Staying on track when you fall behind

Every plan meets reality eventually — a night shift, a sick day, a week where the questions just didn't happen. What matters is what you do next. StudyRise's recovery tools all share one principle: log what actually happened, honestly, and let the app do the rescheduling math for you.

Backdate and Skip Today

The fastest way to reschedule is right on your current task card on the Today screen. Two buttons handle the two ways a day goes sideways: Backdate logs work you did earlier but never recorded, and Skip Today moves on without pretending you studied.

1. Open Today and find your current task card — it has Mark Complete, Skip Today, Backdate, and Log buttons.
2. Tap Backdate if you did the work on an earlier day and just forgot to log it — your history stays accurate.
3. Tap Skip Today if today genuinely isn't happening — the task moves on, honestly, with no fake completion.

Pause, don't abandon

An interruption mid-block doesn't have to wreck the whole day. Every live block timer on the Today screen has a Pause button, and pausing does more than stop the clock — every later block in your day plan automatically re-times itself around the interruption.

1. When something interrupts a study block, tap Pause on the live block timer.
2. Handle the interruption — the timer waits.
3. Resume when you're back: every later block re-times itself around the gap, so your schedule stays realistic instead of quietly impossible.

The question deficit

The question deficit is a KPI tile on your Dashboard that shows how far behind your daily question target you've fallen, added up across days. It turns "I feel behind" into one concrete number — and a number can be paid down, a few extra questions at a time.

1. Check the question deficit tile on your Dashboard's KPI row — tap it to go deeper.
2. Spread the catch-up over several days: 10–15 extra questions a day beats one heroic 100-question binge.
3. If the deficit keeps growing week after week, the problem is the target, not you — adjust your daily question target in Settings.

Rest days are a plan, not a failure

StudyRise treats rest as part of the schedule, not a lapse in it. Your consistency strip never shades a rest day red — planned rest shows as a blue dot, studied days green, and unlogged days gray. The honest move on a bad day is to log it as what it was.

1. Set your weekly rest day in Settings under Daily Routine — see the Settings guide.
2. At the end of any day, open the Log modal on Today: Complete, Partial (with a slider), Missed, or Rest Day.
3. Log a Missed day honestly rather than skipping the log — your Dashboard and Analytics are only as useful as the truth you feed them.

The overload note

Sometimes the fix isn't catching up — it's easing off. StudyRise watches your recent accuracy trend, your SR compliance (how well you're keeping up with spaced-repetition reviews), and your missed days. If the pattern looks like overload, a calm amber card from "your study coach" appears on your Dashboard.

1. When the amber card appears, read it as data, not judgment — it's never guilt, just a nudge.
2. Ease off for a day or two: a lighter day now usually beats a burned-out week later.
3. If overload keeps recurring, lower your daily load — Daily Routine in Settings has a max-tasks-per-day cap and your rest day.