How I Trained Myself to Study Long Hours (Even When I Don't Want To)

Hello everyone welcomes to my blog. Let's just cut to the chase here's how I train myself to study for long hours even when I don't want to. My number one tip for you is to prevent yourself from being overwhelmed by breaking everything down into smaller chunks. What I mean by that is that if you have pages to read if you have mountain loads of slides to go through that can be a motivating factor but it can also bring about anxiety and it can overwhelm you. Leading you to procrastinate you can have you can feel this pressure just sitting on top of your shoulders. Trust me I felt that and here's how you can prevent it. So the first thing that you have to do is to write everything down, so grab a piece of paper a notebook or, a whiteboard and, then write everything down that you have to do for that day for that weekend and just break it down into smaller chunks like I'm gonna finish chapter two and three of this textbook. I'm gonna finish lecture two three four and then over the weekend, I'm gonna finish five and six. That way you don't have to worry about forgetting things that you have to do. And also on that list throw on things that make you worried or make you feel overwhelmed. You don't have to constantly replay that situation with all these tasks in mind and worry about forgetting. You know that it's written down you know that you can come back to it. That way it's going to make you feel less anxious and less overwhelmed. Step two is to shift your focus from all the different things that you have to do all the different tests that you have to write because that can be quite overwhelming to what you can accomplish in the next five minutes so you have all the stuff that you got to do written down just pick one and just think about what you can do in the next five minutes as opposed to thinking I gotta read 30 pages in the next hour. Think in the next five minutes I'm going to read two paragraphs and that's all I'm going to think about and then once you start reading the snowball will build up, the momentum will build up and you'll be able to continue to study afterward. The second tip that I'm going to give you is called break the cycle. You're not going to all of a sudden go from lying down in your bed scrolling through your instagram,facebook tech talk or whatever you guys use these days to getting up and studying right away you're not going to be able to do that you need some time in between to break that cycle so when i'm in those situations where I've procrastinated for hours on end before studying i go through these series of steps to break the cycle and the first step that I take is to give myself 20 minutes of guilt-free time now at this point you're feeling terrible about yourself because you procrastinated all this and you're certain you start to think well i'm not going to be able to study because i'm feeling i'm having a bad day switch that thought off for the next 20 minutes and then move on to the next step so the second step in that series is to turn everything off including your phone your tv your computer that has led you to procrastinate what are you going to do then for the next 20 minutes without all of those and that's where the third step comes in now that you've gotten rid of all these distractions the things that made you procrastinate you can actually do things that will set you up for studying so you know set all your desk space up clean off everything set light those candles make yourself a cup of tea or a cup of coffee turn on all your monitors and have all the slides ready you know write everything down as i previously mentioned clean off your shelf and do whatever it takes to get to the point where it's easy for you to start studying when those 20 minutes is over then the fourth step comes as opposed to studying right away now that you have everything set up use that remainder of 20 minutes to change your mood or your physical sensation and by that i mean go take a shower go for a walk go get some fresh air listen to a mood boosting music that your favorite playlist or whatever to you know change your mood and change your physical sensation prior to studying because you've been feeling miserable for the past two hours you need to do something that's going to change your mood before you go ahead and study then the final step comes which is to sit down at your clean already set up desk and start studying and always remember to the first tip that i gave you just focus on the next five minutes and what you can accomplish in that time okay so tip number three is to quit feeling dreadful so you've put in all this work to set up everything to sit down and finally study and now you're going to start feeling dreadful the amount of work that you have to do the hours that you have to study will never change so it's literally dependent on your perspective you can either you know study and stay miserable and study the whole time feeling depressed or you can just focus on taking small steps thinking about what i can accomplish the next hour and feeling good about it after you finish that and then building momentum from that i don't know if you guys watch suits my favorite tv show but uh imagine harvey specter or jessica pearson just whining the whole time when they're working you know you'll never see you know i know that they're fictional characters but you'll never see strong people like that whine and complain the entire time they have to work you know always focus on knocking down one domino at a time and taking one small step at a time that's my tip number three for you. 

