when I was a first-year medical student I was an absolute mess the workload was way more than I ever thought possible I kept on falling behind my lectures and I was getting terrible grades in all my assignments I'd be hanging out with friends until four in the morning get basically seriously stumble into lectures fall asleep in the lecture hall and generally things were not going well but then I decided that I was actually going to start doing this University thing properly because they say that University is supposed to be the best time of your life and so I started applying a handful of strategies that completely transformed my student experience and because of these strategies I managed to get through all six years of medical school while getting pretty good grades while building a business on the side and starting this YouTube channel and making friends for life and so in this video we're going to go over those eight strategies eight things that I really wish I'd been doing from day one that if I were a student again I would do to completely transform my student experience alright so let's start with strategy number one when I was in my first year I realized that managing my time was a thing that I wasn't very good at and I knew that there was just such a huge amount of stuff that I wanted to do in terms of studies and extracurriculars and joining clubs and societies and hanging out with friends and actually finding the time and making the space in my life to juggle all those things just wasn't happening and there was one simpler change that I made to my life that I've done ever since then for the last like 10 years which has been completely transformational and that was essentially running my life entirely through my calendar so before I started doing this this is what my calendar looked like it was basically blank except I would have my like two lectures a day scheduled in and the rest would be white space and I just sort of assumed that this is how you're supposed to use a calendar you schedule the things that are scheduled and then you do what you want with the rest of the time but then after reading a bunch of blogs and books about productivity and lifehacker.com and these other things I realized that the most productive people in the world almost all of them live their life based on their calendar and so then I started doing that I started scheduling what time I intended to wake up what time I intended to do my homework assignments or my essays what time I was going to go to these lectures what clubs I was going to which evenings I'd be hanging out with friends on and my calendar turned from a blank slate into like a rainbow looking calendar and that was completely game changing it's up to us how we want to allocate those 24 hours let's say you're sleeping for eight hours a day you've got 16 hours let's say you're studying or working or whatever for eight hours a day and then you have another eight hours that you need to figure out what to do with if you're not intentional about how you're using that time you're going to end up defaulting to the random that we default to when we're students I.E totally wasting time but at least if you're intentional about it you can nudge yourself towards acting in a way that you actually want to act and of course I'm not saying that it has to be productive all the time but at least try and be more intentional with your time and ever since I started doing that people started asking me questions how are you so good at managing your time it's literally because I just 100 run my life based on my calendar alright strategy number two was a thing that I discovered in my second year of medical school and again I wish I'd discovered this way sooner even when I was in high school and unsurprisingly it's about learning how to study efficiently this is something that no one teaches us you don't get taught in school or at University how to learn it's just something you're meant to pick up and you watch other people do it and you start highlighting and taking notes and like watching videos or doing whatever the hell you think because you think that like this this is how you learn no one no one taught me how to learn but what I discovered in my second year of medical school is that there is a vast swath of research out there where people have literally done studies showing what are the absolute bang for your buck methods for Effective studying like imagine you had two students and both of them have that same two hour block to study in except one student has actually taken some time to learn how to learn and knows what the effective studying techniques are and the other student is just making it up as they go along obviously the first student is going to be way more efficient they're going to get way more stuff into their brain they're going to have a better time it's going to be more fun because they're making more progress they're going to do way better in their exams and so I've actually been making videos on this stuff on YouTube for the last like five years now and so I'll put a little playlist up there and down below if you've not yet come across the strategies around efficient studying then you should definitely check them out and I guarantee they will completely transform your life continuing on the main theme of studying strategy number three is to study with friends and this is another one of those things that makes those those blocks of time in which you're studying way more efficient way more effective and way more enjoyable as well which is what makes it sustainable and fun and creates all the memories and all that fun stuff in my first year I realized that I was spending all my time on my own in my room or in the library and trying to study myself and it was just kind of draining it wasn't that fun the subjects weren't that interesting I was like I'm starting to be a doctor not studying to learn some random biochemistry Pathways that are going to be completely meaningless but then in my second year I decided you know what I want to try and get a really high Mark in my exam want to do this properly but I also want the journey to be enjoyable and I realized I could just study with my friends and so during exam term we got a group of friends together we're still friends to this day and we'd all go to different