we need to stop being so obsessed with the number of hours we study there are so many
eight hours study with me videos on youtube or how i'm able to study 12 hours a day videos and
i've made a fair view of these videos myself on this channel because they get a lot of
views these kind of videos do really well on my channel suggesting that you guys are aiming
to be studying for 12 hours a day but for this video i really want to get across that focusing
on the number of hours that you study a day is generally the opposite of studying smart because
when you're focusing on the number of hours you need to study that day you're more bothered about
reaching that time goal rather than the real goal of studying for your exams so you get a higher
grade right that's the aim you want to achieve a higher grade and it's parkinson's law in action
parkinson's law states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
the more time you have to work on a task the more time it will take you to do it so let me give you
an example you have a deadline for a 2000 word assignment and you're given one month to write it
now i'm curious how many of you would actually start writing that assignment on the first day
that you get it and how many of you would leave it until the last week of the deadline and i bet
even some of you might even wait until the last 24 hours before the deadline before you started
right and actually in my first year of university i would start that assignment pretty much straight
away on the first day or second day something like that but the problem i had was that because i had
given myself one month to write it that's a lot of time to write 2 000 word assignment right so
i kind of procrastinate by taking far too long to write it so i'd research for hours and hours and
i'd explore tangential problems and opportunities i debate different topics with myself that just
weren't needed for the assignment and basically it would take me a lot longer to write that 2000
word assignment than was actually needed because there was essentially no time pressure i was more
focused on the number of hours i was studying than the actual task itself so i set myself a
target of studying a minimum of eight hours a day and my main goal was to fill up this eight hours
with studying not necessarily fill it up with eight hours of productive studying so i'm kind of
making this video so that you guys can learn from my mistakes that i made in my first year because
it can be a waste of a lot of time and it's just not studying smart so first in order to really
decrease the number of hours you have to study by studying smarter the first thing you need to
do is figure out what your goal is from each class not every class is going to be important or even
relevant to you there might be classes that are essential to your future that you'll need for your
career and there are those classes that maybe are not so important and maybe they contribute a very
small percent to your overall grade then you need to figure out what you actually need from your
classes to achieve your goals so really dig deep and get to the point of why you're really studying
do you need a 4.0 gpa do you really need a certain grade to get into your first choice university or
an internship or to be accepted for a graduate job do you want to build a strong network around you
you need to really sit down and figure this out because something like i want to learn more
is not really specific enough we all want to learn more we can take free classes and read books there
is almost endless amount of information we can read and watch online but why specifically are you
spending thousands of dollars on your education so narrowing down your main one or two goals is
incredibly important but i can't cover it all here you can check out the transform your grades course
there's a link in the description i launched the course a few months ago and it has a workbook
productivity planner lectures quizzes exercises a private community and one-on-one coaching from me
it really is everything you need to transform your grades in one package and there's a 50 promotional
offer again in the link in the description below check it out so the next step is to figure out
the least amount of studying you need to do now this is not coming from a place of being lazy
but it's coming from a place of efficiency why would you study for 12 hours a day if what you
want to achieve can be done in six hours but with more efficient studying right so for example my
goal was to graduate with a 4.0 gpa so i figured out the major assignments and exams in my course
and worked out what exactly was needed for me to get really good grades in those assignments
and exams this often meant finding the marking criteria for each subject and also finding exam
pass papers so i could kind of get an idea of what would be required for me occasionally we would be
given some homework that wasn't graded in any way it didn't go towards our final grade and it didn't
really help us in the preparation for our final exams or assignments so this kind of homework i
would spend far less time on because it didn't bring me closer to my overall goal of reaching
a 4.0 gpa studying smart is really about narrowing down your workload to the absolute essentials the
tasks that really affect your overall grade and spend more time on those and the tasks that don't
affect your overall grade spend less time on those so for example going through exam past papers were
incredibly important in order to get a decent grade so i doubled down on going through those
on the other hand reading every word of a thick textbook was more or less a complete waste of time
so obviously i didn't do that i go through this topic in more detail in a video i made recently
how i study smarter not harder you can click on the pop-up banner right up there to watch it i
think what i really want to get across in this video because i don't think i've talked about it
enough is to understand that you're studying will expand to fill the time that you give it so
if you give yourself 12 hours to write an assignment you'll probably use that entire
12 hours by writing an assignment not only that but if you can write it in two hours
but you give yourself 12 hours you'll probably be studying relatively slowly because you know
you've got loads of time to do it in and that can be problematic because when we're studying
without urgency then it's really easy for procrastination to creep in when we know
that browsing through social media for 30 minutes won't really affect the outcome of the assignment
then that can be a dangerous place to find yourself in every assignment that you do should
bring you closer to a specific goal so why are you writing this why do you need a good grade for that
assignment what percent does it contribute to your overall grade the second thing is pseudo studying
it's a real thing again i've not really talked much about pseudo-studying on this channel but
it's basically where you're tricking yourself into thinking that you're studying but you're
not really studying so you might be reading a textbook but you're kind of reading it lazily
you're not really processing the information so you're just kind of wasting your time it's the
complete opposite of studying smart instead you need to study actively so ask yourself questions
summarize your notes things like that and studying actively is maybe the single most important thing
when it comes to studying smarter again i go through it in great detail in the transform
your grades course link in the description below now i'm going to contradict myself here i talk
about making studying fun quite a lot which is important is very important to make your studying
engaging in the video i made on 13 ways to make studying more fun i talk about watching youtube on
your subject and watching documentaries and things of that nature but if you really want to cut
down the number of hours you're studying then you need to make your studying more focused than that
so extra work that you're doing such as this that is not bringing you closer to your overall goal
is probably not worth doing so studying for 12 to 14 hours a day it's just not needed for probably
more than 95 of you unless you're in an ultra competitive med school or something similar if
you're studying for 12 to 14 hours a day then it probably means that you need to revise your goals
and study more efficiently where can you shave time off where are you allocating time where
you shouldn't be where are you studying where studying isn't necessary if you're studying 14
hours a day it means that you have 10 hours a day to do everything else so let's say you have eight
hours a night to sleep right which is about what you should be getting so now you have two hours
in the day to do things like showering commuting grocery shopping cooking that kind of necessary
thing that you need to do to stay alive right but the problem here is that you've now run out of
time to do the things that are not essential for staying alive so things that are still important
like exercising and occasionally socializing so studying 14 hours a day in my opinion at least
it's just not a sustainable long-term strategy and if you can do it long term you'll be sacrificing
other areas of your life that you might regret later on so this whole video in a nutshell focus
not on the hours that you study but on the tasks that you complete and make sure those tasks are
taking you closer to your overall goal i made a video recently on how i plan my day to encourage
studying smarter not harder you can click on the video on the screen and i also made a kind
of motivational video study advice video called d grade students versus a grade students you can
click on the video on the screen to watch that in whichever video you choose i'll see you over there