The 80/20 Prompt: Find the Part of a Chapter That Carries the Marks

Every page of your textbook costs the same time to read. Every page does not bring the same marks.

Some topics show up in paper after paper. Some appear once in a few years. The 80/20 rule is a simple way to think about this: a small part of the work usually brings a large part of the result. It is a rule of thumb and the numbers are never exact, but the idea holds up well in exam prep.

The catch is that an AI chat does not know your board’s latest paper pattern. If you ask it which topics are important, it will guess. So in this game you bring the facts and the AI does the sorting.

What you need before you start

The marks table from your official syllabus. CBSE and RBSE both publish the syllabus for each subject on their websites.
Questions from past board papers or official model papers for the chapter you are working on.
About 15 minutes.

Step 1: Find the heavy units

Step 1 · Sort the units

Here is the unit-wise marks table from my official [CBSE or RBSE] Class [10 or 12] [SUBJECT] syllabus: [PASTE THE TABLE]. Sort the units from most marks to least. Then tell me which units together add up to about 80 percent of the paper. Use only the numbers I pasted.

Step 2: Find the repeat topics

Now go inside one chapter. Type or paste the questions that came from it in past papers.

Step 2 · Count the repeats

Below are questions from the chapter [CHAPTER NAME] taken from past board papers and model papers: [PASTE THE QUESTIONS]. Group them by topic. Count how many times each topic appears. Show the result as a table with three columns: topic, number of questions and total marks. Use only what I pasted. Do not guess.

Step 3: Build the short list

Step 3 · Must-do list

From that table, make a must-do list for me: the few topics that cover most of the marks. For each topic, tell me what type of question is usually asked: definition, numerical, diagram, derivation or long answer.

Step 4: Turn the list into practice

Step 4 · Practice round

Ask me one board-style question from each topic on my must-do list, one at a time. Check my answer and show me the points I missed.

Step 5: Cover the rest

Your short list tells you where to start. It does not predict the paper. A board can ask from any part of the syllabus, so the topics you left out still need a quick pass.

Step 5 · Safety net

Now list the topics from [CHAPTER NAME] that are not on my must-do list. Give me a 5-line summary of each one so I am not blank if it shows up in the exam.

Check yourself

Did the idea land?

What does the 80/20 rule say, roughly?
- 80 percent of students fail
- A small part of the work brings a large part of the result
- Study for 80 minutes and rest for 20
Where should the marks table in Step 1 come from?
- A random reel
- The official syllabus of your board
- The memory of the AI
Your must-do list is ready. What about the topics left out?
- Skip them fully
- Cover them after the list, at least as a summary
- Study them first

Use it chapter by chapter

Run these five steps once for each chapter and keep the tables in a notebook. By the time revision starts, you will already know which pages to open first.