The study tip they’re NOT telling you | How I went from a 2:2 to 80% at Cambridge University

so in 2022 I graduated from Cambridge University with a masters in chemical engineering after studying for four years I completed my first year with the tutu and after a lot of trial and error I graduated with 80 in my Master's thesis hello my name is Abby and welcome back to my Channel today we are going to discuss a study tip that transformed my academic results and hopefully if you keep watching we'll transform yours too so first of all why should you be listening to me I was a straight A star student until I got to University and the workload overwhelmed me and I could not no matter how many study techniques I tried or how many YouTube videos I watched I could not find a silly technique that worked for me and after a lot lot of trial and error I finally found the study technique that nobody talks about and I'm going to share my whole experience with you backing up all of my points with reputable studies so that you can elevate your academic performance so let's get straight into it you need to be working less now obviously how does that even work why should I work less if I want to do well but I'm going to take you through this whole process of how working less literally changed my whole university experience and got me my final grade let's take it back to the work process that gave me a final grade of a 2-2 and you're going to be surprised by this one so let's look at a typical day I would wake up at 5 30 a. m maybe you make a cup of tea or something and then between about six and nine a. m I would do two of my lectures for the day whilst having my breakfast I would then get ready for the day and between about 9 30 a.

m and 1pm I would then make notes on all of the lectures I'd watched that morning or lectures from the day before I would then have lunch and go to the gym and then between about four and six pm I would do uni work so things like questions set any essays things like that that would be my uni work slot I would then have dinner and then from seven to about 9 10 pm I would continue doing any uni work questions and then pre-read my lectures in the morning now you may hear this and think well that's a great disc very very productive day I got the gym in I got all my meals in that's what I used to think as well and the funny thing is when I was doing these days I thought I was a productive Queen like I literally like my ego was like woo look look at me go I am literally working so hard I'm up so early you know I'm out before everyone else like I'm getting the extra work in I'm so leaving with the first class this year I was wrong I was very very wrong now let me explain to you what is so wrong with that day so in total with the day I just described that totals to 11. 5 hours of studying in that one single day why did this not work it all comes down to being able to study effectively working ridiculous amount of hours a day is completely romanticized and ultimately when you're putting all this work in and putting more effort in you'd expect to do very well it's very understandable to think this when you look at influential people who work ridiculous hours but what we need to understand is the difference between these people and you studying so let's take Elon Musk for example Elon Musk claims to work 120 hours a week that's about 17. 2 hours a day seven days a week so it seems like that should be the goal he's a very successful person you should aim to work in the same way as him if you want to achieve what he has achieved this is wrong because the type of work is very different so Elon Musk Works 17.

2 hours a day okay but the work that he does in that day is very different to the work that you'll be doing when you're studying that 17. 2 hour day will consist of phone calls emails travel conversations with other people meetings and so the last version of that day is not concentrated work hours this is where we need to make a very clear differentiation between studying and working these can be the same thing but it's very important to know that these are not always the same so where Elon Musk is working and it includes all these other things like course meal Times Travel you are studying now studying is actually more of a deep focus style of working your studying includes deep focus often on a very complicated task such as understanding a mathematical concept and applying it completing a research paper a crime complex understanding or writing an essay on a topic you've never seen before each of these tasks require deep focus you cannot deep focus for 17. 2 hours a day now let's look at someone whose work does rely on deep focus and let's see how they work Terence Tao is a renowned mathematician at 10 years old he became the youngest person in his history to win the international mathematical Olympiad terenceau is often referred to as the finest mathematician of his generation so let's see what he has to say about studying Tau released an article all about the way that he works and I will link that article below but one really important quote that I took from this was my ability to do any serious mathematics fluctuates greatly from day to day sometimes I can think hard on a problem for an hour other times I feel ready to type up the full details of a sketch that I or my co-authors already wrote and other times I only feel qualified to respond to an email do errands or just take a walk or even a nap Tao talks in his article about studying for him comes in waves some days he can do a lot Sundays he literally just needs a nap and this is so so important and this is due to deep focus you cannot do 17.

2 hours of deep focus as Terence Town describes and this is why setting yourself up to work ridiculous amounts of hours a day is not effective working and will not get you the grace that you want and what's really into interesting is I can completely vouch for everything that I have discussed so far so I set myself up 11. 5 hours of work a day and it was just impossible even though I did the work I had no engagement in the work I to be honest had no idea what was going on most of the time because I was so adamant to get through it there was no time to take a moment to understand it and I ended up just reaching a point of pure exhaustion and this was very uneffective studying so we've discussed what you should not be doing and you should not be studying for 11. 5 hours a day it's impossible but now what should you be doing a study by John pen cable on the productivity of working hours discusses a reduction in productivity after somebody works more than 50 hours a week this equates to 7.

2 hours a day studying for less than 7. 2 hours a day means you have increased energy and increased Focus which means you're more likely to enter a state of deep focus in which you can develop a deeper understanding of the work now what's really interesting especially if I compare it to how I used to work when I wasn't doing as well as I wanted it is a study done by psychologist Anders Erickson which suggests that people can't do more than four hours of deep work in a day so if you're setting yourself up for 12 hour days you are just setting yourself up for exhaustion not for 12 hours of productivity you want to be aiming for less than 7. 2 hours a day on average some days you might do a tiny bit more some days you might do a lot less but that is good that is not a bad thing and what's so important to remember is the reason I'm saying this is the study technique that's not talked about is because it's a study technique that's almost frowned upon you should be working hard you should be putting the hours in but sometimes putting the hours in does not correlate to doing well so how can you make sure you're not overworking well what I did to get my best result at University was I scheduled in fun I scheduled fun activities with friends I scheduled time for myself I made sure to try my hardest although easier said than done to not think about work in my spare time so when I wasn't working don't think about it sometimes if you want to if you're mulling on a complex problem that is fine you can think about that as you're going through your day but if you have taken time away from work and you know you've got to go back to it you need to try and turn off just so your brain can have time to reset and to bring your energy back okay now I've given you all the facts now you're probably thinking okay so what do I actually do how do I now study efficiently well the next Point kind of backs up the point I've just spoken about working less you need to stop making notes notes are again completely romanticized especially on social media or like study Pages everything like how pretty can your notes be how how many notes can you fit on a piece of paper notes are almost an egotistical form of studying where you can just show off your work and it makes you feel like you did really well but actually did you understand anything that went on that piece of paper now I am so so guilty for this I will put on the screen now my notes and um every single sheet that you see on the screen right now is A3 paper so I must have had I had too many notes that they couldn't fill bedroom walls they would be going out of rooms I felt super proud of myself when I saw these notes I thought look at me go writing all my lectures going through all of the content they look good they're color coded were they useful absolutely not did I understand anything on them no and obviously some people notes will be really really helpful for them but stop relying on notes and this is why writing notes is obviously a time consuming task and if you've got a lot of content to get through to then write notes on all of that it's going to take up so much time that you are going to need 11.