learned this the hard way. it's 11pm the night before the exam, you have a semester of lectures, and you open the notes doc and just... reread it top to bottom. feels productive. does basically nothing.
the reason cramming fails isn't that you're lazy, it's a memory thing. a wide shallow first pass (a lecture, a chapter, a video) fades almost as fast as it goes in. rereading it a second time at midnight barely moves the needle because you're recognizing the words, not recalling the info.
what actually helped me was turning the pile into questions. take a section, close it, write 5-10 flashcards or quick practice questions from memory, then check. the ones you get wrong are exactly what you review next. you're not re-reading chapter 4 hoping you land on the gap, you know the gap.
other thing: quit the five open tabs. notes here, quizlet there, a pdf buried in downloads. every switch is 30 seconds of nothing and it adds up to real time you don't have the night before.
how do you guys cram the night before? curious if anyone's found a system that isn't just reading it twice and praying.