libraries and we'd all study we were all doing different subjects but we would all do the Pomodoro Technique together 25 minutes of work five minutes of rest but the fact that there were eight of us around a single table in a library made the entire process of studying way more effective because it was fundamentally more enjoyable and like with anything you do doing it with friends just makes it more fun now if you're interested in learning how to study more effectively then I've literally got a four hour long master class on this that will teach you everything you need to know what all of the evidence says around how to study effectively and it's available completely for free on skillshare who are very kindly sponsoring this video you've probably heard of skillshare by now they're a fantastic platform I've been a teacher on skillshare since 2019 and it's a great platform for online courses and almost anything imaginable from productivity and studying to cooking and video editing Graphic Design interior design they've got classes on everything but did you know that skillshare also has classes on all sorts of career related topic like how to break into different creative Industries and how to be a freelancer and how to launch merchandise on plan platforms like Etsy and Shopify things like that and actually very excitingly I also have a productivity learning path that is on skillshare so you can literally check out the page and check out my four classes on productivity in a sensible order and that's like a really cool way to experience my productivity classes if you're interested in becoming more productive with your time and so if you're a student and you want to study more effectively for your exams absolutely check out my classes on there about studying or about productivity or if you want to explore different possibilities in your career you can check out the other classes on the platform and the best bit is you can access all of these classes completely for free during the one month free trial so if you're one of the first 1 000 people to hit the link in the video description that will let you sign up for a completely free one month trial of skillshare during that time you can watch my four hour long studying masterclass which is all the evidence-based tips on how to study and you can check out the other classes on the platform and if you like it then you can continue with the premium subscription skillshare I've been a paying member of skillshare since like 2018 would fully recommend it so whether you're interested in time management or studying or productivity or marketing or sales then skillshare is a great place to check out if you want to learn those skills while you're at University so check out the link down in the video description and thank you so much skillshare for sponsoring all right so zooming out and thinking about the calendar let's say that one of the points of university is to get good grades to learn stuff and let's say for the sake of argument you're doing that for around eight hours a day that gives you another eight hours every day and 32 hours on the weekend to be able to do other more interesting things than studying and so these next five strategies that I would do if I were a student again are around what I would do with the rest of that time the time I wasn't spent directly trying to study for exams and the first one is that I would join way more clubs and societies I would I would think of them as sampling different types of experiences now there's a bunch of evidence that a chap called David Epstein cites where he kind of looks at what makes the most successful athletes are they the people that took one skill and just focused on that one skill like Tiger Woods who was playing golf from the age of three or are they people that sampled loads of different sports and then kind of decided what they went for apparently Roger Federer was like this he tried loads and loads of sports and then around like age 16 decided to double down on tennis which is very different to the kind of Tiger Woods model and then when Epstein post all the data on this apparently it turns out that like way more successful athletes are the ones that sampled loads of different sports rather just like laser focusing on one specific thing and so if you're spending all your time at University just laser focusing on this one subject that you care about you're missing out on a lot of other potential life experiences and also career experiences that could potentially get you ahead in life if that's what you care about but that could also add color and Vibes and like a magic Sparkle of enjoyment to your life as well [Music] I really wish that back when I was in Cambridge I tried more dancing or kickboxing or rowing or windsurfing or abseiling or climbing there were so many clubs and societies that I wanted to join but in the given moment I would think I'm just gonna do the easy thing instead of trying to go to this club and trying to meet new people and trying to try a new experience I'm just going to hang out with my friends that I already know as a Valentino it's obviously it's fun hanging out with friends but like it's one of those things that I I really wish I'd done more of and so if I had my time again I'd be sampling more of those experiences alright so the next strategy is something that I advise all students to do when they're at University and that is learn skills in the Universal toolbox so the universal toolbox is a toolbox of skills and techniques that if you learn how to do them even to a basic level they will help you out in life in ways that you can't even imagine so something like that would be public speaking whatever career you happen to be in being confident at public speaking is just ridiculously helpful for doing better in your career but also for having a more interesting life being good at negotiation is another one of those things and kind of hard to learn at University because they probably don't have a negotiation Club but like everything in life is a negotiation if you're better at negotiating you're better shading razors yes of course but you're also better at selling things whatever you're doing in your career you're better at putting yourself forward for new things you're even better at negotiating with your friends and