HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY BEFORE EXAMS (STUDY 10X BETTER)

 

Exams are approaching. You don’t feel prepared. You want to feel prepared. You NEED to feel prepared. First of all, here’s some good news: you still have time to learn a shit ton of stuff. You have more than a month.

Here’s the first thing you need to do:

BUY A FUCKING CALENDAR

And I mean a real, physical calendar (none of that Google Calendars bs)! What you’re going to do is check off everyday till your exams. You’re going to visualize how close you’re getting, and how unprepared (or hopefully, prepared) you feel.

This is hopefully going to create a sense of urgency, and honestly, if it doesn’t, you deserve to fuck up your exams.

There I said it: if you don’t have the motivation or willpower to work your butt off this final month, then you deserve to do badly.

This is the final stretch, and the most important one.

You need to get in the mindset of a fucking warrior. You need to control your urge to get distracted. You need to hold yourself accountable. You need to study. Now, when you actually study, and listen up because this is important, you’re going to want to use a Timer. Here, I’ll repeat that:

USE A TIMER

I don’t really care if it’s a physical timer or one you have on the Internet, but just time yourself working.b And every time you feel like procrastinating, and then you subsequently give in, you’re going to also time how long you spent procrastinating. Record all of this in an excel spreadsheet. 

Btw I know this sounds like a shit load of steps but honestly it’s remarkably easy: just time yourself working and time yourself being distracted. What you’re going to see is that holy Jesus poop, you THOUGHT had sat down for 6 hours on your desk doing math, but only 2-2.5 of those hours were you actually working.

Hopefully this makes you feel like shit.

Just remember that there is someone out there that spent almost 5 hours working in that 6-hour period. And that person is going to kick your ass. 

Wait, what’s that? You’re calling that person a nerd? If being a nerd means going after what you want and working on it so hard that you’re going to get it, then please, I want to be a nerd!

Alright, so far you have a timer to actually see how long you’re working and you’ve bought a physical calendar to create a sense of urgency day by day.  Now, you need to realize that the IB can only be fought if you work smarter, and not harder. In fact, that’s the motto of our website. If you spend 5 hours simply reading the Math Textbook instead of actually writing out solutions, congratulations:

YOU’RE STUPID!!!

Here’s what you should do instead (or something like it whatever). Let’s say this is your first day of proper revision for Math:

Spend 1 hour identifying what you’re good at and what you’re bad at. Literally open up a Google Doc, make a table, and jot down your strengths + weaknesses for Math. Something like this: 

And remember: you want to be specific. Don’t just write down integration, examine what exactly it is that you don’t like or you’re not good at. Don’t worry, I just made this up really fast; your list should be much longer and should also be grouped according to broad topics.

You’re going to want to start working on your weaknesses, and here’s the best way to do it.

For Math, open up your textbook to the corresponding chapter (of your weakness) and just go through it. Write down everything in your notebook, do the examples, and then do most of the problems in the review section. Don’t do ALL of them (unless you want to). Maybe do all the odd-numbered ones or even-numbered, or simply the ones that look the hardest to you.

Now here’s the critical step:

After you’ve done textbook problems, it is absolutely critical that you open up your QuestionBanks or any past papers you have and tackle specific IB related questions to the topics you were having difficulty with. This is really important because there’s often a wide disparity between IB questions and Textbook questions. The textbook is great for solidifying your fundamentals and actually learning the material, but only by doing IB questions can you get better at solving IB problems.

Essentially, you want to do this form of studying for all your subjects. Keep remembering to time yourself and record that data. You want to see how productive you are.

Further, you can even notch it up a bit and record specific times when you work, and this will allow you to see at what time of the day you’re most productive.

What do you do when you don’t understand something?

This is arguably the most important part of this post. Please please listen up. I’m literally being 100% serious right now: this is the reason why most students mess up their exams and don’t study the right way. Are you ready?

When most students encounter a topic or concept or question they don’t understand, they either

1. Directly look at the markscheme, copy the answer down, and smile thinking that they’ve understood it.  OR:
2. Shrug it off, ‘look at the markscheme’, and move on.

