Worked Examples

Replanning without pretending time expanded

Sam has ten study hours available. The plan assigns three hours to a lesson, four to exercises, one to review and leaves two as buffer. A family obligation reduces the available time to six hours before the week begins.

Keeping all eight hours of tasks would create an impossible plan. Sam preserves a two-hour prerequisite lesson and a two-hour smaller exercise set, keeps one hour for review and one as buffer. The rest of the lesson/exercises moves to the next planning window. Sam records what moved and updates the expected completion date; the reduced exercise set is not falsely marked as the whole assignment.

After the first session, the lesson actually takes three hours. The buffer now has zero remaining. If another overrun occurs, something else must move. Calling the plan “flexible” does not remove the arithmetic.

Interpret a stalled session

Sam opens the exercise and switches among resources for 20 minutes. One explanation is distraction; another is that the first instruction uses an unknown term. The next useful action is to restate the task and identify the blocked term, rather than automatically installing a stricter timer. A tiny observation can change the appropriate repair.