Remember more between study sessions
The default gaps are 1, 3, 7 and 14 days. They follow recommendations 1 and 5 of the IES practice guide linked at the bottom of the page (space learning over time, and use quizzing). The reason they work is a bit uncomfortable: each time you come back it is harder to recall, and that effort is the point. A review lands on your next study day on or after its spaced date. With the example days, the Monday topic’s 1-day review turns up on Wednesday and its 3-day review on Saturday. A day or two late, both times. We decided that was fine. Asking for a Tuesday you don’t have is worse. A review that would fall after the last week is dropped rather than squeezed in. Set the example to 2 weeks and the 14-day reviews disappear, one topic no longer fits, and the page says so.
How to do a review
Answer from memory, then check. For a conversation topic: hide your side, say the lines, reveal. Re-reading feels like progress and isn’t. In the example the sixth topic goes in on Wednesday 7 October, and the last week is nothing but reviews. That is the shape you want before a real conversation or an exam: nothing new in the final week.
What to do when you miss a session
Do the missed session’s reviews at the next slot and let the new topic wait. The reviews are the part that decays; the new topic keeps. Untick a day you keep missing and regenerate. We would leave the spacing on the default unless there is an exam within three weeks, and then use the dense one. Twenty minutes is short on purpose. A 20-minute session on Wednesday beats a 60-minute one you skip. The .ics download puts the sessions into your calendar alongside everything that will compete with them, which is exactly where we would want them.
Sources
- IES: Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning
Released September 2007