If you have been getting only three hours of sleep every night, surviving on the bare minimum snacks that are lying on your table, this is the time to change. Most students have a very weird coping mechanism, and to make up for all the pending revisions they resort to avoiding their own needs and simply switching to studying all day long. You can do much better than that, here is how;
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Get more sleep
It goes unsaid that sleeping more brings you comfort, and brain capacity to absorb a lot of information in a day. You cannot expect your body and brain to cooperate while you continue to exhaust them.
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Don’t cramp on all important topics at once
Take it easy, take it slow, and make sure you have some smaller easier topics in between the important ones so that you aren’t simply studying little portions in the day. You might understand that it was a difficult topic which is why it took you so long, but it is also demotivating to focus all day long and land up completing only a small difficult portion. The easy ones are just fillers to make yourself feel better and avoid procrastination.
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Have smaller goals
Having a lot of pending work is overwhelming, but if you have smaller goals to achieve you will have fun taking them off your list. Consider for example you have a chemistry exam the next day, so if your goal is to revise everything from chemistry it is used one thing and it will take a very long time. Only thinking about it is very demotivating.
When you have smaller goals that lead you up to the main goal, you feel more up to it. Start with arranging the material, then completing the important topics as per your schedule priority, and then going through easier topics. Teachers always advise you to not read anything new before an exam because it might be overwhelming, and might confuse you more. Sometimes, students are extremely demotivated to look at all that they have not covered, which makes them panic and forget the portions that are already prepared. However, if you feel like you can cover it all in one night, go for it! Pulling one-nighters are great as long as you have enough coffee and motivation. Don’t forget to get at least an hour of sleep to refuel yourself because sleeping well is also a great habit.
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Review all notes before studying
When you make notes, you often make multiple mistakes because writing down while live classes are going on is difficult, and you might miss out on some words or misinterpret some words. Revising the notes right after the class is also very hectic because it means you have to go through lengthy pages of information once again, things that you have already learned in your classroom app. What is the right time to review your notes then?
You need to add a specific thing to your schedule, and this comes pre-revision. Before you sit down to revise subjects, go through the study material at least once. This doesn’t mean that you will read everything out because it will take hours, just go through the keywords and make sure that it is in chronological order and all the topics are present. If they are not, you can immediately ask for it from your friends or rectify it from live classes recordings. Save yourself from the frustration of not finding the right material at the right time! This habit will also stop you from procrastinating because once you have everything ready, you will have the urge to sit down and study.
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Use your weekends
There are two types of students- the ones who cramp up all their important study hours during the weekends, and the ones who take a complete break during the weekends to give themselves some time to relax. you shouldn’t be either of them! Did you know that if you clock yourself to a particular routine, trying to clock away from it will destroy all the progress you have made, and from Monday onwards you will no longer feel like yourself? Taking a long break will also not help you because you will miss the feeling of relaxing, and therefore you will have longer break times than what is required. Instead, try to carry on your weekend just like any other day of the week, but this should be followed only during the examinations and not in everyday life because that will make you monotonous.