Both those options will lead to failure and you’ll end up crying on your exams. Instead, you should do one of the following:

1. Email or ask your teacher asap. Literally just send out an email to her/him and ask to explain why the answer is what it is. The next time you see them, ask them to give you a similar problem, and be ready to solve it.
2. Skype with your friend(s). Learning through collaboration is awesome and I highly recommend it. Chances of a topic or concept sticking in your head are much stronger if a friend explains it to you simply because they’ll give you the real deal. Trust me, this really works.

Also, and most important, most people will just stop studying when they encounter a sticking point. Their brain isn’t tough enough to handle challenges so it’s much easier for them to just watch Youtube Videos and delay action.

Use your timer to your benefit. Is this happening to you? Do you tend to start procrastinating the moment you’re faced with a problem you don’t understand? In these situations, you have to realize that this is the critical moment: if you keep studying and grind it out for another few hours, you will understand the concept well and you would have spent time & energy getting prepared. If you decide to procrastinate, you’re letting yourself down. As simple as that.

Stuff you’re going to want to cut out (only for a month relax):

I know it sucks, but if you want to perform at optimal level, you’re going to want to stay away from some stuff. Don’t drink alcohol, smoke marijuana (this will do quite a bit of harm to memory retention), and do any other sort of drugs. I know it’s going to be tempting, but the morning after you’re going to feel like crap and not get anything done.

Instead, this upcoming month should include good exercise, lots of fruits, and lots of water. Water is amazing. You’re lucky to have it, so drink it. Drink lots of it. It will make you feel amazing.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of positive thinking. Something bad happen to you? How can you re-frame it in the most positive manner so that you learn from the situation instead of cry about it? Smile, study, and take care of yourself. This is the last stretch, and you’re almost there. The finish line will soon be in sight.

Will you train like a champion or give up at the most important time?

-Shikhar S.

Lie to yourself (The right way)

We often lie to ourselves when it comes to working, but we do it in the wrong way:

“I will start working in 10 minutes”… 1 hour later “I will start working tomorrow”-everyone

We are delusional creatures and despite already knowing what’s going to happen, we still convince ourselves otherwise. Interestingly enough the things we might do instead of working aren’t even that interesting. The reason we do them, however, is that the initial effort required to initiate those activities is so low. Comparatively the initial effort and mental power required to start writing an essay is much higher than that of opening YouTube and just clicking through videos. Worst of all is that the satisfaction that we gain from completing that assignment (that we always put off) is much greater than that of watching 15 videos in a row (well, the satisfaction in the long term at least).

The issue at hand seems to be overcoming initial effort required to get us moving and working. So, how do we do this?

Well, we lie to ourselves.

Instead of looking at an assignment as a large block we should break it down mentally into its smaller components. Let’s take writing an essay; upon first glance we might think that the task of doing it breaks into the following sections: Planning, Writing, and Proofreading. But we can break it down into even smaller components. Planning could be broken down into the following sections: reading the assignment, brainstorming, creating thesis, structuring the contents of the essay. Looking at these small tasks they seem so easy and remedial that procrastinating over doing them just seems ridiculous…. Well let’s use that our advantage, Instead of telling ourselves:

“I will start working in 10 minutes”… 1 hour later “I will start working tomorrow”-everyone

We should tell ourselves:

“Let me just look over the assignment and think about it, once that’s done I can have a 20 minute break and then start working for real.” -you

What happens is magical, because the task is so small and it would literally take 2 minutes to accomplish you get to it without hesitating. As you have breached at this point the initial barrier, and have given yourself some working momentum you will find it easier to continue working. By the time you end up finishing the first task you will want to continue, or at least your guilt will nudge you to do so (and as the initial working barrier has been overcome you are more likely to continue the task).

It seems ridiculous that this would even work, but it does. We are such delusional creatures that lying to ourselves is so easy, there is a reason behind why it is said that “we are our own enemy”. So let’s shift the whole paradigm upside down and lie for a better cause.

Another lesson to be learned from this is that breaking things down can help, it can help a lot. Tasks which might seem impossible at first will become do-able. Taking this example even further, how do you think companies such as google arose? They took it a step at a time, they knew they could never be perfect from the first try, so they didn’t plan themselves to perfection. They had a bias for action, once they went over basic planning, they begun work, taking each step at a time. 

