i hate to break it to you but to me the secret to an effective study routine isn't candles or pastel highlighters even though they improve the experience a routine is a habit it's something you don't think about anymore it's a shortcut it reduces cognitive load and the beauty is it doesn't feel like a choice anymore you just do it you're used to doing it so you get it done today i want to help you make studying feel easy and to do this we're going to develop an effective study routine this saves me during uni where i feel like i have a million things to juggle so i want to make this video as practical as possible and i really hope it helps you live a more social less stressed free and wonderful academic life the first element to any effective study routine is planning the more you know about what your upcoming exams homework class prep essays all of that are gonna look like the more you can filter that into your study activity so that you're prepared like how do you know how to guide your study activities unless you know what things are coming up and how long they're gonna take you so much happens during uni that i know if i lived just day to day i would fall apart like i did in first gen so planning is good we like planning the first tip i have within planning is a concept i came up with just now it's called the mandatory minimum it's so important to get really good at estimating how long tasks actually take you because the more accurately you can estimate your study activities the more easily you can plan that into your timetable into your life and so when i look at my upcoming week for university i have this idea of the mandatory minimum in the back of my head this is the minimum amount of time i need to prepare really well for that class for that homework to write the essay and my knowledge of my mandatory minimum for all of these things is guided by my experience odds are you're repeating these things again and again you are doing homework every week you have to do class prep every week so you can get good at learning how long that actually takes you and knowing your mandatory minimum lets you know the minimum amount like even if life gets so so so busy as long as you do this minimum you're gonna be okay for example on a tuesday i have two classes in my afternoon they're at 2pm and 4pm and each is 90 minutes so i only have half an hour in between them and if i didn't know my mandatory minimum was longer than that half an hour and if i decided oh let's just do preparation in between the two i would be screwing myself over every single time for that second class for every class i have a bunch of readings to do i have pre-class work i have to submit and i also get a test question in every class where i get tested on the readings so if i haven't done the readings i'm not gonna be able to answer this question and this also goes towards my final degree and just everything will fall apart so it's important i do that prep work well i now know that my mandatory minimum for my philosophy elective class is two hours it takes forever for me to read sometimes 40 pages or more of like an original philosopher's argument and then depending on the classes pre-work it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour my mandatory minimum for my business classes which is my minor is an hour generally if we're talking minimum i can do it in an hour and then generally an hour for the pre-class work which i submit oh my god last week i got given a data set for a company's marketing efforts and i had to manually code and do a bunch of statistical tests to work out which of their marketing efforts was more successful under different parameters and i remember seeing that pre-class work and being like bloody hell this is going to take me a long time and if i wasn't aware of the mandatory minimum if i hadn't looked at that in advance i would not have been able to do it in time for the class and then my mandatory minimum for all my neuroscience classes is two and a half hours depending on how dense the readings are if i didn't know my mandatory minimum for all of these classes in my schedule it would be so easy to accept invitations with friends to schedule too many activities to get overwhelmed and bogged down this would lead to me being unprepared and then being stressed after and have a knock-on effect on my understanding and i feel like i'd always be running and catching up so this mandatory minimum means that at least i'm gonna be okay in these classes and i can plan my life accordingly and then the next mandatory minimum in my academic life is assignments and essays for you that might be homework it might be end of chapter tests i get given an essay sometimes two a week they take me varying lengths of time but i now know that i like to have one session for planning it and one session for doing it for me this is a mandatory minimum of five hours and i know i have to find the time somewhere with my class schedule with my readings with youtube with all these other things and then i also know that i'm exhausted after classes so my best time to work is the morning so i have in my head okay cool this mandatory minimum of morning sessions focused on my upcoming essays and this concept of mandatory minimum i apply to everything in my life it's you know it takes me an hour to make a youtube thumbnail it takes me this long to film to plan a video all these things and this is just the first step to having a good routine is estimating how long things take you but the demands of my degree of your academic life change which is why i use monthly weekly and daily overviews we're all familiar with the to-do list we know what it is it's a list of annoying things we