Planning a long exam goes wrong in a familiar way. You set a target for the whole subject, a smaller one for the month, another for the week and a to-do list for today, and the four numbers never quite agree. The fix is to treat them as one budget seen at four levels.
The four levels
| Level | The question it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Roadmap | What does this subject need across the whole preparation? | 20 hours for a subject |
| Month | How much of that budget goes to this month? | 12 hours |
| Week | What do I commit to this week? | 4 hours |
| Today | What exactly will I do today? | A 45 minute task |
Example. A 20 hour target for one subject can be split by stage: Self Study 8 hours, Practice Questions 6, PYQ 4 and Revision 2, which adds up to 20. Allocate 12 of those hours to this month, 4 to this week and 45 minutes to today’s task. They are nested views of the same hours. They are not four separate additions to your study time, and assigning time does not create studied time.
Setting it up, level by level
- Roadmap. Choose the goal or phase, the subjects that matter and your daily capacity. Review target hours, the time you have tracked and any credit you recorded separately for earlier work.
- Month. Allocate part of a subject’s budget to the month. Keep room for revision, other commitments and unfinished work.
- Week. Pick the work to commit to. Choose the topic, the stage and the round, then the length and the day.
- Today. Start the saved task, or schedule, complete or carry it forward.
In the app, when you set a week target for a subject, the subject’s remaining month balance goes down by the same amount. A 12 hour month target with 4 hours given to the week leaves 8 hours in the month.
Timed and flexible tasks
A timed task has a start time. A flexible task has a length and a day and no fixed slot. Each task can carry a reminder: none, a notification or an alarm. Use timed tasks for things that must happen at a set hour and flexible ones for study you can fit around the day.
Keeping unfinished work realistic
Compare what is left with the time that is still available. In a week with 2 hours available and 1 hour unfinished, 1 hour of buffer remains. Unfinished work is worked out for each subject before the totals are added, so extra time in one subject does not quietly cover a gap in another. You can try this yourself in the capacity calculator.
When a task slips, carry the unfinished part forward. The part you studied stays on its real date and the carried part keeps its topic, stage and round.
| Task carried | Added to the receiving week | Added to the receiving month |
|---|---|---|
| 35 minutes | 35 minutes | 1 hour |
| 1 hour 30 minutes | 1 hour 30 minutes | 2 hours |
Month additions round up to a whole hour for each carried task. Existing targets stay as they were, and Undo prevents the same move from adding its time twice.
How AspirantGoal handles this
- Roadmap shows syllabus progress and study time as separate figures. When the targets are more than the time left at your daily budget, it says how many hours short you are and suggests reviewing targets or dates.
- Month and Week show the balance of each subject’s budget.
- Week shows Available time, Assigned time and Buffer, and the same figures by subject.
- Today shows the planned time, the studied time and the task’s status as three separate things.
See the Features page for the full list.
What this does not tell you
A plan is an intention. Nothing in these screens estimates how well you will do. They tell you whether the hours you assigned fit the hours you have, and where your time went.