My tip number four is to take scheduled breaks as opposed to taking breaks whenever you want so I do a 15 minute study session and then 10 minute breaks you can set up a timer for yourself and just tell yourself for the next 15 minutes or next 45 minutes that I'm going to focus on studying and then i'll have 10 minute or 15 minute break off and then I can study again it's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking oh man this stuff that i'm learning is so challenging i'm just going to take a break on my phone and that will turn into 5 minutes 10 minutes 20 minutes to an hour and you're gonna go into that dreadful cycle again so make sure you turn the phone off put it somewhere else if you're working on your desktop there's an app called self-control that you can turn on to prevent yourself from going onto websites like facebook reddit or twitter you can set those websites up for yourself so that you don't fall into the trap of bad breaks. 

My tip number five is to study actively and not passively. The study strategies I use as a medical student where I encourage people to take a break from looking at the monitor and looking at reading the textbook and think through the concepts yourself write things down say things out loud move around and you know study actively as opposed to studying passively. 

My tip number six is to change the study location or change the scenery and this really applies when you're feeling mentally drained or physically tired from studying all day long and you don't want to sit at this desk any longer in that case you can push for that extra two hours, four hours of studying by changing your study location and it can be challenging during kobe times but what I did during my undergraduate and first couple of years of my medical school is to go somewhere like at a cafe or a library where there are people moving around and I can put my earphones in just focus on my study materials and study there somehow people moving around me actually helps me to stay motivated and finish the task at hand. I don't know which city you live in and what the covid situation is like but maybe you can call up a friend meet up at a cafe together study together and push each other just make sure you guys stay safe. 

My tip number seven is to take a well-deserved break and well-deserved sleep at the end of the day of studying without thinking about studying anymore like it's so important to just separate that side of things and not worry and not have those two things cross over from each other. I try to think about all these times when I went to bed feeling absolutely exhausted and mentally drained from studying although I was physically and mentally tired those were the days when I felt incredibly good about myself and felt confident about myself because I put in all the work. 

My tip number eight is to work around your schedule so that you can end your day early and then throw in a couple of hours of late night study sessions so for example on a weekend in medical school when I'm preparing for an exam which is literally you know every damn time I would study from 8 a.m to 12 p.m take an hour long break and then from 1 p.m to 7 p.m I would study and then I would end my study day there so from 7 p.m I have you know all the time to do whatever I want guilt-free because I've studied for study hard for the first half of the day and then at around 10 p.m of three-hour break which is more than enough I would start feeling like oh man like I'm not doing anything I might as well just study so from 10 pm to 12 a.m I would turn off all the lights have these lights on and then uh throw in a late night study session for another couple hours before bed ,those as opposed to just dragging out and studying for multiple hours on end take a long break and then throw in a couple hours at the end that seems to work for me. 

My tip number nine is probably my favorite and that is to make myself my favorite drink put on my favorite playlist for those late night study sessions between 10 p.m and 12 a.m. Not everything that I do, not all the study sessions involve heavy duty brain power and things like active recall sometimes you have to do my numbing things like editing figures and tables for your research paper and then checking for grammar and reading through things again answering emails planning for the next study sessions and data crunching and all those things. I'll leave those until the very end of the day where I'm feeling tired so that I can just do those things while I'm enjoying myself with my favorite drink and my favorite music with lyrics. 

My last tip for training yourself to study for long hours even when you don't want to is to make studying and incorporating into your lifestyle making it a habitual thing and placing consistency over everything. If you have midterms or finals coming up start from day one and study regularly so that you don't stress yourself out towards the end of the day. From someone who studies on a regular basis at a level of 80 per day every day versus someone who starts at zero and then build themselves up to 100 studying for the last couple of weeks before a final that can be incredibly stressful so if you continuously keep that momentum up that's going to help you tremendously with making this type of long hours of studying more of a regular thing. All right I hope you guys found these study tips useful these are strategies I used over the years. I will continue to use them once I become a doctor and going into residency and so far so forth. See you guys soon you.