I have not made a study plan ever since I got into medical school when I flopped my a levels and didn't get the grades I needed to get into medical school I made a study plan every single day fast forward 6 years after resetting my exams and eventually getting my place at Medical School I passed every single one of my exams and not only that I got into my Top Choice area for my first job as a doctor coincidence I think not I am about to drop a little bit of bombshell on you and explain why making a study plan could be harmful to your grades and not only that but also what I do instead if you're new here then my name is Fay I am a final year medical student in the UK and the aim of this channel is to unashamedly explain all the silly silly mistakes that I've made over the past few years in the hopes that you guys could learn from mine and avoid making those mistakes for yourself if living a more successful and fulfilled life sounds like something that you would be interested in then make sure to click the Subscribe button down below reason number one why I hate study plans the worm versus the snail now the snail has a shell on it it is rigid it is hard and if you have ever seen a snail move it does not move very quickly versus the worm worms are slippery slimy flexible overall just a lot more superior to the snail previously when I would make study plans I would create a rigid robust 6 week schedule that I would try to stick to when each topic would be allocated a onh hour slot if it needed any more time than that allocated 1 hour slot tough they won't getting it a lot of the times study plans completely neglect that some topics are going to take longer than others some topics we going to be weaker in some topics we're going to go over them once and then a week later forget and then need to recap it and then unpredictably need to recap it at a later a date the rigidity of study plans is one of the reasons I hate them the most studying is an art it is fluid it is not prescriptive we all have different brains we all have different memories there are some topics that just will always stick in my head for some unbeknownst reason whereas individuals who are of equal intelligence May struggle with that individual topic but a topic that I might really struggle with sticks with them another aspect of the rigidity of study plans that is detrimental is the neglect for high yield topics now not all topics are created equally there are some topics that you will learn about for any exam that will almost certainly come up year after year after year and then there are some topics that are incredibly Niche and may never come up and honestly if you never touched upon them once you may still be able to get a pretty decent grade in an exam another reason that I hate the rigidity of a study plan is how it neglects how you feel on that day this may sound really fluffy and really wishy-washy and I can just tell that some of you are probably thinking F bill build a bridge steady is not meant to be easy we don't need to Bubble Wrap everyone it is hard it's draining it's boring you just need to get over it I 100% get that however from doing 5 years of medical school exams there have been days where I have tried with every answer my being push myself through the burnout and I physically have not been able to and I would have just been so much better to take the evening off rest recuperate and come back to it in the morning I think the issue that I always found with the study plan is if my days were so rigid ly structured and then I got to the afternoon and I just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep I would feel so much more guilty doing that because then I would be behind on my study plan and I'd never be able to catch up for women if you're ill or burnt out or at a certain point in your cycle a lot of the times these aren't things that can be predicted 6 weeks in advance kind of moving on from the guilt that I would feel when I used to make a study plan is my second reason that I do not like study plans and that is the colorcoded plan that never gets cross out now when I used to create study plans I would allocate a couple hours out of my day to create my study plan for like the next 6 weeks 8 weeks 3 months whatever and those 3 hours would eventually engorge the entirety of the day because I would be having way too much fun organizing my topics on a colorcoded daily chart that I would neglect the actual activities that are actually going to get me better grades in my exams and the worst part is I would convince myself that I would was being productive the cherry on top of all of this is I would spend an entire day creating this study plan and I would never and I mean never stick to it now if you're someone who creates a study plan and religiously sticks to it then well done you this video probably isn't for you keep doing what you're doing I certainly was not one of those individuals Not only was it a complete waste of my time but it felt like a huge Cloud hanging over my head for the entirety of exam season a reminder of of the failure I was at being able to allocate and delegate my time correctly and not procrastinate final reason that I do not like steady plans is the Brussels sprouts or the Lindor analogy would you rather 50 brussels sprouts or five Lindor now personally I really do not like brussels sprouts if you really like brussels sprouts then again well done to you this video probably isn't for you I would much prefer Lindor just because there is 50 brussels sprouts it really does not make me want them any more than the five lindel if you haven't CAU on already I am referring to the ageold saying poliy over quantity I myself was sucked into thinking that quantity was more important last year when I was studying for my medical school exams I set myself a daily quota of how many practice questions I had