals your break time, so the schedule shows the real clock commitment, not just study minutes.
Should I study one subject per day or mix them?
Mix them. Interleaving subjects within a day produces better long-term retention than blocking one subject per day, even though blocking feels easier in the moment. The planner interleaves automatically: each day's sessions alternate between your active courses.
What should I do the day before an exam?
No new material. The planner reserves this as a 45-minute final-review day: active recall only. Close the book, reconstruct the key ideas from memory, then do timed practice questions under exam conditions. Then stop and sleep.
My plan says overloaded — what should I do?
Four fixes, in order: add daily study hours, add study days such as weekends, cut each course to high-weight topics only, or move an exam if that is possible. The unmet-minutes total tells you exactly how large the gap is, so you are negotiating with a number, not a vague feeling.
How does the progress tracker work?
Every scheduled session gets its own checkbox. Tick sessions as you finish them and the per-course and overall progress bars update live. Progress is saved in your browser only, so it survives refreshes and is still there tomorrow.
Is my study data sent anywhere?
No. The planner is 100 percent client-side: your courses, schedule, and progress live in your browser's local storage and never leave your device. There is no account and no server.
Can I plan for several exams at once?
Yes — add as many courses as you like. Days shared by several courses split your hours proportionally, and each course keeps its own final-review day before its exam, so nothing collides.
How is this different from an SM-2 spaced repetition planner?
SM-2 optimizes flashcard review intervals card by card; this planner optimizes your calendar across whole courses, deadlines, and daily availability. They solve different problems and work well together: plan the weeks here, then schedule individual flashcard reviews with our spaced repetition planner.
Related tools
Planning flashcard reviews card-by-card with the SM-2 algorithm? Use our spaced repetition planner. Need a timer for your focus sessions? Try the classroom timer suite with Pomodoro, countdown, and interval modes.
Free tool by NRTechStudio