have to check off but they're really helpful to guide you and i've gotten into the habit of on a sunday i plan the coming week it takes like 30 minutes to an hour on a sunday evening i look at the topics we're gonna be covering and how long it's gonna take me like how dense the pre-work is how dense the readings are to see if i need more than my mandatory minimum it lets me look at essay deadlines coming up all of these things and it just gives me the foresight to know should i overwhelm myself with saying yes to friends to doing a million exciting exploration things in the city or is that going to make me really stressed because there's a lot going on and then from this week overview every single day i can come back to it and then i can make a to-do list for that day i generally love notion and google calendar as a combination but i also love jack edwards's ink outside the box weekly calendar you can also use a planner so all of this is just to shape your study routine that you're going to have for that day what are you going to be studying why are you doing those activities because you've planned them you're aware of everything you've got to do in the week like you spending time now in this study session is great because you know that it's something you've got to tick off okay cool so we've talked about the high level of planning which i think is the first step and now we're going to talk about the activity of studying itself one of the things i talk about in my book is called sanctity of space the idea is that our brains come to associate physical spaces with an activity when we're in the kitchen we expect to cook or to eat which is why we often feel hungry when we're in bed our brain expects to sleep which is why you often feel tired or relaxed when we sit at our desks what do you want your brain to expect what are you training your brain every single time you sit here to believe and that's the thing you need to have the discipline to carve this space as a study space to get your brain in this mindset of when i sit here i'm studying and that means don't go on your phone there if you can every single time that you want to go on your phone or you want to scroll actively come away from your desk or your study space like sit on your bed go outside the room sit on the floor make it so that your brain thinks this space is for deep work and if you don't have a desk that's okay like if you use a certain cafe or a library try not to go on your phone too much in that library so that when you enter the space you're telling your brain i am here because i'm gonna study secondly as i said earlier habits are repeated over time until they become unconscious activities the best way to know when to put the habit in is to look at your life and think what is the time my brain is most active when is a logical place for me to always study i know that when i was at school i had the most motivation either early in the morning or just when i came home from school by the time it was late at night i just wanted to go on my phone i wasn't productive so i got into the habit of coming home every single day going and getting a snack taking off my school uniform and then just sitting down and blurting down every thing that i needed to do on my to-do list it would just come gushing out of me all these things on my mind and it wasn't hard to make this to-do list it didn't require energy because it was a habit i didn't think i just came home got the snack went upstairs and just wrote it down and then i quickly prioritize what i need to do the first step is already done and then just spend an hour or so doing that task and then later i enjoy my phone enjoying my life nowadays my uni timetable is more dotted around so i build a routine around certain spaces and around my classes for that day i love going to assign cafe for doing readings i love going to a certain workspace for classes i love doing youtube and creative work at my desk here whatever it is make it a habit get used to deeply focusing on one task set yourself small breaks so deep focus for like half an hour and then have a 10 minute break that is what an effective study routine is it's habit it's reinforcement it's knowing your space that you're going to go to to get these things done and it's having planned it in advance so just to recap what is a study routine a study routine is the high level planning of what you want to do it's having an understanding of the mandatory minimum time it takes you to do things having sanctity of space over your chosen location and then being disciplined enough to do the routine again and again until it becomes a habit i really hope this helps you in some way and i know school can be so stressful so just developing a study routine is one really concrete step to feeling less stressed feeling in control it sounds really weird to say it but i actually did write a book on this topic it's called the only study guide you ever need which is a very pretentious name and it details everything from timetabling to study habits how to revise motivation all of that stuff i'll leave it the link to it down below my casual magic for today which is just like a little thing that i'm grateful for is well this morning i woke up and i heard these kids like playing outside before going to school in the morning and i was making my porridge and i was just listening to them and i was like ah like i know there's something about children's joy which is just so refreshing sometimes i wish i could have that that childish playfulness again it's just i love it have a wonderful rest of your day and let me know if there are any study related videos or specific university videos you'd like to see bye [Music]