A study plan fails for one of two reasons: it was built for someone else's situation, or it was too ambitious to survive contact with your real week. This lesson installs the decision logic — three inputs, one route — and shows you what to cut when time runs short, because what you cut matters more than how much.
The three inputs
Every sensible plan is a function of exactly three things:
- Time to exam. Days you actually have, multiplied by hours per day you will actually study — not the heroic number. Be brutal here; a plan built on fantasy hours collapses in week one.
- Target gap. Your diagnostic band minus your target band, per section. If you skipped the diagnostic, stop and do it — choosing a plan without it is choosing blind.
- Weakest skill. The section with the biggest gap gets the most hours. This sounds obvious; almost nobody does it. Candidates practise what they enjoy (usually Reading) and avoid what they fear (usually Speaking or Listening dictation).
Time decides the plan's length. Gap decides its intensity. Weakest skill decides its center of gravity.
The plan archetypes and when each is right
The study plans library contains the full written versions of each route. Here is the decision table:
| Plan | Choose it when |
|---|---|
| 1-week sprint | Exam is booked, ≤7 days out. Not a study plan — a damage-control plan: exam mechanics, timing drills, your top two error types only. Realistic gain: sharper execution, not new skills. |
| 2-week plan | Gap ≤ 0.5 band and you can give 2–3 hours daily. One full test every second day, error log after each, one drill per weak question type. |
| 4-week standard | The default. Gap of 0.5–1.0 band, 1.5–2 hours daily. Two weeks of skill-building drills, two weeks of timed full tests with error-log review. |
| 8-week plan | Gap ≥ 1.0 band, or your diagnostic showed broad weakness across question types. The only honest route for moving Writing or Speaking a full band. |
| Band 6 / 6.5 / 7 routes | Your target is a specific number and you want the plan weighted toward what that band actually requires (a 6.5 route spends its hours very differently from a 7 route — see the scoring lesson for why). |
| Skill-focused plans | Three sections are already at target and one lags. All hours go to the laggard; the others get one maintenance test per week. Common for retakers who missed one section minimum. |
| Working-professional plan | You have ≤1 hour on weekdays. Drills on weekdays (dictation, paraphrase sets, error-log review — all fit in 40 minutes), full timed tests on weekends only. |
| Retake plan | You have an official score report. It replaces the diagnostic; the plan attacks the exact section that fell short, plus a review of what went wrong logistically on test day. |
Two rules cut across all of them:
Pick the plan you will finish. A completed 4-week plan beats an abandoned 8-week plan every time. If you are torn between two lengths, take the shorter one and extend it if you finish early.
One route, no mixing. Plan-hopping in week two is the most common failure mode. Commit for the plan's full length; measure with a fresh test every two weeks; adjust only at those checkpoints.
What to cut when time is short
Sooner or later your week explodes and you lose three study days. Here is the priority order — and it is counter-intuitive:
Cut breadth, never the error log.
- Cut first: new material volume. Fewer full tests, fewer new question types. Doing 12 tests carelessly teaches less than 5 tests fully digested.
- Cut second: your strong sections. They are at target; maintenance can wait a week.
- Never cut: the error log and its review. The twenty minutes after each test — classifying every miss by type and cause — is where the improvement actually happens. The test is just the instrument that collects your errors. A candidate who does three tests with full error analysis outscores one who does ten without it, and it is not close.
- Never cut: timed conditions. An untimed test measures nothing (you learned this in the diagnostic). If you only have 30 minutes, do one timed Listening section from something like Listening 2026-05 Test 1 and analyse it properly, rather than a full untimed reading passage.
Your drill (10 minutes)
- Write your three inputs on one line: days to exam × honest daily hours / section gaps / weakest skill. Example:
35 days × 1.5h / L −0.5, R −0.5, W −1.0, S at target / Writing. - Match the line against the table above. In the example: 4-week standard, weighted toward Writing, with Listening and Reading on maintenance-plus.
- Open the study plans, use the chooser, and read your route in full — including its weekly checkpoints.
- Schedule the first three sessions in your calendar right now, with the specific test for each — for instance Reading 2026-05 Test 1 for your first timed session. A plan without calendar entries is a wish.