to complete in a day to the point that by the end of the day I was getting every single question wrong eyes half shut crying out for my bed and some rest probably not remotely benefiting from getting any of these questions wrong because my focus was just purely to get through the questions and hit that number now the method behind my madness was by doing as many questions as possible I would get through the breadth of content that was required to pass my medical school exams and to an extent quantity is important I could have done one question every single day but if I really done it thoroughly it still probably wouldn't have been enough to pass there's a balance but I think with study plans it often puts the weight on quantity over quality I truly believe that four or 6 hours of good quality studying is infinitely more beneficial than guilt tripping yourself into spending 12 to 15 hours in the library slowly dragging yourself through each minute so if I do not make a study plan what is it that I do instead well at the beginning of any exam season I lay out my goals I lay out weaknesses from from last exam season areas of improvement rough targets of maybe how many questions I want to have got through rough goals for what I would have wanted to achieve by the time I come to sit the exam to know that I feel like I've done enough for me I know that if by the end of exam season I'm getting decent marks on mock papers I'm getting decent marks on my question Banks um I'm up to date with my flashcards then I feel relatively confident that I've done enough to pass so I have my initial laying everything out session and then instead of having a study plan every single morning I have a little bit of a ritual for planning out my day I will write out the date and next to it I'll write you got this and a little heart and then I will write a daily schedule in half an hour slots and plan out my day based on how I did the day before any weaknesses I noticed how I feel that day take for example I'm Midway through exam season I have a couple of past papers that I haven't done that I want want to get done I have my flashcards to go over and I also have a couple of topics I noticed I was particularly weak on the day before then I will write out my daily schedule um I might schedule in to do one of those mock papers as I know that's part of my overall goals for that exam season um I'll also schedule in reviewing my flashcards because I like to do that every single day of exam season and ideally not exam season but doesn't always happen and then I'll also schedu in a little bit of time to focus in a lot more intensely on the areas of weakness that I noticed from the day before so normally I like to plan out about 3 hours in the morning have a little bit of break for lunch and then come back and then based on how I did that morning plan out the next 3 hours and then after those 3 hours are done depending on what stage it is in exam season or how I'm feeling that day or how productive the morning and afternoon were I might then decide to go home have a little bit of dinner have a little bit more of a restful evening or if I'm still feeling productive still feeling energized it's quite late on in exam season or I've had a particularly unproductive unhelpful morning I might choose to stay for another 3-hour session in the evening if you've watched any of my other videos you'll know that I'm a big big big advocate for batching tasks now batching tasks is just grouping all the tasks that are similar together to improve efficiency and to reduce the cost of task switching I can't actually remember what it's called but I'll put it here it's basically just the energy you use up by switching from one task to the next so anyway I am a big advocate for batch tasking getting all your daily plans for the next few weeks done so that you can just get up get to the library and you do not have to think about what you're doing on that day for me personally doing my plan every morning and afternoon and evening usually only takes me about 5 minutes and it's got to the point where it is such a ritual in my study routine that I actually feel like it really grounds me it's almost like a little bit of a warm up for me and it gets me in the zone of knowing I'm in the library to get done alongside it being so flexible and allowing me to incorporate all my weaknesses and adap the plant my knees for that day one of my favorite things is checking off each half an hour with my little red pen and giving myself that quick little dopamine kick that I need to get me through the rest of the day rather than having the guilt hanging over me of an empty 6 week color coordinated study plan studying is hard and mundane enough as it is I think when we can give ourselves these little moments of Joy these little moments of satisfaction motivation encouragement then I don't think we should shy away from that I think that we think that we can achieve more when we beat ourselves up and I get so scared that the adrenaline hits me and I study a lot harder however that is great for 5 days before my exam if I was to constantly be going through that for the eight weeks on the lead UPS of my exam I would get burnt out so quickly and it has happened before the pressure ate me up and I burned out I reckon about 3 weeks before my exam these little moments of encouragement really can just be as simple as Crossing out your daily schedule with a red pen or rewarding yourself with going home early because you've achieved everything that you wanted for the day if you made it to the end of this video then maybe you can leave a little calendar and across Emoji in the comment section I hope you enjoyed this video if you did then please don't forget to like comment and subscribe to join the community I hope you have a wonderful wonderful wonderful week and I will see you in the next video by