The Best Studying Skills No One Ever Taught you

hi so for the first video of 2024 I wanted to create a video that's dedicated to different types of study techniques so over the course of doing my MERS and also now the PHD I learned different type of techniques that really work for me and I do want to caveat this by saying that I do think everyone has a different type of studying approach that works for them but I kind of wanted to give you these techniques and maybe some of them will work for you so let's get straight into it so I divided it

up into five different chapters so first of all fictionalize your life then Creative Study techniques optimize your work space and digital space morning routine for productivity and finally different motivation strategies so first of all for the fictionalize your life this is maybe a little bit strange idea but I kind of like to visualize certain study tasks or certain things that I have to do as chapters within a novel so the idea is that you if you could rewrite a novel with all the rewards and viewing yourself as the main character which would be the next

steps in the chapter how would your character act in certain situations which values does your character live up to and I think by kind of viewing yourself as studying or doing a PhD or researching as a character within a fictionalized novel you can kind of see what you would like your character to live up to and I think this works especially well if you yourself read a lot of books like I do I especially enjoy reading fiction books for example Brandon serson is a fiction writer that I really enjoy or lately I also have read

the poppy Wars and I think through identifying which these characters and also placing some of their values on your own fictionalized character you can kind of see what for you is really motivating so then the second tips that I want to give are Creative Study techniques so this is really when I was in a period that I had to memorize a lot I think memorizing and learning the skill how to memorize is really important when you're studying so one of the things I always do is if I have study material I create kind of a

narrative story structure out of it and then I re-explain the study material to myself so for example if I have to learn a concept in physics about atoms I would re-explain the entire chapter as a story chapter to myself and that really works to restructure The Narrative and also to Truly Deeply understand what is being said another thing I always do is I use a lot of visualization and diagram techniques to make the story Visual and this is especially if you're really a visual thinker so when I close my eyes I can kind of see

these images up in front of me and then through looking at these images and through explaining these images I kind of understand all the concepts better and especially if you work with technical Concepts this is a really good tip I think of course um I also used the memonic palace when I was learning numbers or these kind of things so I didn't do it as strictly as for example in this book where they really explain how memorization experts do it what I did more is I just have within my room a certain root right and

alongside the root that I take in in my room so in my mind I would Place certain things that I need to memorize in order and then if you rewalk the room you can Reem these things and this is really good if you have to remember some kind of narrative structure for example or giving a presentation so then um tips number three are optimize your workspace and digital space this is definitely something I relearned during my PhD I think it was a little bit less important during the Masters cuz I would just kind of study

everywhere but now doing a PhD it's really I notice how important it is that the workspace is conducted for your research so first of all I have kind of two spaces I work at one is here in my uh bedroom and the other one is at Uni and at Uni I like to keep my workspace as clean as possible that such that when I arrive there I can just immediately work and here I have it a little bit more set up in a fun way but I think it's good to experiment with what kind of

workspace works for you do you like a little bit an Ambient sound on the background do you like to work in a cafe do you like to work in silence all by yourself if in a quiet room and really see it as a kind of experimentation phase where you try different workspaces and see how productive you are and also try to be really honest with yourself so for example I sometimes think I can work quite well by myself in my room but that's not really true I get really distracted actually but I just find it

really comfortable working at home another thing is to optimize your digital workspace so for myself I create kind of created in notion this digital workspace for my PhD and I want to distribute this soon such that other people can also use it so if you sign up to um the newsletter I'll distribute it probably for free on there but in my notion for example I have a word counter because I found that really useful for writing the PHD so every day I try to finish about 500 Words which is about one page but also I

have other things in there so for example when I'm reading papers I collect papers on there when I'm making notes I collect my notes on there and I think having one digital workspace as well that works really well for you is also very important to build that from the beginning finally a technique that I use within the digital workspace which so many people have talked about but which has helped me a lot is to have or to use a pomodora timer and I do think I used the pomodora timer in a little bit a different

