u/Popular-Tone3037

For instance, suppose you're budgeting 3 hours per week to learn math.

If circumstances allow, it would be much better to study 30 minutes, 6 days a week, as opposed to 90 minutes twice a week.

Here are several reasons why:

First, you want to form a habit. The more consistently you study math, the more it will become a habit that you naturally do each day without thinking. The habit is what will carry you through the long game once the initial adrenaline wears off.

Second, you want to operate at peak productivity during your session. It's easy to maintain high levels of focus and intensity throughout a short 30-minute session, but during a long 90-minute session, you become significantly less productive as fatigue sets in.

And third, you want to minimize the amount that you forget between sessions.

However, there are some caveats to consider:

-- First, whenever you switch to a new activity, it can take a few minutes for your brain to spin up on the new context. And if you make your sessions too short, then the proportion of study time that's wasted on context switching will outweigh all the other benefits of daily practice. So while it's good to spread out your practice, each session should be long enough that context switching cost is proportionally negligible.

-- Additionally, if you have a hectic schedule and 6 days per week in theory ends up being just 3 days per week in practice, then you need longer sessions just to achieve the same volume of practice.