It's National Butter Day: Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

If you're studying for the bar exam, National Butter Day probably isn't on your study calendar. You're likely thinking about MBEs, essays, outlines, and practice sets ... and not toast.

But stay with me. Butter is actually a pretty good way to think about how you use your study time.

Really, stay with me.

Photo by Joanna Stołowicz on Unsplash

Imagine you have one small pat of butter and a giant slice of bread. If you try to cover every corner, you end up scraping that butter so thin that most bites just taste like plain bread. Technically you covered everything, but you didn't really enjoy the butter or get any satisfaction from it.

That is what many bar takers do with their time. They try to touch every subject, every day, in tiny amounts. On paper, it looks productive. In reality, nothing gets enough attention to stick.

I call this the Butter Rule of Bar Prep:

In any given study block, it is better to cover fewer things well than to smear yourself over everything and learn almost nothing deeply.

What the Butter Rule Really Means

In this analogy:

• Your bread is your limited time and energy in a day.

• Your butter is your focus and attention.

• The finished toast is real, exam ready understanding.

When you try to hit five or six subjects in one short block, you create very thin coverage. You might be able to say, "I did a little Con Law, a little Evidence, a little Torts," but you didn't close any feedback loop. You didn't fully work through a set of questions, review explanations, or write and revise a complete essay.

The Butter Rule is permission to zoom in. Instead of asking, "How many subjects can I touch tonight," ask, "What one or two concrete skills or topics can I actually build tonight?"

How to Apply the Butter Rule to Your Study Plan

Here are some practical ways to put the Butter Rule to work.

1. Give each study block a clear identity.

Don't let every session become a grab bag. Decide in advance: "Tonight is Evidence MBEs and review" or "This morning is devoted to Torts essays." Stay in that lane until you finish.

2. Use the week for breadth and the day for depth.

You don't need to see every subject every day. Instead, plan your week so that different days spotlight different subjects. Over seven days, you will still cover plenty of "bread," but each day you will spread your butter thick enough to taste it.

3. Let your weak areas get extra butter.

If your practice sets show that Real Property is a problem, don't sprinkle in two random Property questions each day and hope for the best. Give Property its own focused block. Drill a narrow topic, review explanations slowly, and write down what you learned.

When you sit for the exam, you're not graded on how many subjects you glanced at in June. You're graded on how well you can spot issues, state rules, and apply them under time pressure. That requires a solid layer of understanding, not a thin, anxious smear.

So on National Butter Day, take a moment to look at your schedule and ask: are you spreading yourself too thin? If so, pick one slice of bread, one subject, and give it enough butter that it actually counts.