Studying is boring, right?
Every time you have to open up a text book
or tackle a homework assignment,
a million things go through your mind
that would be more fun to do.
Like skydiving or watching paint dry
or typing a YouTube comment about how the fact
that I'm holding a fidget spinner right now
makes you want to puke.
Yeah, I can see you warming up your fingers Derek.
Of course, studying is something that you sometimes
have to do
which leads to the obviously question if you have to do it,
is there at least a way to make it more fun?
Or at least less boring?
Well that's what I want to talk about today.
I'm gonna get this out here right up front,
there is no way to make studying always fun.
After all, part of learning process
is to sometimes go through challenging
and difficult material
and that's not always going to be a walk in the park.
But there are things you can do
to make studying more fun more of the time.
And that's what I want to talk about in this video.
So let's dive right in.
(rap beat)
First and foremost, if you want to make studying fun,
you need to get interested in your topic.
All the way back in 1913,
Francis Lockwood wrote in his book
The Freshman and His College,
in the long run,
the secret of study resides in our ability
to bath our thought, our task, our lesson
in the stream of interest.
But how exactly do you gain that interest?
Well, you certainly don't do it
by jumping straight into the minute details.
To gain interest that's truly strong enough
to power you through the hours of rigorous study,
you need to expose yourself to the truly exciting facets
of the topic.
First,
nobody reads The History of Middle Earth
before reading Lord of the Rings
or at least watching the movies first.
And nobody goes digging through C sharp documentation
unless they're interested in building something in C sharp
like a video game.
That's why Bill Nye made Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Why Carl Sagan made Cosmos.
And why David Attenborough helped to make Planet Earth.
These three men are known first and foremost
as Science Popularizers.
Because they knew what it took
to get the public interested in science.
They knew that showing electricity in action
or showing a shark hunting its prey
is far better at generating that needed
initial spark of interest
than talking immediately about Ohm's law
or talking about how the dorsal fin
affects the flow of dynamics.
And the best teachers in the world
understand this innately.
They know that they need to get their students
initially excited about the topic
before they jump right into the rigorous minute details.
But if your teacher's not good at that,
you can do that yourself.
One great way to do this is to find a book
or a movie or a podcast
or even a video game that give you
an initial high level introduction to the topic
in an entertaining way.
Or that somehow connected to it.
I'll use my girlfriend Anna as an example.
Anna is somebody who really doesn't like to read
a whole lot of non-fiction.
But last year, we took a trip to St. Louis
to go to city museum.
And on the way, we listened to a podcast
called Hardcore History.
And if you haven't listened to this podcast before,
it is one of the downright most entertaining podcasts
in the world.
It is my personal favorite podcast
and the particular episode we were listening to
was talking about Ancient Persia.
After we listened to that episode,
Anna actually got interested in the topic
and she went and bought the book
Persian Fire by the historian Tom Holland.
And this is a good book.
But as you can see right here,
it's a pretty thick history book.
And it's not Anna's usual affair.
But despite that, she finished the entire book.
Because the podcast
gave her that initial spark of interest.
And I remembered while she was reading it,
she'd come up to me several times and say,
"hey, I remembered when he talked about it in the podcast."
So she was building an interest link.
(rap beat)
A second tip that I hope you'll become more interested
in anything you're studying
is to adopt a growth mindset.
Carol Dweck's book Mindset The New Psychology of Success
contrasts people with fixed mindsets
people who essentially believe that talent
or intelligence is fixed and doesn't change
with people who have growth mindsets.
People that believe anything can be changed
and improved upon.
Early on in the book,
Dweck demonstrates how the mindset that you have
also plays a huge role on how interested you'll be
in your studies.
Especially when the going gets difficult.
During her research for the book,
she followed premed students
who were taking an initial chemistry course
during their freshmen year in college.
And in this course, the average exam grade was a C plus.
It was one of those weed out courses
that's basically designed to be difficult
so it weeds out people who are not a good fit
for the medicine program right at the start.
In the book, she reported that
most students started out pretty interested in chemistry.
Yet, over the semester, something happened.
Students with a fixed mindset stayed only interested
when they did well right away.
Those who found it difficult
showed a big drop in their interest and enjoyment.
If it wasn't a testimony to their intelligence,
they couldn't enjoy it.
In contrast, students with a growth mindset
continued to show the same high level of interest
even when they found the work very challenging.
Challenge and interest went hand in hand.
So try to reframe the way you think about your classes.
Not as tests or evaluations
to show everyone how intelligent or unintelligent you are,
but as continual learning opportunities.
