Concurrency is the actual enemy
The IB is designed so that nothing can be left to the end, and yet everything is. The Extended Essay in particular has a way of expanding to fill the term before the exams — the single worst term for it to be occupying.
The structural fix is unglamorous: get the coursework that *can* be finished early, finished early. The EE, the IAs, the TOK essay. They have deadlines that are not exam-dependent, and every one you clear buys back an evening in April, when evenings in April are the scarcest resource in your life.
Revising six subjects at once
You cannot run six separate revision plans; nobody can. What works is one system that spans all of them: everything you get wrong, from any subject, becomes a card, and a scheduler decides what you review today. You stop making the allocation decision — which was going to be wrong anyway, because you'd have revised the subjects you enjoy.
Use the IB's own machinery
- The subject guides state exactly what is assessable. Anything not in the guide cannot be examined — a genuinely freeing fact that few students exploit.
- The command terms are defined by the IB, formally. 'Evaluate' has an official definition. Learn them; they are marks.
- Past papers with markschemes, timed, closed book. As always, the most predictive resource there is.
- Paper 1 / Paper 2 / Paper 3 have different demands. Practise them separately — pacing on Paper 1 is a different skill from structure on Paper 2.