2022-11-12 17:01:45
How do I get in the mood to study and stop wasting time?
The mood is a tricky thing. Now you feel it, now you don’t. Because a mood — whether positive or negative — is only a temporary state of mind or feeling. You cannot attach an absolute value to it because it is a shifting thing you may value more or less, depending on the day you’re feeling it.
And that’s important why? Because when it comes to studying, you want to have a plan of action that is sturdy, reliable, and predictable. Something that you can execute, day by day, to move forward.
You may be reading this answer as a high school or university student and feel that the road to graduation will take forever. I have been there and I understand you. You have so many expectations of yourself, and most likely others (like your parents and your professors) have expectations of you too. But right now, this minute, this year, I want you to make a promise to yourself that to move forward, you will study for yourself. Because the benefits you will have from completing your studies will outweigh all the difficulties you’re experiencing now.
There are three pieces of advice I have for you.
#1. Be kind to your brain. Treat it like a friend. This friend is a genius! It’s a supercomputer that can help solve problems you encounter in life (including exams). But, it needs some extra care. I’ll get to that in a bit.
#2. Focus on the quality of the time you spend studying. Not the number of hours sitting at your desk. Being successful doesn’t take 12 or 16-hour days.
#3. Train your brain. Do it so it works together with you, just like a good friend should, and not against you. How do you train your brain?
Study the most difficult material early in the day.
Why? For most people, your brain’s peak performance happens 2-4 hours after you wake up. This is the time when your brain can focus on analytical thinking — in studying this can be reading, writing, coding, analyzing, critical thinking, or problem-solving.
How early is early? If you wake up at 8, your peak times are between 10 and 12. You can extend this time until lunch to maximize your peak performance. Turn off the volume on your phone and avoid distractions such as emails, watching the news, or your social media feed.
What are the benefits? Doing your hard work early in the day allows your brain to focus fully on the problem at hand, with fewer distractions and with a lot of energy that you've gained from a restful night.
Use a timer to work smarter, not longer.
Review study material. Set the timer to 30 or 60-minute increments to maximize concentration; or, you can also try the Pomodoro technique for even shorter time blocks.
Practice for the exam. Use the review questions from the textbook or create your questions based on the most important concepts from each chapter. Write the questions down on a sheet of paper. Then, use the Pomodoro technique to give yourself a short time to answer each question.
Talk it through. As you’re going over new material for the first time, write an outline of the basic points and then read it out loud. This helps you review, recall, and retain what you’ve learned much better than just silently looking over the material and writing notes.
Visualize success in an important exam.
Why? This technique is called building a mental model: you imagine in detail how you expect things will go during your exam. You train your brain to anticipate a positive outcome by telling yourself a story.
How can you do it? Take 5–10 minutes to visualize what happens on exam day. Think of all the steps you will take (from receiving the exam questions to writing the answers). Anticipate which questions you may find challenging, and come up with ways in which you will attempt to give the best answer. Imagine yourself after the exam feeling good about what you’ve written.
Reward yourself for your efforts.
Prefer to socialize? Call a friend at the end of the day instead of watching TV. It’s important to share life experiences, both good and bad, with others. Find something funny to laugh about. Laug
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