How I avoid feeling overwhelmed when studying MASSIVE content

this episode was sponsored by short form hey guys it's Justin here and today I feel like crap why because I've got covered and here I am making a video for you but why else do I feel like crap because I've got 900 pages of this textbook I still need to study in the next three days and instead of just going in and studying it like any normal human person would do I decided you know what this is a learning point it's a learning opportunity for you guys so me feeling sick and having to study all

this stuff I'm feeling this is overwhelming you know I don't know how good my cognitive function is right now I can tell you for sure my focus isn't amazing but I still need to get through this stuff so the normal way that I've experienced that most people would think about this is that okay well let's do some reverse go sitting right I've got 900 pages of a textbook to get through okay honestly about 50 pages of its references so 850 pages okay let's assume that across 850 Pages at least 50 pages are not going to

be that useful so be optimistic 800 Pages I'm gonna need to go through so if I've got three days that means that I need to be doing like 270 Pages roughly per day across the next three days right so if I can hit 270 pages per day across the next three days I should be good now I've got roughly six hours per day blocked out for studying which is a lot of time I put aside a lot to get through this and if that's the way that you're thinking about it then that's not the right

way to think about this I tell you man my brain is not moving fast right now the right way to think about it is not in terms of a linear order of a textbook because let's say that you weren't learning it from a textbook let's say that you were learning it the same knowledge all the knowledge in the textbook but instead of learning it through a textbook you were learning it through someone teaching it to you and this person that's teaching it to you they know everything they have all the knowledge and they've decided they're

going to teach it to you in the way that makes the most sense for you that makes the most sense for your brain that you feel is the most relevant is the easiest path for learning what do you think are the chances that the way that this person teaches it to you and the way that's optimized for your brain and how you know it is going to be the exact same order and way it's taught as this textbook which was written by these two authors that I'm sure know their stuff you know I'm sure they're

experts but they don't know what exactly is relevant for you they don't know your knowledge level they don't know your experiences they don't know what's going to be exactly relevant and what's going to make the most sense for you and so this is something that I've talked about quite often so when I think about learning this across the next three days I'm not thinking about it in terms of page numbers number of pages I need to get to because I know that that is a meaningless measurement of progress because not every page is the same

density of Concepts not every page is in the order it really should be in terms of what makes the most sense in my brain is the most relevant for me so what I should do is I should go through this and think about it in terms of breaking up the entirety of the knowledge into those three days so on day one I want to build a fundamental understanding about what I'm learning I want to have a basic but broad understanding I want to develop myself to the level of expertise with the next level of detail

is more relevant more meaningful more interesting more engaging makes more sense for me and I'm not gonna be able to do that by starting at the beginning and just working progressively in a linear order some Concepts that allow me to understand page 120 might be presented in page 500 and it doesn't mean that the textbook was written badly it's just that for me maybe that would have been easier to do it in that order so I'm never going to know that if I stick to a linear order which is why I never encourage linear orders

of learning because a linear order of learning although it might make sense on paper literally it's not necessarily it's often not actually logical for your brain cognitively speaking so I'm going to be skimming through this book I'm going to be picking out what feels relevant I'm going to be skipping over a lot of stuff that doesn't feel relevant and I'm going to spend my time and effort on day one go through the entire 800 Pages Yes you heard me correctly I'm going to go through 800 pages in a single day but the volume of information

I go through is going to be the equivalent of maybe 75 Pages 100 Pages there's still quite a lot but I've got six hours remember so I'm gonna go through roughly let's say 100 Pages worth of actual knowledge but that's going to be the knowledge spread within this entire book it is the most relevant for me that makes the most sense it's a easiest for me to understand and wrap my head around that's going to create a lot of anchor points it's going to create a really strong schema a really strong foundation for me to

start working from and then on day two I'm going to go through the same 800 Pages again and this time slightly different things are going to be more relevant for me different things are going to make more sense because I have more prior knowledge than I did the day before AKA today so tomorrow I'll have more knowledge than I do right now because I spent time to build a foundation so you see as I learn more these anchor points are allowing the later learning to become easier so tomorrow I'll be going through another 800 pages

but again maybe only 100 to 200 Pages worth of knowledge but I'm able to consume more because I have more reference points I have more anchor points there are more ways things feel relevant and there are more ways things feel interesting so for my brain's perspective it's easier to understand and it's easier to process it's easier to make sense of and apply and ultimately easier to hold on to to retain and to develop that high level of Mastery form and on day three I'm going to go through the 800 Pages again but this time I'm

focusing on just those details that I've missed will I have 100 retention and high level of Mastery across three days no if I was studying for an exam which I'm not would that be a problem potentially but if you're studying a 1 000 page textbook in three days for an exam where you actually have to do well that's another problem like you shouldn't be in that position but if I was studying an exam I'd probably get the best Mark I possibly could get given that I only studied for three days is it gonna be enough