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” -Laozi

-Arthur Zargaryan

Preventing and Managing Stress

These are a few recommendations for how to prevent and manage stress. You can skip to the sections you want below.

Introduction

These are some brief thoughts about how to manage stress throughout the IB exam period and in general. I welcome anyone and everyone to share the techniques they use to manage stress.

Firstly, if you want to effectively reduce the amount of stress you feel with your workload, managing your time properly will help cut down on the level of stress you feel when working. So read this and this. Then come back here. But the chances are you'll just continue reading this anyway so I'll pretend you haven't read them.

I'm not going to put any of these techniques in order because some people prefer different things. I should also mention that these techniques will only work if you actually use them. Don't just read them, ignore them, then come back after the exams and exclaim that your hair is turning grey because of stress.

It seems like when students think of studying they think of it as an extremely painful process which requires a lot of stress in order to be useful. 'You need to live in the library to get good results' 'studying is just student and dying put together' that sort of thing. None of that is true. You don't need to strain yourself while working in order to do well.

You learn much better when you're relaxed.

Techniques

• Meditation

This is a great way to relax. I'd link you to a bunch of scientific studies about it but it's much better for you to try it and experience its usefulness first hand.

How do you get started?

Sit down (or lie down if you have back problems), and spend 5 to 10 minutes just focusing on your breathing. Don't try to alter your breath patterns. You'll probably find that it's quite difficult to just focus on your breath because thoughts will pop into your head but that's normal. Just gently return your focus to your breath.

I'd recommend meditating at the start of the day then again at the end of the day if you want to.

• Schedule time off

Don't cram your schedule with work and actually let yourself have a prolonged break. If you feel up to it, schedule a whole day off every week and do whatever you want absolutely guilt free. It'll help you approach the next week with a bit more energy and you won't be at a continuous battle with your work if you completely separate yourself from it for a while.

• Have regular breaks

While trying to complete a huge task, it can be easy to lose track of where the time is going. Then you end up working for years without having a break. This can make you feel extremely frustrated when you're not making progress on something. However, you should wait until you feel like p

The point is to work with as little stress as possible. I'd recommend breaks as frequent as one every 25 to 30 minutes.

• Plan your work

If you don't have any clear idea about what you're trying to accomplish then you'll always be fighting uphill. Take some time to make a detailed plan about what you want to do and when.

Also, assume you've underestimated the amount of time you'll need to complete something. If you've set aside 2 hours to think about an essay or make notes on a topic, give yourself 3 or 4. It'll stop you getting stressed about not being on schedule (that wasn't realistic in the first place) and give you spare time at the end of the day

This is also related to managing your time effectively. So read this and this.

• Clean yourself

Ok, admittedly that sounds like a dumb statement to make. But I have a point. I promise.

There's very little point in being in an environment that either makes you feel like you're boiling or freezing or generally uncomfortable. So if your room feels stuffy, open your window a bit (and the curtains. Jheez I don't know why some people enjoy darkness so much. It makes no sense to me).

Groom yourself in the morning instead of groggily getting out of your bed in the morning and working away in pyjamas. Be comfortable but shower or something. If not for yourself, do it for everyone that'll come into your presence that day.

please.

You'll hopefully feel a bit more energised before you start your day.

• Manage expectations

It's important to manage the expectations you have of yourself and the expectations other people have of you.

We're often extremely self critical because we either just want the best for ourselves or there are visible pressures from other people. This isn't an admirable trait. Yes, we should try to find ways to improve our work but not at the expense of harmful negative talk and self-hatred. It isn't useful and won't help you progress at all.

If you don't complete all the tasks you wanted to complete that day, check if you've been too unrealistic, make the appropriate changes then forgive yourself. It won't change much in the long run especially if you've made changes which could improve how the next day goes.

If you find yourself talking to yourself negatively, ask yourself whether you'd talk to a close friend the same way. If you wouldn't, you're probably being too harsh. Trust me, you do not deserve the negative self-talk you might put yourself through.

• Eat properly

Ah, food. Food is good. So eat something.

Don't stuff your face with crap all the time. Be reasonably healthy and save all the beautiful fried chicken for the weekend. Eating properly has a great effect on your energy levels.