Opportunities to learn, grow and yes
sometimes fail.
But to come back and improve upon those failures
and to win eventually.
This is a global mindset.
If you can do this, you're gonna find that your studies
across any subject you tackle
are gonna be more enjoyable and more interesting.
(rap beat)
Another great way to make studying more fun
and interesting is to do it with a partner.
But studying with a partner is a double edge sword
that can go wrong really easily.
And I find there are two main pitfalls that you fall into
when you do this.
First and foremost, if you study with the wrong partner,
they are going to distract you
and you're never going to get any work done.
And I definitely been here.
During my freshmen year,
I tried to study with the people in my dorm
and all we ended up doing
was opening up Duke Nukem soundboards
and wasting all of our time.
But just as easily,
you can find a partner who goes through the work so quickly
and does so much of it
that you end up glossing over the problems and the concepts
and never end up really learning them yourself.
So if you're gonna do this,
you need to not only find a partner who's focused
and stays on task the whole time
but who also ensures
that you understand the problem solution
and that they understand it as well
before both of you move on.
(rap beat)
The next tip is to change your environment
in non distracting ways that makes studying
more enjoyable.
And there are a lot of ways you can do this.
One of the best ways is to find a study playlist
that you enjoy listening to
that doesn't distract you.
And I've been making a playlist here on YouTube
called the Ultimate Study Music Playlist
for a few years that works really well
when I need to get some work done.
It can also help to find a study spot
you usually enjoy being in
like your favorite spot in the library
or a good coffee shop
or maybe study with a cat.
And having a good drink next to you while you study
definitely helps as well.
Pretty much every single morning,
I make a pot of cinnamon clove tea
which is basically my favorite kind of tea
and I drink that while I do some writing.
And it might sound weird to you
but the ritual of having that pot of tea
and being able to pour multiple glasses
while I write makes the process of writing
more enjoyable.
So I do it.
(rap beat)
And that brings us to our final tip on the list.
You want to make studying more fun and more enjoyable
and create many rewards that you get
for doing that studying.
Your motivation to complete your tasks
is to find partly by the reward you're going to get
for doing it.
And with studying,
there's a pretty obviously main reward.
You'll get a good grade, you'll graduate from college
and you won't have to live in a van down by the river.
But that doesn't have to be the only reward
you give yourself.
You could also create many rewards
that can be an incentive for finishing an assignment
or even just putting an amount of time in it.
You've probably all seen the Gummy Bear trick on Facebook
and that might work for some people.
I think I would just eat all the Gummy Bears
and close my book right away.
But for the most part,
these rewards should be high density fun.
Letting yourself go out with friends
or letting yourself play Overwatch for a while.
Something that isn't stupid like scrolling through Facebook
for five minutes.
It's also important to plan out the details
of these mere rewards in advance.
As the author Piers Steel talks about
in his book The Procrastination Equation,
rewards are a lot more motivating when they're preplanned
because they build anticipation.
You know in the back of your mind
that once you finish studying,
you're gonna get to do something fun.
And that's gonna further increase your motivation
to power through that study session.
This video was made possible in part by Skillshare.
Earlier, I talked about how important it is
to get interested in the things you're studying.
And that's especially important for required classes
you have to take.
But there are also things that you probably
always wanted to learn.
Things you already have an interest in
maybe playing the guitar like I am
or learning digital illustration
or maybe just learning how to cook
so that you don't have to keep living
off of Hot Pockets everyday.
If that's the case
then you should definitely give Skillshare a try.
With over 16,000 courses
and a ton of different topics,
there's something for almost everybody
and almost all their courses include challenges
and projects that you can tackle
to start putting what you're learning into action
right away.
A premium membership on Skillshare
will run you about 10 bucks a month
which basically makes it a Netflix subscription
that will actually make you smarter
but the first 500 people
that click the link in the description below and sign up
will get a free two month trial of unlimited learning.
And trust me,
in two months, you can learn a lot.
So if you're interested,
definitely go give that link a try.
I want to give a big thanks to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video and supporting this channel
and thank you so much for watching.
If you found this video helpful, give it a like.
And if you have additional tips that I didn't mention here,
definitely go down in the comments and share them
so that other students can benefit.
You can also hit that subscribe button right there
to get new videos every single week.
And if you want a free copy of my book
on how to earn better grades, click right there.
Additionally, you should definitely go check out
this week's podcast episode
where we discuss the book called Essentialism
which is one of the best books I've read this year.
So click right there if you want to check it out.
Or click right there for another video on this channel.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you guys next week.