The Spreadsheet Trap (and How to Avoid It)

  • Reviewed by: Amy Rontal, MD
  • Don’t fall into The Spreadsheet Trap and derail your board exam prep!

    What is ‘The Spreadsheet Trap’?

    You know you need a plan to prep for your board exams, and you’ve checked out Cram Fighter, but maybe you’re thinking about just using Excel or Google Sheets instead. After all – they’re free, right?

    The question is: How much is your time worth? $8/hour? $15/hour? More?

    Now think about how many hours it will take you to divide up the resources you want to study and manually enter them into a spreadsheet. But once you’ve created your study plan you aren’t in the clear – in fact, you’ve only just stepped into The Spreadsheet Trap!

    Because next think about what happens when you inevitably miss a day – something comes up, you get sick, you need a break to re-engergize yourself. Think about what happens if you fall behind or want to change one of the resources you are using. Now you’re trapped: in order to keep your study schedule from becoming totally useless, you’re going to need to spend HOURS more moving tasks around, editing a spreadsheet, and updating your calendar.

    The question is: How much is your time worth? $8/hour? $15/hour? More?

    Your time is valuable and the Spreadsheet Trap drains you of hours and hours, again and again throughout your study period. Don’t step into the trap: use Cram Fighter to create a detailed, customized schedule in minutes and then rest easy knowing you can edit and rebalance your schedule with the click of a button.

    Subscribe to Cram Fighter for less than $10/month!

    Now think back to our question at the top: how much is an hour of your time worth? Even if you said only $10/hour – and even if you only spend one hour a month creating or editing your spreadsheet study plan – a Cram Fighter subscription is worth it!

    Check out our pricing page to check out our monthly or fixed duration subscriptions to see which plan is right for you.

    Not ready to subscribe? Try a FREE, no-strings-attached 7 day trial and see how easy it is to create and manage a detailed, personalized study plan.

    Avoid The Spreadsheet Trap and save your of valuable time so you can focus on your studies and not your study plan.

    About the Author

    Jonathan Zeitlin is a Brand Manager for Blueprint Test Prep with over 10 years of experience in education and ed-tech. He has a B.A. from UCLA.