Guess what? It’s time for exams! You know what that means? Endless hours of constant studying in order to get barely passing grades in order to make it to the next semester. Yay!
In all seriousness, I don’t think I have ever studied in my life as hard as I have for this semester. I’m currently going through year two of my Mechatronics degree at university, and this semester has been a nightmare.
I’ve had back to back tests on the same day, multiple days of testing less than a week from one another, and I’m soon about to hit a week of hell where I’ll have to take four tests over three days with only two days prep time between THAT and my PREVIOUS test.
Out of then ten or so tests I need to do, at the time of writing I have done three of them, and have passed two (the third is still being graded).
You know the phrase, “Life isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon”? Well, this period of my life hasn’t been as much of a marathon as it is a series of back-to-back one hundred yard dashes, where the reward is the rest of the triathalon.
I just wanna play with my Springbok Casino bonus, man.
But enough about me griping about my situation. A lot of what I have to say here is, naturally, related to studying, but I think a lot of these tips can be just as easily applied to other projects. This trial by fire that I’ve been going through has made me hyperaware of my productivity. Every moment I’m not doing something feels like a moment wasted.
However, getting the motivation to haul my butt out of bed and get to work isn’t always as easy as it sounds. I bet you know what I’m talking about. Its dark and cold out, but the bed is inviting and warm and you want nothing more than to lie still and drift back to sleep, and not think about all the things you have to do…
So how to I find that motivation to put my head to the grindstone, and get to work? Well, I have some tips…
To Do Lists / Journals
One of the biggest reasons to procrastinate is because you don’t even know where to begin. You’ve got so many things on your plate, or the project that you need to do just feels to big to take on, so you don’t even begin. Some people attribute this kind of procrastination to perfectionism. People want to succeed, and big problems that require time and effort seem so overwhelming that it often seems better to avoid even starting then to risk failing them in the first place.
This is why you need to get all of these things you have to do out of your head and onto paper. To-do lists are an amazing and simple way to do this. However, don’t stop at just getting the things that need to be done onto the paper; break each of them down into smaller, more approachable steps.
For example, you might have a reasearch paper due for a class. Have the item of “research paper” be the header, and then break down the various steps you need to do. This could be broken down into “hunting for sources”, “research”, “Summarize”, “write”, “formate”, or any number of smaller chunks. You might realize that you can accomplish some of the research by watching a documentary on Netflix or YouTube.
To-do lists have become my go-to method for keeping on top of just about everything, from payments to studying to grocery shopping.
Adjacent to to-do lists are journals. Journals can be very personalized, but what really got me to use one was the lack of personalization. Is that a word? Whatever, that’s not the point.
I had always imagined journals as being basically the same as a diary. You write down how you feel every day, and sort of chronicle your life. That can be it, but it doesn’t have to be!
I use a journal filled with ONLY lined pages, and treat each page as a space for my daily to-do list. This way, I always have enough space for what I need to write down. My quantity of tasks every day is arbitrary, and range from being a couple lines to filling up so much space that I’m cramming notes and reminders into the margins.
Now, this doesn’t work for everyone. Some people prefer completely blank journals. Others prefer ones with the calenders, like a planner. Despite multiple attempts at them, I have never really clicked with those kinds of planners, but you might. Try them out and see what works for you.
The Two Minute Rule
You might have heard of this one. Productivity channels on YouTube love talking about it, and it’s easy clickbait. Who doesn’t want their problems solved in just two minutes?
The gist is simple: If there’s a task on your to-do list that can be done in two minutes, do it. Right now. Don’t think about it, get it done.
A lot of us have all this small, nagging things that have to get done, and sometimes they all build up to the point where it seems like big project in and of itself. Little things like “washing dishes” or “filling out a form” or “posting an update” feel a lot bigger than they are. But ask yourself, can this be done in two minutes? Then do it. You’ll feel so much better about it.
There is also another rule, by the same name: Even if you don’t feel like working on something, sit down and work on it for two minutes. At the end of the two minutes, you can get up and do something else. However, chances are that once you’re actually in the thick of it, you’ll want to keep going, and you’ll actually get it done. I know for a fact that this one works. Why? Because It’s how I got myself to work on this very article.
Scoreboard
Something new that I’m trying out is “Scoreboarding”. There are habits I want to start building, such as consistant studying and writing, but those are hard. A trick to keep up such habits is to build a scoreboard. On this scoreboard, you keep track of your goal (AKA: How much of thing you want to do every day/week/month), and alongside it you track how much you’ve actually done. In a program like Excel, you can graph it out, and have a visual representation of whether or not you’re keeping up with your goal.
There are some caveats. First, the thing you’re tracking actually has to matter to you. Studying may be important, but it may not be personally fulfilling. I’m not studying for the sake of studying. For me, I’ve given up caring about grade scores a long time ago, so long as I pass the courses I need to pass.
I’m not going through university because I like university. Therefore, my goal needs to be different. It needs to be something more like, “Pass X courses”. That’s a tangible goal that I can work towards, and I can feel motivated to track my progress towards.
If you want to work out every day, then you should have a specific goal that you want to achieve. Maybe you want to lose a certain number of pounds, or a be able to lift a certain weight. You’re goal is as important as the progress you make towards it. I recommend watching Tina Huang’s video, “The scoreboard I use to achieve my goals”, which goes into a lot more detail, and from there you can find where she got her sources.
Group Accountability
However, easily the biggest game changer for my studying habits was finding someone to study with. I’ve tried getting into study groups before, and most of them just never really clicked with me. It always felt like we would turn up, and then realize that we were all at different levels in the material, and then we would each just be studying on our own anyway. Any maybe that could be helpful regardless. You’re in a studying environment, and you are still studying, and that’s still better than nothing.
However, when you do find someone to study with and it clicks, it’s a real game changer. We’re both studying together at specifc times everyday, and we just keep going until neither of us can keep our eyes open. When I say that I have studied more in the last two weeks then the rest of my life, I’m only marginally exaggerating.
When I’m studying on my own, I usually can get through a couple of hours, but often times I get stuck on something simple and can’t, for the life of me, see what I’m doing wrong. In this last week, I’ve been regularly clocking in 6+ hour study sessions.
A study buddy not only keeps me on schedule, but gets me to question assumptions that I didn’t even realize I was making. “Why is this X?” or “Why do we a minus sign there?”
With two sets of eyes, we keep each other accountable and spot each others basic mistakes. Like when we forgot a minus sign in step two, that results in forty five minutes of work being wasted… blargh.
Know Your Limits
It’s important to push oneself to achieve one’s potential. I think that much is clear. However, there’s a line where sometimes it’s best to back away, and take a breather. I mention above about how I’m regularly doing more than six hours of study a day.
I’ve talked to people who claim to do double that. I can’t do that. That six hour mark seems to be my limit where the law of diminishing returns starts to apply. I’m tired, and there’s only so much I can input into my brain, and the longer I go the more effort it takes to even get simple things done.
Mike Rowe said it best, “Work smarter AND harder.”
And my addendum to that quote would be, “and don’t kill yourself in the process.”