way maybe I use just a standard a setting so 25 minutes and then maybe 5 to 10 minutes off but during those 5 or 10 minutes I actually work on another task that is still kind of stimulating so I don't really take a break because I kind of noticed that if I take a true break where watch some YouTube or whatever I kind of get into that mindset and then I find it really hard to get back to the main task finally I think it's also nice if you finish a writing session on a high

note this is also a small tip that I got at a certain point but I find it really good so if you're in the flow and there's still a few things you can finish I try to keep those things for the next day such that the next day I know immediately what I have to start on how I have to start on this and I can just kind of continue the working session and I notice then you kind of create the these Loops of being in the zone from day to day section number four this

is kind of about morning routines and evening routines I do think morning routines are pretty uh personal if you're not a morning person maybe this will not resonate maybe this will not resonate with you at all so then you can skip this section but um I am a morning personing so I noticed that when I wake up a little bit on the earlier side I'm a lot more productive that day but I've also noticed it's a hard balance with sleeping so expent with that yourself but some things that I've tried to experiment with lately is

to try to incorporate also exercise in my morning and night routine so I like personally to do weight training but also yoga cuz yoga kind of help create a certain type of focus that I found really useful during the PHD so it kind of trains you to use certain breathing techniques and also certain meditation techniques that for me really allowed me to also focus better during studying days but I think there are different types of of meditation techniques that can also help you with this so try to experiment with that yeah and to be honest

I think those are kind of the only two things that I really have to do so wake up early and exercise at some point during the day and all the other habits or techniques even though I talked about it previously on this channel as well actually for me don't make that much of a difference I don't need to journal in the morning I don't need to have some kind of elaborate morning routine to get started I can actually just get up and straight away start but if you do need a few things to kind of

get you in the flow or kind of get you more in the studying Zone try to experiment with that and try to incorporate that in your morning routine uh so lastly these are motivation strategies I found motivation always a bit a hard word because I think motivation is kind of fleeting and once you're motivated or not motivated it shouldn't really matter for you studying yes or no but I do think sometimes when your motivation is really low it's really hard to even start on a project and that's these are tips for that so to kind

of just start working on something and then sometimes you you kind of get back into the zone and you can keep working so one thing that I did during my PhD especially is I uh developed study specific playlists for every task that I need to do and it sounds super ridiculous but it actually works really really well so I have um a playlist for coding a playlist for writing and a playlist for editing YouTube videos so always when I code I put on the same playlist and this is actually a really yeah like deep house

playlist so it really makes time feel like it flows by really really fast and also always when I put it on my mind kind of goes like okay it's coding time I need to be in the coding mindset so try to experiment with that as well your soundscape and see if it works for you something related to this is to try to identify and replicate Focus triggers from past successful studying sessions so I do think for me music for example is this kind of focus trigger so when a certain type of music is playing it

kind of brings me back into that Focus but knowing your own Focus triggers and knowing what get you in the focus zone so that when you think back on your week for example what were the moments that you were really focused what time of day was it what were you doing what made you so interested in the topic you were focused on what was your environment like and try to replicate these things more and more such that you can get into this Zone almost on command and different Focus triggers can be for example the environment

you're in the friends you're talking to the type of subject you're working on and kind of related to this but this is a small tip is to have kind of all the essentials or create a checklist of Essentials that you need to get into this hyperfocused zone so gather the things around you to get into the hyperfocus mode AKA have snacks around you minimize distraction get your notebooks ready create a checklist of all the items that should be around you for you to finish a project so for example when I'm filming or writing I have

all the gear already set up the day before because I know if I'm very unmotivated these small hurdles can really make me stop doing anything and not really work so I think having a checklist of all the items that you would like around you when you start a study session is also a good tip so these were all the study tips that really worked for me and I do think they seem very basic in some sense and very simple and they're also very personal so I think throughout studying I've learned many techniques and many different

ways to focus but to be very honest now doing a PhD I just realized a lot of them don't really work I think they maybe work for that individual person but not for everyone so I think the biggest tip that I can just give you with studying is try to experiment what works for you you know yourself best and you know when you can focus or when you cannot focus and this is probably a little bit different for me and also different from other people if you have any tips that you would like to share

that actually really really works for you I would be interested so put them down in the comments below and otherwise see you next week bye