family for relationships all of this kind of stuff another thing I would add to the universal toolbox is something like video editing like it sounds weird but like increasingly the world is moving multimedia YouTube is a thing social media is a thing if you know the basics of how to edit videos then even if you're a for example physics Professor later in life the fact that you know how videos work means that you'll be able to communicate information way more effectively than someone who does not know how to basically make a video something like coding or design or how to write a good presentation and so I'd be spending some of my non-studying time working on these different skills which are basically guaranteed to synergize with whatever career I do in the future by the way if you're enjoying this video so far I'd love it if you could hit the thumbs up button it really helps support the channel alright strategy number six is that I would try and experiment more with side hustles when I am a student again the reason for this is because because when you're a student you have loads of time on your hands it might seem oh like oh my God my life is so busy I'm so stressed but wait until you get a real job you know I've heard until you get kids then you'll be like oh I had so much time when I was a student then when you're a student is the perfect time to experiment with different side hustles where the stakes are pretty low and I put a lot of my kind of I guess financial success later in life to the fact that I experimented with side hustles when I was a student initially when I was in high school I was doing private tutoring I was helping people with maths and English and Science and that was a thing that was making me a few pounds every hour then when I got to University I started running courses helping kids get into medical school and then later on I started doing user interface design and web design for medical technology companies and all of those things fundamentally led to this YouTube channel starting which is completely completely transformed my life now at this point some people are like very anti-anti side hustle be like oh University is meant to be for enjoying yourself not for trying to make money in the capitalist machine ecosystem kind of thing to wish I'd say yes fine but also like would you say no to having an extra few hundred dollars a month or a few thousand dollars a month when you're when you're working a job most people end up in jobs that they don't actually enjoy that don't provide meaning and fulfillment if you have the skills of making money on the side then you're not tethered necessarily or Shackled to a job that you might not enjoy which to me was always something I really wanted to avoid I never wanted to be in a situation where I'm doing a job because I have to pay the bills and I'm not looking forward to work on a Monday and I'm hating my life and I think like experimenting with side hustles and learning how to build a business and learning the skills involved in making money means that at least in that part of your life you have more autonomy you have more control you have more Choice all right the final two strategies relate to relationships because yes part of university is about studying and part of universities about learning skills but a big part of universities about making friends and having fun and making memories and so strategy number seven that I would definitely do if I was a student again is to take way more photos now it's been about five years since I've graduated University I started University in 2012 and graduated in 2018 and so it's actually been 10 years since my first year of uni but every year I took lots and lots of photos I had a little camera I would take it around with me I would take photos on my phone and now all of those photos are in my Apple photos and it means that now 10 years on I see those like on this day like on this day six years ago on this day seven years ago and it's so nice to look back at those memories of seeing me and my friends hanging out or studying whatever that might be and these days for example I haven't seen my friend Paul all in many months because he lives in Singapore now but the other day I saw a photo of Paul in me on my little apple photos widget from like six years ago and I just sent him that on WhatsApp being like oh this was cute this was 2017. and there's something so nice about being able to relive those memories of Student Life by virtue of having taken photos and then the final strategy that I would do if I was doing University again if I was a student again is to really try and surround myself with energizers so you know that feeling where some of the friends you hang out with they really lift up your energy levels but you might have some friends in your life some people in your life where you hang out with them and it dampens your energy levels I would say that try your best to nudge the amount of time you spend more towards the energizers it's less about time management and more about like energy management like when it comes to productivity and efficiency and all this enjoyment all this kind of stuff if the people that you're surrounding yourself with are the people that are raising your energy level it just makes your whole life more enjoyable but it also gives you more energy to be able to apply to your studies but also to apply to the important things outside of your studies whereas if the people you're spending your time with are draining your energy then you have less energy to give to your studies and now you have to work harder and it feels Less Fun and now you have less spare time to do all the other eight things that we've talked about in this video so I don't mean this in the sense of like you know cut out all the friends that are draining your energy but at least nudge the time that you're spending more towards people that are lifting you up rather than the people that are bringing you down now if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more about how to manage your time as a student then check out this video over here which is an in-depth guide of the things that I would do specifically to manage my time and be more productive and be more efficient so check that out thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video bye