for me to achieve my own goals of why I'm learning this yes definitely in fact I might be able to do that in just two days but I've got coverts I gave myself another day for buffer right it sounds intense to go through almost a thousand pages in a single day it sounds enormous it's not it's not because you're not covering every single piece of content within that space what you're doing is you're scanning through to find the parts that are relevant you can only hold so much right the human brain's got a capacity for

how much it can handle across an entire day 50 to 100 Pages that's going to be a stretch no matter how smart you are once you fill that 50 to 100 Pages worth of information across six seven eight hours you're pretty much done so you need to make sure that that com content you are filling it with is the most relevant the most efficient the one that gives you the most leverage the one that puts you in the best position so that tomorrow even more things will make sense so for me that first of all

makes it less overwhelming because I know that I'm not gonna have to stretch myself too far to make sense of something because I'm literally going to pick the path of least resistance I'm picking the path of highest relevance hey guys it's Justin from the future here I'm recovered from covet now you might be wondering what if you don't want to read an 800 page textbook and then realize that you missed something or this was the wrong book to be reading in the first place well the sponsors of this video have got you covered short form

yes they are one of the rare sponsorship requests that I accept because I think that what they do actually is helpful so the way that short form works is it's kind of like a book summary but it's more like a book guide you'll get this summary of all of these different books but the key thing and I think this is really reason that it's useful is that they compare different books and articles and sources against each other so when you read one book you're not just getting the value of that one book the person that's

writing that guide is also comparing the ideas from that particular book with other prominent sources of that same topic so it means that even if you didn't know that there's a better book to read as you go through the guide you'd naturally find these references to these these other books and then you could go and read those as well and it's not just AI there's stuff about business finance personal development even learning so there's a lot of different genres that you can pick from and if there's a book that you really want but they don't

have it you can actually vote for books and they upload new books every single week if you're interested check out my link in the description it's short form.com Justin sung you get five days of unlimited access and 20 off an annual subscription so a lot of people often say well Justin aren't you going to learn this out of order what if you missed something and again I'm only saying this yes it's out of order on paper but it's in order for your brain and am I going to miss something yes but if I do this

enough times maybe not three days if I had a week my fourth or fifth time I'm not missing anything because I'm allowing myself to go through and pick up all those areas that I missed honestly I'm like literally I'm trying to sweat from making this video I think speaking and making this video is gonna be the hardest thing that I do today the learning itself shouldn't be too bad because I'm picking that path of least resistance yes it can feel overwhelming when you first start but it's not too bad and you can get your head

around it and this concept and this method of learning pretty easily take some time but it's just another habit that you can build and then once you've got that habit it's a tool it's in Your Arsenal you can you can use this whenever you need to you're not going to have the situation where you need to study a thousand pages of a textbook in three days when you've got covered too many times in your life but it just means that when you do need to learn new information the feeling of being overwhelmed is a sign

that you're not seeing the relevance so to reduce the overwhelm you just need to find the path of relevance when things are relevant things make sense more easily it's easier to cover more content if you don't have the prior knowledge to create relevance then you need to work on creating the right prior knowledge to put yourself in a position we have got good relevance so any new information you start with you always have prior knowledge to work with start with that prior knowledge find what's relevant build the foundation and then the next day you've now

got more prior knowledge if you only Built one chapter's worth of prior knowledge and that chapter was very specific and detailed about very singular aspect of the entire topic that's not much leverage you're not going to be able to expand that out into the entire rest of the topic so instead of studying a hundred units of something really detailed actually would have been better to study a hundred units of superficially the entire topic because now you've got more anchor points you've got more ways to make things relevant it's going to make it easier for you

on day two day three day four so on and so forth the other thing is with this particular textbook I know it actually does a really great job of listing out and explaining some of the fundamental across the whole topic principles that are covered in the entire book so for me even if spend the entire of day one today covering only 45 pages with that 45 pages I know is fundamental to the entire textbook maybe the rest of the textbook is just explaining each of those points in more depth chapter by chapter and that's still

time well spin even though I only covered five percent of what I needed to cover in terms of page numbers in terms of actual knowledge it was actually fine because I laid a firm solid foundation so anyway just sharing a bit of perspectives before I actually dive into the studying because I know this way of thinking is uncommon and it's so powerful once you can start thinking about learning this way it gives you a lot more control because if you don't do it this way you're always going to be fighting against your brain trying to

discard information because it doesn't feel relevant anyway that's enough talking my voice is really starting to go now hope you enjoyed this video I'll see you in the next one foreign [Music]