When I was a first year medical student, I was an absolute mess.
The workload was way more than I'd 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 4 in the morning,
get basicallyzero sleep,
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.
All right, 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 simple 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 realised 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.
Now, if you're not intentional about how you're using that time,
you're going to end up defaulting
to the random shit 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 then 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 have 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.
All right, 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 realised 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 starting 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 exams,
I want to do this properly.
But I also want the journey to be enjoyable.
And I realised 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 masterclass 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 topics,
like how to break into different creative industries and
how to be a freelancer and
how to launch merchandise on 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 1000 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 of 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 this video.
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 slash 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 8 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 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 passed 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
than 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
That's what you care about, but that could also add colour and
vibes and like a magic sparkle
of enjoyment to your life as well.
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 going to 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.
There's a balance, you know, it's obviously it's fun hanging
out with friends, but like
it's one of those things that I really wish I'd done more of.
And so if I had my time again, I'd be sampling more of those experiences.
All right, 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,
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 at negotiating raises.
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, family,
relationships, all of this kind of stuff.
Another thing I would add to the universal toolbox is something
like video editing.
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.
All right, 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 when you're a student,
you have loads of time on your hands.
It might seem like, oh my God, my life is so busy, I'm so stressed,
but wait until you get a real job.
I've heard wait until you get kids, then you'll be like, oh shit,
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 has completely transformed my life.
Now at this point, some people are like very 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 which 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 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 university is about learning skills,
but a big part of university is 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
or whatever that might be.
And these days, for example,
I haven't seen my friend Paul 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.
And 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 energisers.
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.