What to do when you are falling behind

If you are falling behind, this is your first step:

Failing to keep up with your daily schedule happens to even our most successful users. The next step is to figure out exactly why you are falling behind.

Falling behind because of school

If you are taking classes while preparing for an important exam, it's important to take special care to design a study plan that works around your daily commitments. The best way to do this is to use our study blocks feature. It's best to create a study block for when you are in classes and another block for after you are done with classes, when you have time to focus on the exam.

For the study block that you create for the school year, be conservative. Understand that you will get busy with schoolwork and it's best to just try to accomplish one solid, concrete goal. Pick the main book you plan to study from and plan to get through it during your first study block. Or perhaps do 500 questions over the next few months. Although you might be tempted to tackle a larger number of resources, we advise that you play it safe. Keep in mind that many of your fellow test takers won't get anything done during the school year, so even meeting a conservative goal will give you an edge.

If you fall behind during that first study block, don't worry because that's normal. Use the rebalance feature to move your overdue tasks to future days and balance out your schedule. As long as you can catch up on the work at some point in the future, you're in the clear. 

For the second block that you create for when classes are done, you can be more ambitious. Your study hours will hopefully be more consistent, so that's the time to go through as much as you can. However, we still recommend a strategy where you have a high probability to finish a few number of resources.

Falling behind because of work, family, or other commitments

Preparing for a major exam when you are balancing work, raising a family, or have other commitments can be quite a challenge. It's difficult to create a study schedule to accommodate the unpredictability of your life. Cram Fighter has features to help you stay on track.

When you are taking care of sick family member or getting caught up with a busy project at work, you should rely on Cram Fighter's rebalance feature. You can use rebalancing to take all of your overdue tasks and moves them to future days, while balancing out your schedule in the process. This lets you fall behind from time to time without having to throw out your whole schedule. Keep in mind that the rebalance feature is not magic - you will have more to do in the future if you rebalance a schedule with lots of overdue tasks. But hopefully you get the time to catch up and at least with Cram Fighter, you get to see where you stand.

Also keep in mind that the rebalance feature alters your schedule. The changes can sometimes be dramatic, depending on how many overdue tasks you have. So don't get attached to exactly how your schedule looks today, since it will almost certainly change. In fact, we found that the average user makes over 10 changes to their schedule during the course of their studying. If you treat your study plan as something fluid instead of something set in stone, you will be more successful with Cram Fighter.

If you are still falling behind after following the above tips

If you followed the above tips and still find yourself falling behind, it's an indication that your schedule is too ambitious. Pare down the number of resources that you are going through. Remember the following that Cram Fighter will schedule all of the resources that you select. So your best option when you are consistently falling behind is to select fewer resources.