Search "study timetable for SSC" or "UPSC daily routine" and you will find a thousand colour-coded PDFs. Almost none of them survive a real week of preparation.
Below are three hour-by-hour time tables you can copy today, one for each common situation, followed by the rules that make any timetable last — and a free planner that keeps it honest.
Time table for a full-time aspirant (about 8 hours)
- 5:30 am — Wake up, water and a short walk, no phone yet
- 6:00–8:00 am — Deep work: your hardest subject (Quant, Reasoning, an optional or a technical paper)
- 8:00–9:00 am — Breakfast and a proper break
- 9:00–10:30 am — Practice: sectional questions or previous-year papers on what you studied
- 10:30–11:00 am — Break
- 11:00 am–12:00 pm — Second subject, new study
- 12:00–2:30 pm — Lunch and rest
- 2:30–3:30 pm — Light work: current affairs, static GK, vocabulary
- 3:30–4:00 pm — Break
- 4:00–5:00 pm — A timed mock section, then go through every mistake
- 5:00–7:00 pm — Exercise, family, free time
- 7:00–8:30 pm — Revision: today's notes and the topics due for revision
- 8:30–10:00 pm — Dinner, then five minutes to plan tomorrow
- 10:00 pm — Sleep
Time table for a working aspirant (about 3½ hours on weekdays)
- 5:30 am — Wake up
- 5:45–7:15 am — Deep work: your hardest subject, before the job takes your energy
- Commute — Today's current affairs on your phone
- Lunch break — 20 minutes of vocabulary or quick MCQs
- 7:30–8:30 pm — Practice: questions on the morning's topic
- 8:30–9:00 pm — Dinner
- 9:00–9:45 pm — Revision: today's notes and the topics due
- 10:30 pm — Sleep
On weekends, add one long deep-work block, a full mock test and the week's catch-up. Our guide to planning around a working day goes further.
Time table for a college student (about 4 hours around classes)
- 6:00–7:30 am — Deep work: your hardest subject
- 7:30 am–4:00 pm — College — use free periods for current affairs or vocabulary
- 4:00–5:30 pm — Rest, food, exercise
- 5:30–7:00 pm — Practice: questions and previous-year papers
- 7:00–8:00 pm — Dinner and family
- 8:00–9:00 pm — Revision: today's notes and the topics due
- 10:30 pm — Sleep
All three follow the same pattern: the hardest work first, practice on what you just studied, light reading when energy dips, and revision to close the day. Move the clock times to fit your life and keep the order. The rest of this page explains why that order works.
Why most timetables fail in week two
A timetable fails for three predictable reasons:
- It is over-engineered. Forty-five-minute slots, seven subjects, two languages and three kinds of break. You spend ten minutes working out whether you are on schedule.
- It ignores energy. It treats 6 am Quant and 9 pm Quant as the same. They are not.
- It has no recovery built in. Miss one session and the whole structure breaks, because there is no slack.
The fix is to design around three things: your energy windows, hours you can sustain, and slack.
The four-window structure
Most people have three or four natural focus windows in a day. A typical layout:
- Window 1: morning deep work — 90–120 minutes soon after waking. Your hardest subject: Maths, Reasoning, technical papers or your optional. Protect this window above all others.
- Window 2: mid-morning practice — 60–90 minutes. Application: problem solving, sectional tests, drills.
- Window 3: afternoon light work — 45–60 minutes, when energy is lowest. Current affairs, vocabulary, reading-heavy theory.
- Window 4: evening review — 60–90 minutes. Revision and consolidation: the day's notes, a few problems redone, short summaries.
That is four to six hours of focused study built around how your energy actually moves — not twelve hours of half-attention.
What goes in each window
Match the task to the brain state, not just the subject to the clock:
| Kind of work | Window |
|---|---|
| High-load subjects: Quant, Reasoning, technical subjects, optional | Window 1 |
| Practice and application | Window 2 |
| Reading-heavy subjects: general awareness, current affairs, theory | Window 3 |
| Revision and consolidation | Window 4 |
Revision is part of every day
This is the principle most timetables miss. A sustainable daily plan is roughly:
- 50–60% new study
- 30–40% revision of what you studied earlier
- About 10% tests, practice and review
A day that is all new study converts very little into memory. Revision is what turns study hours into marks. Spaced intervals do the heavy lifting: in Lighthouse Prep every topic comes back after 1, 3, 7, 14, 30 and 60 days, and sooner if you mark it weak.
Build in slack
The single biggest reason timetables collapse is zero slack. Day five arrives, you miss the morning window, the week feels "off", and you quit.
Build the buffer in on purpose:
- One full day off a week — genuinely off, not "light study".
- One catch-up window a week, often Saturday afternoon, where the week's missed sessions go.
- About 10% headroom — plan four hours and treat four and a half on good days as a bonus.
When slack is part of the structure, a missed session doesn't break the structure.
Fixed windows, flexible content
Keep the windows fixed and let the content adapt. Don't write "Monday 6 am: Algebra"; write "Monday 6 am: deep work". The topic comes from your plan, which follows your progress. The routine survives even when the content changes.
A sample week
| Day | Plan |
|---|---|
| Monday–Friday | Window 1 deep work · Window 2 practice · Window 3 light reading · Window 4 revision |
| Saturday | Morning deep work and practice · afternoon catch-up window · one full mock test |
| Sunday | Full day off |
| Every day | Seven or more hours of sleep, one walk, one screen-free break |
Three checks before you commit to a timetable
- Can I do this for nine months? If not, cut the hours.
- Does every day include revision? If not, give it about a third of the time.
- Is there a day off? If not, add one.
A timetable that passes all three is usually the right one.
How the free planner keeps the timetable honest
- Your windows, your pattern. Tell the planner your exam, exam date, daily hours and when you usually study, and the AI builds a routine weighted towards the topics that appear most in previous papers. Choose a fixed plan, where sessions have start and end times, or a flexible one, where they are an ordered list you work through at your own pace.
- A timer that stops on time. Each session stops at its scheduled length and keeps running when you lock your phone. On Android, Focus Shield silences your phone while it runs.
- Planned against actual. The wastage report shows, session by session, how much of each window you really studied, so you can see which windows work and which don't.
- Catch-up instead of quitting. When you keep falling short, the planner offers to shrink the routine to what your best days prove you can sustain. Start times stay put, durations shrink, and sessions that no longer fit are paused, never deleted.
- Revision on schedule. A Due Today banner shows what to revise, and each topic's questions get harder as you master it.
Build your timetable
Set your exam, set your date, and run today's first session.