The Coolest Apple Shortcut for Studying!

Yuviana Sachar
Jan 5
3 min read

Even though it has been 6 months since I posted (oops), I haven’t stopped trying out productivity hacks whenever I can!

The coolest one so far is the power of spaced repetition. It isn’t a new discovery by any means. In fact the best way to understand spaced repetition is this:

Imagine the route you take to school everyday. Everyday you pass by a few houses and maybe a small market with different shops. You know this route by heart. You know the order of all the shops, the traffic lights and all of the landmarks in between.

If you are being driven you didn’t actively make the effort to learn this route. You just know it. You know it because you effectively reviewed your route everyday.

If you went to school once a month, it would take you 7-8 trips to absorb the route. If you went to school once a year, you’d never learn the route.

This is spaced repetition. Your brain has to store so much information throughout your life that things like these which are important slip our minds to make space for the rest. It isn’t because you’re stupid or forgetful, it is just how our brains work. The more you review your information (e.g. route) the more likely it is to stay in your brain.

When it comes to studying, spaced repetition is the holy grail. The concept is that when you study a topic you schedule ‘reviews’ to keep that information in your head. Preferably you would review this information with constantly increasing intervals. A day after the initial learning date, then 3 days later, then 5 days later, a week later and then finally a month later! Ideally you could also adjust how much you want to review a certain topic by how difficult it is for you.

Keeping track of this in a notebook or even an Apple Note would be extremely tedious. On high intensity days I could study 10 different topics! So to save myself from having to write down when I want to review something in the future manually, I made an apple shortcut. And it’s really cool :)

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7ab1137d71d941949026598fdd71f793

This is the link to the Apple Shortcut to automate your Active Reviews (what I like to call them)

It depends on three main components, the title of the topic, the intensity of the topic and the apple reminders app.

The intensity of difficulty is as follows:

Easy: You will be reminded to review the topic 3 days after the initial date and then 7 days after the initial date.
Medium: You will be reminded to review the topic 1 day, 3 days, and 7 days after the initial date.
Hard: You will be reminded to review the topic 1 day, 3 days, 5 days and 7 days after the initial date.

This shortcut errs on the shorter side of active review because I (like everyone else) started studying very close to my very important exams.

Note: To make this shortcut work for you, go to the Apple Reminders app and create a list named EXACTLY Active Reviews.

This might need some configuration on your side depending on your needs. Feel free to email me at vlogvanta@gmail.com if you need any help, I am very free :)

Here is what it would look like if you used this shortcut: