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How to study for exams - The Retrospective Revision Timetable

2019-02-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 13:42 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Aimed at students, Sponsor segment present

Junior doctor Ali argues that his retrospective revision timetable beats the standard prospective one: topics go down column A of a spreadsheet and the dates he revised each one along its row, colour-coded by how well he knew it, so each day he revises the topic he would be least happy to face if the exam were tomorrow; he shows the sheet from his third-year psychology exams.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Introduction: prospective and retrospective revision timetables, and the plan of the video

  • ★ Ali introduces himself as a junior doctor working in Cambridge. — 00:00:00 · Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali used the standard prospective revision timetable, planning his revision about six weeks in advance, in secondary school, but for about six years has used his retrospective revision timetable and never looked back. — 00:00:00 · spaced repetition

00:01:03 — The standard prospective revision timetable and its four problems

  • ★★ Ali describes the usual prospective revision timetable: dates down one column and, in the rows, the topics to revise each day, predicted in advance. — 00:01:03
  • ★★ The first problem Ali had with a prospective revision timetable: it asks you to foresee which topics you will struggle with six weeks ahead, and when something came up, such as friends or a World of Warcraft raid, he did not follow it. — 00:01:34 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★★ Ali thinks revision is better planned by topics than by time: rather than getting three topics done each day, aim to know everything about every topic by the end of the exam period. — 00:02:08
  • ★★ The third problem Ali sees in a prospective revision timetable: it gives no real way of seeing how much of each subject you know. — 00:02:38
  • ★★ The fourth problem: making a prospective revision timetable was, for Ali, an activity in procrastination; before the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil he got out coloured highlighters and felt-tip pens for a big timetable he never followed. — 00:03:07 · iPad Pro, Apple Pencil
  • ★★ Some of Ali's friends saw making a revision timetable as so insurmountable a task before studying that it put them off studying for weeks to months. — 00:03:07

00:04:02 — The retrospective revision timetable: topics down the axis, dates, colour coding and choosing each day's topic

  • ★★ When Ali revises a topic he does not just read his notes, which he calls a complete waste of time: with the book closed he answers the questions he wrote for himself, past papers or essay questions, and looks up what he gets wrong. — 00:05:02 · active recall
  • ★★ After testing himself on a topic, Ali colours its date in his revision timetable by how well he knew it, using the classic traffic-light method: red, yellow or green. — 00:05:31
  • ★★★ Each day Ali chooses what to revise by asking which topic he would be least happy about if the exam were tomorrow, so a topic that was red last time comes before one studied longer ago. — 00:06:00
  • ★★ When no topic in his revision timetable is red, Ali revises the one he studied longest ago, which he calls spaced repetition in action. — 00:06:39 · spaced repetition
  • ★★★ Studying the topic you judge weakest, instead of one picked six weeks earlier, means every session works on your weakest point, which Ali says gets the most out of revision. — 00:06:39
  • ★★ As the exam approaches, the colours of the retrospective revision timetable show the whole subject at a glance: Ali drops a subject that is all green and works on one that still has yellow areas. — 00:07:08
  • ★★★ Ali says a retrospective revision timetable takes no effort to start beyond scoping the subject and writing every topic into the spreadsheet, itself a valuable exercise because a subject seems daunting until its topics are written down. — 00:07:37 · scoping the subject

00:08:28 — His third-year psychology revision sheet in Google Sheets

  • ★★★ In his third year of university, studying psychology, Ali did by far his best and won the prize for the best exam performance that year, which he puts down to aggressive use of active recall, spaced repetition, spider diagrams and flashcards. — 00:08:28 · active recall, spaced repetition
  • ★★ Ali says he will make a video on exactly how he memorised 50 different essays for his third-year psychology exams. — 00:08:28
  • ★ Ali's third-year psychology sheet had sections A, B and C for the three papers; on 20 April he did four memory topics, from implicit versus explicit memory to short-term versus long-term memory. — 00:08:58
  • ★ Ali began colour-coding his third-year psychology revision timetable only as the exam drew close. — 00:09:27
  • ★★ Ali repeated his implicit-versus-explicit memory essay seven times by active recall, drawing its spider diagram from memory until he could write any essay on the topic, citing 10 papers. — 00:09:56 · active recall

00:11:09 — Summary of why the retrospective revision timetable is better

  • ★★★ Ali's retrospective revision timetable in Google Sheets: the list of a subject's topics down column A and, along each topic's row, the dates he revised it, ideally colour-coded by how well he knew it before looking at the book. — 00:11:09 · spaced repetition, Google Sheets
  • ★★★ Ali thinks his retrospective revision timetable is a more effective and more efficient way of studying than the standard prospective revision timetable everyone is taught from a young age. — 00:11:09 · spaced repetition

00:12:12 — Squarespace sponsor read

00:13:10 — Sign-off: a better name and study questions in the comments

  • ★★ Ali asks for questions on the retrospective revision timetable or anything study-related in the comments and says he will happily make videos on them in the coming exam season if people find them helpful. — 00:13:10

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked how the retrospective revision timetable works with 19 subjects to revise, the channel replies that it works just as well. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: active recall · Google Sheets · spaced repetition

Also: Apple Pencil · Cambridge · iPad Pro · scoping the subject · World of Warcraft

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