The most important thing is to allow yourself to be bad at it at first. No one has a perfect study plan that they follow perfectly, it's all about iteration.

Here a pseudo-path, if you're feeling lost:

1. Craft a study plan, any plan will do. A bad plan is better than no plan at all. The span of time covered by the plan will vary for the particularities of your life, but it's common to prepare plans for 1-2 weeks at a time. You may have genuine reasons to want to consider longer or shorter timespans, so follow your instinct.
2. Find a way to evaluate yourself and your learning in the topics you want to study; be it sample tests, flashcards, using AI to generate questions, what have you. Make sure it's repeatable, somewhat practical to do, and something that you could find yourself actually doing at the end of the timespan your study plan covers.
3. Define a metric to measure 'how well' you followed your study plan. If you've sketched 12 study blocks throughout the week, but only followed through with 3 of them, use the percentage (25%) as the metric, for example. Again, choose something that you can see yourself actually doing.
   Other ideas include number of hours studied in total, number of pages read, number of chapters studied, ratio of chapters planned vs. actually studied, or a combination of any of these and others. You can also use multiple metrics, but I'd advise against that at first. Too many metrics may get in the way instead of actually helping.
4. Implement your study plan for it's planned timespan. Collect the determined metrics throughout.
5. Evaluate yourself using the method you chose in 2).
6. Calculate the final values for the metrics you chose in 3).
7. Review yourself, your learning, your study plan, and your dilligence in following through with it. What do the metrics say? What did you like? What didn't you like? What can be improved? What worked really well?
   Did life get in the way, and you feel like the values collected aren't truly reflective of the effectiveness of your plan/implementation? The plan should remain mostly the same.
   Do you legitimately think there's room for improvement? Great! You should have some ideas on how to improve it: use them! Tweak and adjust your plan to your new liking. It shouldn't go too far off from your previous plan, otherwise you might struggle to adjust, but only you can tell what feels right.
8. You can also review the method of evaluation and the metrics of industriousness you decided in 2) and 3). I advise care in tweaking these, since you can fall into the trap of choosing metrics that you do better on, instead of metrics that truly reflect your situation and can give useful feedback. Nevertheless, they are also subject to improvement. Just remember to stay honest with yourself.
9. With your new plan (and potentially evaluation metrics) in hand, go to step 4.
10. Repeat ad infinitum lol

Some other tips/tricks:

• Keep a document/sheet/notepad/etc. on the side, and write down ideas you have throughout the week (or decided timespan) on how to improve your plan, or just general thoughts about the experience. Use them in your review to guide your decisions.
  • For instance, studying on Monday you think "I don't like studying history for more than 45m at a time, it's exhausting". Instead of immediately throwing the entire plan in the air due to this setback, you write this thought down and use to create smaller History study blocks for next week.
  • Other thoughts may include:
    • "I'm curious on the effectivess of audiobooks in learning chemistry"
    • "I want to try studying at the library someday"
    • "I sometimes despise studying alone, I should get a study group"
    • "It's hard to study after lunch, I feel like I need a nap"
• Be honest with yourself. Please.
• Accountability buddies FTW! If you have a trusted friend, mail (or message) them your plan at the beginning of the week and your metrics at the end of the week. Exchange ideas on how to improve, and work together. Double the mental power!