I believe that at least seventy percent of your academic success comes from a solid study
routine.
A good set of learning habits and well-paced study sessions go a long way in helping you
achieve academic success next year.
Perfecting your study routine is probably the most important thing you can start doing
right now, even before classes start.
(1) organizing and (2) managing your time are the two most crucial things you have to
master to become a more mindful student.
To build our perfect study routine we will keep two principles in mind: scheduling all
of your course work (with an exception) from monday to friday and keeping your weekend
free from any academic related tasks.
There are some main rules to create a perfect study routine:
- 1) **Schedule short study sessions, every day**.
In most typical college schedules, your classes will probably take a morning or an afternoon,
or the equivalent of six to eight hours of classes divided in multiple chunks of time.
This means that you should manage the remaining hours of the day to do most of your coursework,
as well as taking enough time to take your meals, relaxing and having the appropriate
number of hours of sleep.
In doing this, less is better - the best students know how to schedule daily small chunks of
deeply focused work, instead of cramming everything once a week or right before the exam.
You should forget the typical idea stating that more time studying equals more memorisation
or comprehension.
In fact, studying for an extended period of time without breaks may actually hurt your
ability to learn your material.The goal here, then, is to schedule one to three study sessions
per day in your calendar.
Usually, each study session (and that means an uninterrupted stretch of time of focused
work) should range from 20 minutes to one hour.
Whether you study for 20 , forty or sixty minutes depends on a number of variables like
your levels of energy, focus, your interest on the learning material and even your comprehension
of the subject.
Harder topics may require a longer study session, while easier topics may only need a 20 minute
revision time.
Interesting topics or problem sets can probably be solved faster, since you are more motivated
to work through them, then boring exercises.
The secret is to understand that each session should range from 20 minutes to 1 hour.
After a session is complete you should take a break from 5 to 15 minutes and after the
break is over you can proceed to a second study session continuing the same subject
or related to other course.
Since we are trying to maximize your effort in less time, it's recommended that you do
no more than three focused study sessions in a row.
Our goal is to create a manageable and short study routine that can be repeated daily and
not an overwhelming period of reading and problem solving that only happens once or
twice a week.
2) **Schedule a longer buffer session per week.** Although you should focus your efforts
on small chunks of deep work during the week, it's a good idea to schedule a couple of hours
per week as your buffer.
You can use this to either consolidate past materials created during the week or to make
up for the time you've lost due to some unforeseen event.
An early morning or an evening during the weekend is a great time to place your buffer
in your schedule since it's probably a more flexible time for you and since it's also
the end of your weekly classes, you can use it for any of your courses.
Remember that the goal is to **not use your buffer** but you should schedule it anyway
so you know it's there in case something goes wrong during the week.
If you've been organized and were able to keep up with your schedule then you've just
earned a couple of hours of time for yourself.
3) **Have strict time management habits.** A good study routine can only be created and
maintained with strict time management habits.
And here I refer to time management as the act of allotting specific study related tasks
to specific slots of time or, in this case, your short study sessions.
This means that your short study sessions shouldn't comprise of an abstract selection
of school work but rather an organized workflow of tasks you need to complete.
For instance, if you schedule a study session in your calendar from 2 to 3 pm and just plan
to study for your "European Politics" class, that's *bad* time management.
When scheduling that event in your calendar, you should already know what specific tasks
you should be covering during that hour.
For instance, a good example of this would be planning to "read from page 15 to page
30" for European Politics and answer two discussion questions.
Another important point for strict time management is that you should consistently go through
the list of tasks you have to complete on a certain day or week, evaluate them and move
them around if needed.
Basically, the first thing you should be worried about is your own perception of the amount
of work you have to go through-
Organizing you study schedule in the correct way will give you freedom to spend the remaining
time reading, playing video games, going out or simply stay at home and watch tv, but if
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I hope you enjoyed today's video and I will see you next week.
Bye guys!