Most players study in bursts — a long solver session after a losing night, then nothing for two weeks. That pattern builds knowledge you can't recall at the table. A routine you can actually keep beats an ambitious one you abandon.
Pick a fixed weekly budget
Decide how many hours you can give study every week and treat it like a standing appointment. Three focused hours you protect are worth more than a vague plan to "study more." Put the blocks in a calendar and defend them the way you would a coaching call.
Split the time three ways
- Range work — build or refine one spot until you can reproduce it from memory. One spot, not ten.
- Drilling — run reps on the ranges you have already built so recall stays sharp under a clock.
- Review — walk through hands you flagged during play and label the mistake.
A rough 40 / 40 / 20 split keeps you learning new material without letting old material rot.
Close the loop with play
Study that never gets tested is just reading. Schedule your sessions so that new range work is followed by volume where that spot actually comes up, then bring the misplays back into next week's review block. The point of the routine is the loop, not any single part of it.
Keep a one-line log
After each block, write a single sentence about what you worked on and whether it stuck. Over a month that log tells you what to cut and what to repeat — far more useful than trying to remember how the last four weeks went.