Pomodoro for long study days and competitive exams

Preparation for a competitive examination is a matter of months. The plan that wins is the one you can repeat on a dull Tuesday.

Hours on the chair are not the measure

Stories of fourteen-hour study days do a great deal of harm. Many who claim such hours are counting time at the desk, not time at work. A day of ten to fourteen real pomodoros, that is about four to six hours of full concentration, with breaks, meals, exercise and sleep around it, is a strong day, and it can be repeated tomorrow. Build up to your number slowly and judge it by what you can sustain for months.

Shape the day in sets of four

A full day divides naturally into three or four sets:

• Morning set. Four rounds on the hardest subject or the one that needs problem solving. Long break and breakfast.
• Late morning set. Four rounds on a second subject. Lunch and rest.
• Afternoon set. Three or four lighter rounds: reading, notes, current affairs, formula revision.
• Evening set. Practice questions and a final round of revising the day's work.

Use the day planner to put clock times on this, and keep the same times every day. A fixed timetable removes the daily decision of when to start, which is where many days are lost.

Subject order

Put the subject you find hardest in your best hours, which for most people is the morning. Follow a calculation subject with a reading subject so that the kind of effort changes. Give your strong subject fewer rounds than your weak one, however pleasant it is to study what you are already good at.

Revision is part of every day

With a large syllabus, forgetting is the main enemy. Keep one or two rounds each day only for revision: yesterday's topics, last week's and last month's in turn. Do it actively: close the book, write what you remember, then check. A syllabus covered once and never revised will mostly be gone by the examination. The exam study plan page shows how to count revision rounds into the plan from the beginning.

Mock tests are not pomodoros

A mock test is sat in one stretch, at the examination's own length, without breaks, ideally at the same time of day as the real paper. Do not pause the clock. Afterwards, use ordinary rounds to analyse it: every wrong answer, every guess that happened to be right, every question that took too long. The analysis usually deserves as much time as the test.

The weekly rhythm

• Six working days with a steady number of rounds.
• One lighter day: a mock test and its analysis, the weekly review, and real rest.
• A weekly review of what was planned, what was done and what must change.

Protect the foundations

Sleep, food, some exercise and a little time with people are not luxuries taken from study time; they are what make the rounds worth anything. Cutting sleep to add rounds usually lowers the total amount learned. If preparation is making you constantly anxious or low, talk to someone you trust or to a counsellor. An examination is important; it is not the whole of a life.

When a day collapses

Illness, a family function, a bad mood: some days give you two rounds. Record the two, without drama, and return to the timetable the next morning. Do not try to "repay" a lost day by doubling the next one; that starts a cycle of exhaustion and more lost days. A buffer of one lighter day each week is there for exactly this.

Check the official notice. Syllabus, pattern, eligibility and dates come only from the body that conducts your examination. Read the current notification on its official website; do not rely on coaching summaries or forwarded messages.

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