How to defeat the forgetting curve - a practical guide to revising for your exams
In total, I spent something like 18 years in formal education. That's a lot of time, and over those years, I learned many things, working all the way up from the alphabet to writing a master's thesis.
One thing that I don't exactly remember being taught is how to organise one's work effectively. Certainly, there were versions of this along the way: being given a homework planner at secondary, and project management lectures at university - but these never quite laid out a system for organisation, and especially revision, that stuck with me.
In various 'how to revise' sessions at secondary school. Invariably, these involved some external speaker (presumably charging cash-strapped schools a healthy fee for the privilege) where they showed you this diagram:
This is the "forgetting curve". It's meant to show the value of revision: as you forget the knowledge, you can top it up to improve long-term retention. At this point someone would explain how to draw a mindmap (great for some subjects but much less useful in STEM) in excruciating detail, and the actual logistics of how to organise oneself and achieve the goal became lost in motivational buzzwords.
This was always frustrating to me, because it presents fairly sound logic as to why one should revise, and tells us one key specification point (the process should cover the material repeatedly at regular intervals), but then doesn't present a method for doing this. I think most people in formal education with exams to prepare for are fundamentally aware of the need to revise, and a large chunk of them will find the motivation, but too much time is wasted on inefficient revision because it's left to the individual to figure out the how.
This post is me covering the revision organisation that I figured out over my time in education, to fill in that gap. I'm not saying it's a perfect method, trying to sell it as a guaranteed top grade, or suggest that it's the thing that made me what I am today (that's a story that involves work, but privilege and luck played a very large role too). What I hope this offers is some direction, a practical framework of actions that might suit those who share some of my organisational traits.
Back to that diagram. What it tells us is pretty straightforward, but it remains the key aim of the whole process: review information repeatedly at some spacing to keep it fresh in the mind from the time that it is learned to the point of examination. The holy grail here is to never quite feel like you're re-learning something forgotten, but that every time you look at some information, it feels recent and familiar.
For this to work optimally, you'll want to start revising pretty much as soon as you start covering material. This does lead to a first couple of revision sessions where there's not much content to go over, but this is a good time to set up the other elements of the system. It's also important to get going early to establish the habit of revising. Much of the rest of this strategy is about minimising the barriers to revising, by reducing the number of decisions you need to make about what and how to revise.
The first element is a weekly revision schedule. The idea isn't to dedicate large chunks of time to revision, but to do frequent small amounts. Using my A-levels as an example, my schedule looked something like this:
If you're following along at home, then make your schedule fit you and suit your priorities: mine had more maths than the other subjects, because I was doing Further Maths and had more material to cover. If there's a day that doesn't suit you, skip it; if you want to include the weekends, go for it. It's up to you to set a workload that is achievable and sustainable, because burning out is a bad outcome here. The other element of setting the workload is time, and if you're starting early enough you can keep it pretty minimal, at least to start with: I only scheduled 10-15 minutes per session.
Notice here that we've already lowered one of the barriers to revising, by eliminating the decision point of what to revise. By removing a decision point, we've also removed a potential opportunity for procrastination. The more you can lower the number of decisions you need to make, the more time and mental effort available to revise.
Now that we know which subject we're revising, we can determine the topic, again with the minimum of decision-making. My method for doing this was the topic card: a 3x5" filecard with the name of a chapter and a list of revision tasks.
One of these file cards gets written every time that you start a chapter or topic, laying out the groundwork for revising that content. These cards then get put in the stack for that subject. When it's time to revise on a particular day, you simply take the top card for each of the subjects for that day and get going on whatever task is next on that list. Once a task has been completed, it can be ticked. In a single piece of card we've organised which topic to cover and suggested a method of revision to use - cutting down on time and brainpower used on decisions rather than learning.
The first task on any of my cards was always to highlight my notes on the topic. This is about getting the first bump in on the forgetting curve and making sure that your notes are clear and comprehensive. Having good notes at the start of the process is vital for when you inevitably need to consult them further down the line. If there's anything unclear, any dodgy handwriting, any little extra footnote you can add to clarify, now is the time to add it, while the information is still fresh and before bad habits have had a chance to set in.
After highlighting the initial notes, I tended to write a summary page: one side of A4 that neatly covers the topic. This is great as a quick reference guide for key names, dates, formulas, or any other information that you might need to refer to frequently. As a second task, it's likely to take place a little later after the topic has been taught, so the fact that this task is a little bit more involved than highlighting is key to ensuring the material is re-covered effectively and the neural pathways are reinforced.
Beyond that, later tasks could be anything that can be broken down into short, manageable chunks, and will allow you to get another bump up on the curve. Try to make sure that in the process you don't end up favouring any particular area, and cover your weak spots. More classic revision activities like flashcards fit nicely into this structure too, so if you like any particular method, just add it to the topic cards and you'll be able to deploy it on all the areas you need to know.
Once you've completed the revision task for the day, the card simply goes at the bottom of the relevant pile, so that the topics get reasonably even coverage and all areas are fresh in your mind. If you feel you performed weakly on a topic, that card can go nearer the top of the pile to get more focus; similarly, if a topic is too simple to need repeat coverage (early maths topics that are built upon might be a good example), then you can skip it every so often.
Later on in the process, you'll typically get to the point where you're no longer being taught new content and your sole job is to revise full-time. At this point (preferably a couple of weeks in advance of this point) I would advise printing out a calendar covering the time from now to your final exam. Write on the exams (triple check the dates and times!) and then start working backwards from there to plan the broad strokes of what you're going to cover and when. The most critical area to get sorted is anywhere where you have several exams in a short time period, and you'll have to be clever about how to switch gears from one subject to the next with minimal prep time.
Once you've worked out the tricky area in the exams, start working backwards to fill out what you're doing when - no need to be overly-specific here, a suggestion of a subject for the morning and afternoon will do. As before, the aim is to reduce the time spent making decisions about what to revise. At the start of a revision day use the calendar to help write a more detailed plan of what you'll do on an hourly basis (don't forget to build in breaks). With a solid period of covering and re-covering behind you, you should be able to use this time to build exam technique, knowledge of the papers, and most importantly confidence that you'll be able to handle whatever turns up on exam day.
Remember that all these plans are just plans, and therefore they need to remain responsive and flexible. If you find that an area needs more work, or that in exams you want to work differently, then go for it. This system is only there to provide the framework you hang work off, and remove the initial faff (and opportunity for procrastination) from the day. Keep the strategic-scale goals (I need X grade in Y) in focus, instead of obsessing over a daily target - the latter is a tool to achieve the former.
Hopefully that seems like a straightforward and relatively achievable way of keeping up with revision over a longer period of time. It probably isn't healthy to try and live your entire life this way, but for a school year or a university term it's hard, but manageable. If you're ever feeling overwhelmed or burned out, do take a step back and make sure to prioritise. After all, studying and exam results will take you a long way, but the ability to relax and have a social life will ultimately make a much bigger impact on your life satsifaction than exam results, especially if you're dedicated enough to have read this. Happy revising!