How I Study

Published: 2023-10-26

2024-02-11: Added that I listen to DnB as well as told you to go to sleep and wake up and the same time every day

One of my friends asked me for study tips and I thought sharing it publicly could help other people who were interested.

Advice pulled from Atomic Habits, Deep Work, AMFN, James Scholz, and my personal experience.

Not everything I do is going to work for you. Take what works leave what doesn’t.

You’re now someone who is proud of their ability to focus and work hard. Making it a part of who you are will make it easier to make choices that align with that idea of yourself.
This personality is also easier to maintain if you’re studying for things you care about and what to get good at. If not that’s okay, just wanting to be generally productive works too.

But time is limited, we’re capped to 24 hours a day.
Develop better focus first, then try to stretch that focus out for as long as you can.
Start at trying to do 1 hour or 1 50-minute pomodoro session of deep work a day (more on what that is later), then add more time as yFu get comfortable with focusing.
Focusing on how we focus and what we focus on also influences how we think about what we spend our time doing our day to day lives, which is a very good thing, we’re are very distracted these days, so cultivating focus will allow us to live more intentional lives.

Grades are a consequence of doing quality work. You cannot “get” grades, they’re given to you as a result of your work. Don’t focus on the grade, focus on the systems to acquire it.

when I was a real goblin I’d wake up at 6, be at my desk at 7am, then study for 8 hours, till 3pm. There was no inner turmoil or debate about if I should do it or not, it’s what I did.
It didn’t start out that way, but it got there eventually.

I work with the pomodoro system, following 50 minutes of studying and 10 minute breaks (so technically I only studied for 6h 40m a day at my peak… I’m a fraud.)
I use forest and it track metrics on what I study on and for how long, you also got coins to new unlock trees. It’s cute and game-ifyed it, but it’s not required.
There are also those study with me videos if you think those will motivate you.
Any pomodoro timer will do, anything that can track sessions and what you were working on

Make it as frictionless to study as possible, and make it as difficult to be distracted as possible.
Put your phone in another room.
Listening to music or not varies from person to person. I listen to Jazz standards or DnB mixes or rain noises.

Have a chair that you don’t hate sitting on, stand up and stare out a window during your breaks.
Get 8 hours of sleep, try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day (even the weekends). But if you’re reading this then you’ve likely talked to me enough to have heard this from me by now.
Get a blue light shifter on your computer if you study late, f.lux works.
Get some exercise, your body and brain likes it.
Have a big bottle of water next to you, the extra trips to the bathroom are worth it.

Reach out if you have questions kthanksbye 😳