Revision Schedule Planner

What this generator does

Turns a topic list and two dates into a dated review schedule, with each topic revisited at growing gaps and the topics staggered so the daily load stays even. The revision challenge generator already here produces something to do in a session; this decides which topics a given day should cover and when. It is also distinct from the countdown planners: those schedule a sequence of different tasks backwards from a date, while this schedules the same topic repeatedly forwards at expanding intervals.

How to use this tool

1. List your topics, one per line.
2. Enter the date you are starting and the date of the exam.
3. Press Build the schedule.
4. Check the busiest day — if it is too heavy, start earlier or split the topics.

Understanding the controls

Topics

One per line. Each gets its own ladder of reviews, and its own first-study day — that staggering is what keeps the busiest day manageable. Blank lines are ignored.

Start date

When revision begins. Topics do not all start here: they are spread across the run-in, which is the difference between a workable schedule and one where every ladder lands on the same days.

Exam date

Nothing is scheduled after it. If the run-in is too short for the full ladder, the ladder is shortened for everybody rather than some topics silently losing their later reviews.

Worked examples

5 topics, three months

25 reviews spread across the term, with no day holding more than two topics.

24 topics, four and a half months

120 reviews, and the busiest day still holds six or fewer.

5 topics, 8 days

The ladder shortens to what fits, and the tool says which reviews were dropped rather than pretending they happened.

What is never produced

Four reviews of the same topic on the day before the exam.

Common use cases

• Building a revision timetable for a set of exam topics
• Spreading a syllabus over a term so nothing is seen only once
• Giving a class a shared review schedule they can each follow
• Checking whether there is genuinely enough time left before an exam
• Planning review of professional or language material against a fixed test date

How this generator works

Each topic gets a ladder of reviews at one, three, seven, fourteen and thirty days after its own first study session — the conventional expanding interval. Topics are then staggered across the available days, but only across the room left after reserving enough time for the full ladder, so spreading them never pushes a topic's later reviews past the exam. A review that would land after the exam is dropped and reported as truncated rather than pulled back onto the exam day, because cramming a month's spacing into the night before removes the exact property that makes spacing work. Where the whole run-in is too short for the full ladder, a shorter ladder is used for every topic instead. The output is grouped by date and the heaviest day is reported rather than left to be discovered.

Randomness and fairness

Nothing here is random. The same topics and the same dates always produce exactly the same schedule — which is deliberate, because a revision timetable that rearranged itself between visits would be impossible to follow, and the test suite checks the schedule is identical across repeated builds.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

• Revision starts on the start date and the exam is on the exam date. Both are treated as fixed.
• A topic is first studied on the day it is assigned, with its reviews counted from there.

Limitations and good to know

• The intervals are a fixed, conventional ladder. This is not an adaptive algorithm — it does not change the schedule based on how well a review went, because doing that honestly needs a stored record of each review, which is a different tool with different privacy obligations.
• It treats all topics as equally difficult and equally long. A topic you find hard needs more time, and only you know which one that is.
• It schedules dates, not sessions. How long each review should take is not something a calendar can decide.
• Days off are not modelled — reviews can land on a weekend. Where that matters, moving the start date by a day or two shifts the whole pattern.
• The spacing effect is well supported; these particular numbers are a teaching convention rather than a research result, and are presented as such.

Common mistakes

Starting too late and then compressing the intervals

Compressing them removes the benefit — spacing is the active ingredient, and five reviews in three days is just five reviews. The tool shortens the ladder instead and tells you what was dropped, which is the honest version of the same news.

Treating a full schedule as the whole of revision

It says when to review, not what to do. Retrieval practice — closing the book and trying to recall — is what makes a review worth having, and a schedule of re-reading produces very little.

Adding every subtopic as its own line

Forty topics over six weeks produces a heavy schedule and a lot of very short reviews. Group them at the level you would actually revise in one sitting, and check the busiest-day figure before committing.

Practical tips

• Check the busiest day before anything else. If it is heavier than you would actually do, start earlier or merge topics — those are the only two real fixes.
• Put the topics you find hardest first in the list. They get the earliest start date and therefore the most complete ladder.
• Use it alongside retrieval practice rather than re-reading. The schedule decides when; what you do in the session decides whether it works.

Troubleshooting

Some topics are marked as truncated

There was not room for the full ladder before the exam. Starting earlier is the only real fix — the alternative would be to compress the intervals, which removes the spacing that makes the schedule worth following.

A day looks too heavy

Reduce the number of topics or lengthen the run-in. With a fixed ladder and a fixed window there is a floor on how thin the load can be spread, and the tool reports the busiest day rather than hiding it.

Privacy and your data

Your topic names and your dates never leave your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored between visits, and nothing is written into the page address — a list of topics plus an exam date is more identifying than it looks. Analytics records that the tool ran and how many reviews it produced, never the topics themselves.

Frequently asked questions

Why these intervals?

One, three, seven, fourteen and thirty days is the widely taught expanding ladder. The spacing effect — that distributed practice beats massed practice — is one of the most replicated findings in learning research; these specific numbers are a convention built on it rather than a result themselves, and it is worth being clear about which is which.

Is this the same as Anki or SuperMemo?

No. Those adapt each interval to how well you recalled the item, which needs a stored history of every review you have done. This is a fixed ladder laid out on a calendar, and it does not store anything. If you want genuine adaptation, use flashcard software — imitating it with a fixed schedule would be pretending to a personalisation this does not have.

What if I have only two weeks?

The ladder shortens to the intervals that fit — one, three and seven days — and applies that to everything. That is a real schedule rather than a compressed version of the long one, and the page says which intervals it used.

Why are the topics staggered instead of all starting today?

Because if they all start today they all get reviewed on the same days, and with a dozen topics that produces a handful of impossible days and a lot of empty ones. Staggering the first study day spreads the load. The stagger is bounded so it never pushes a topic's later reviews past the exam.