How to make a study plan from your exam date

Memento wasn’t built for exams. I built it because looking up the same word from a book a week after I’d already looked it up felt like a tax on reading.

The target date feature came later, after I noticed one thing while building it.

Spaced repetition doesn’t know your exam date

Spaced repetition brings a card back just as you’re about to forget it. It’s a proven method, and it’s what I rely on myself. But what the algorithm optimizes for is remembering for a long time. It has no idea when you need to remember by.

That’s fine for someone like me, learning with no deadline. A dated exam is a different story. If the algorithm decides a card comes back in 40 days and your exam is in three weeks, that card never makes it into the exam room.

It’s also why exam prep feels so anxious. You know how much material there is. What you don’t know is how much today has to cover for you to get through all of it in time. So you redraw the schedule, and there goes the day.

Plan backwards from the exam date

Memento reverses the usual order. Instead of collecting everything and planning afterwards, you give a folder its target date first.

From there it spreads the new cards across the days you have left, so you see the whole folder at least once before that date. If there aren’t enough days and the pace gets heavy, it tells you right away, and there’s a button next to the warning that pushes the date back a week. Scaling the plan down on day one beats making an impossible one and quitting on day three.

Today’s load and exam readiness, nothing else

A plan that lives as good intentions fades out. A number for today is what actually gets you moving.

The home screen shows today’s new cards and reviews. Clear those and you’re done for the day. Next to them is exam readiness, as a percentage: roughly where you’ll be on exam day if you keep this pace. When you fall off the pace, a short status tells you where you stand, like ahead of schedule, on track or behind.

Split your subjects into as many folders as you like. Today’s work still lands on one screen, so you don’t lose time deciding where to start.

Making the cards is where most people stall

A plan is only as good as your willingness to make the cards. I installed Anki once and gave up right here.

So in Memento you paste in what you need to learn, or add photos of a textbook page or a PDF, and AI suggests the front and back of each card. You check and fix them before saving, so nothing strange slips in. If you already have an Anki deck, import it and pick up where you left off.

Reviews are scheduled with FSRS-5. Anki still defaults to SM-2, but people who take it seriously go into the settings to switch FSRS on. Memento has it on from the start.

Not letting the plan run you

Language test or professional certificate, any study with a fixed date works the same way. If you have nothing to memorize yet, pick a study deck, add it and set the target date first. The app works out each day’s load from there. Memento is on the App Store.

Feedback from people using it ahead of a real exam helps this feature most. Send it to support@hyunsanglabs.com and I’ll read all of it.