Thread by @eclipsict

—how to be productive and study efficiently without feeling burnt out ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

[from my personal experience]

—a #studytwt thread ✎

—♡/↺ pls!

1. don’t force a schedule.

it is always preached that in order to be disciplined in your studies you must follow some sort of schedule. personally, this has never worked out for me and i found myself getting stressed about my schedule and ending up with a lot less study hours.

for example, if i had a study block between 6-7, and its currently 6:10 and i havent started, i’d just call off the entire session simply because i was 10 minutes late. instead, i find it more useful to simply start studying whenever, and for as long as i want to. no limits.

this way, i can sit and study without breaks for over 2 hours without getting bored—overall, not limiting myself to any time period and not having a very strict schedule helped me.
[this works well for revision. with assignments, the strict schedule may work more efficiently.]

2. don’t spend too much time making notes.

outside of class, when you’re rewriting notes, don’t spend a great amount of time trying to make your notes overly aesthetic. i find that taking over a certain amount of time to write notes leads me to not remember anything at the end.

instead, allow yourself to get messy. try to condense your notes into certain main takeaways. i also find it useful to get rid of extra wording in order to my remember notes better.
for example, “waves that are unpolarized have oscillations in all planes/directions.” —>

can be condensed into—> “unpolarized: [oscillation in] all planes”. and so on. furthermore, after completing a page of notes, go back and annotate and try to perhaps come up with questions that you can research/ask your professor about. this is a way to make notes interactive.

3. analyze your answers.

after completing exams/past papers, look back at questions you got wrong and try to figure out which way of thinking led to this wrong answer. if possible, without looking at the method in the markscheme, try hard to reach the right answer yourself.

4. no music—not even lofi

i’ve found that any type of music playing in the background distracts me from the work i’m doing. statistically, i end up getting about 20% more wrong answers than i would normally—the cause of error being simple reading mistakes. even with lofi-

-it is difficult for me to focus as the songs end up relaxing me when instead i need to be alert. having no sound in the background works perfectly as the only thing i can focus on is the voice inside my head reading the questions and processing the information to answer them.

5. diversify your study methods

the key to not being burnt out in my experience is having different study methods. being a physics/maths student, obviously there are methods that didn’t end up working for me such as flashcards or knowledge organizers. however, even something-

so small like reciting my notes to myself out loud or answering a question by voicing my thought process helps me and adds more fun to my studies—rather than simply sitting there in silence and writing away. everyone will have different methods work for them-

so, it is important that you find which ones are those that you enjoy the most. furthermore, experimenting and triangulating with different methods to see the impact on the long run will be useful. here’s a link to some effective study methods: e-student.org/best-study-met…

6. self-teaching

perhaps you’re like me, if so, you’ll find more enjoyment in teaching yourself topics that are ahead in the curriculum (or even outside the curriculum). studying is a lot more fun for me when it doesn’t feel like a chore—and if i am teaching myself something-

that’s not taught in college (yet), i’ll be more prone to wanting to learn and practice to get better at the topic. you can use this at school to get a step ahead of everyone else, even bring some confusing questions to your teacher and have a discussion about them.

7. exams exams exams

there’s 2 types of studying for me—studying for exams and actually studying content to understand it better. i do past papers in order to study for exams, to get used the style of questions but i don’t necessarily end up grasping everything about the topics.

to avoid this, start studying with the goal to understand the content rather than just memorizing some words and formulas. watch youtube videos, real-life examples/applications of topics (if this applies to your subjects of course) and really try to grasp the concepts.

—and don’t forget about the usual stuff: stay hydrated, grab some tea/coffee and make yourself comfortable.

—that’s it. thank you for reading ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

—♡/↺ if you found this useful!

@nlovephysics @143eriou @07txt_ @kairastudy @studyblush @icychoc0 @umatatata025 @eurynus @talaseas @shosmochi @ujincngtip @addystuds @beeomies @caverslattee @tararast @anastudycafe @crystaliake @elthegleams @stdyng_ @MissAnyaCPA @i_camaba23 @user21090605 @bbtimewithnotes