Don't starve yourself either. Working on an empty rumbling stomach is like listening to a baby cry. They can both be stopped with some warm milk and cookies.

I don't think a new born would eat cookies though so you can have them for yourself. If anyone has a baby, you can let me know if they eat cookies. Or not. I don't mind. It's your baby after all.

• Exercise

Exercise has been scientifically proven to be healthy. So you should do it. Preferably everyday if you can. It's a great way to release stress and make you feel good. You work much better if you're more healthy over all. You don't need a gym membership to ride a bike or go out running.

• Have fun with friends

It might be odd to be reminded to talk to your friends but you should. You don't need to be in complete seclusion in order to be efficient. You can study alone but you don't need to be alone for the whole week.

And enjoy time with them without feeling guilty! If you always feel guilty, you won't enjoy the company or get any work done. You'll just be in a weird purgatory that doesn't let you do anything.

• Summary

To prevent you from getting too bored, I'll end the techniques here. There are loads more but I hope others will contribute with what works for them.

Exam preparation doesn't need to be painful. Going into it with that mindset will make it much more likely to be a bad process. Try out some of the techniques and let other people know whether they worked for you.

Best of luck with your revision and I hope your hair doesn't turn grey.

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This Article was originally posted on IB Survival, it has been re-posted on IB Survivors with the authors' permission. For more articles like this one check out his wordpress, or read more articles we have below.

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How to Create Plans You’ll Stick To

The following is about how to create realistic plans. It's adapted from my blog. I hope it helps.

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There are two easy ways to create feasible plans:

1. Pretend you have 30% the energy you usually have
2. Copy a plan you’ve completed successfully before

Note that I’ve left out the most obvious way – looking at a calendar and the things you have to do then filling up the hours.

Why don’t we stick to plans?

It’s simply too difficult

For some reason, if we imagine a free day we imagine a lot of time. But we also assume our energy levels will match that. It often doesn’t.

Cramming the day with loads of activities is only going to make you tired quickly and far more likely to stop doing them even in the middle of the day. If it’s a long term plan it’s even less likely to continue.

We get distracted

Distractions are a huge problem. As research shows, after a distraction, it takes about 25 minutes to get back into work.

It makes our work far less efficient and moves everything in the plan forward. Therefore we work longer, become more tired and start putting things off.

We don’t give ourselves enough time

We might assume that we can get an essay done in 3 hours but sometimes we might get stuck which means we have to take a longer break. Or we can’t find the book we want.

Same with side projects you might want to do after work/studying. If we expect to do all of them in a minimal time then we’re either going to drop them completely or reduce them drastically and feel guilty about it.

We procrastinate

Looking at a large plan for the day can be intimidating and cause us to procrastinate. Therefore we don’t do anything we aim to. Here’s one simple way to stop it.

Making plans work

1. Assume less energy than normal

This point relies on assuming you have less energy than your plan assumes.

If we try being superhuman then get intimidated or worn out by our plan, it’s not a useful. On the other hand, if we’re more modest, we have a much easier starting point, procrastination is less likely and we will complete things.

Let’s take one of the plans I’ve had in the past (and I’ve had many):

  This is actually a simplified version of a plan I had at one point in my first year of university.

Looking back on it, it’s surprising to think that I considered it then even more surprising is that I was annoyed when I couldn’t complete it! Nearly 9 hours of difficult (and unnecessary!) work I had planned. That’s on top of being social, dealing with chronic pain and you know, trying to not hate books after my first week.

The plan didn’t work for a variety of reasons:

• I didn’t have the energy to complete them
• I ignored other factors (like having friends and going outside)
• It was boring
• It wasn’t flexible

Creating the plan with the mind that you’ll have less energy means you plan to do fewer things, increase flexibility and still complete things. So the plan above might turn into this (assuming there’s a 9am start):

And that’d be it.

The first plan has nearly 9 hours of mentally tasking work while the second has 4 hours with large breaks in between. It’s much easier to start and I found I got more work done with the second plan overall.

 Copy a previous plan.

The second condition is easier to implement. If you’ve successfully created and completed a plan before, copy it and use it again.

However, it’s important to take into account new factors when doing this because your past plan might have been completed under much different conditions. For example, if you’ve caught a cold, your energy is going to be lower than it would be normally so you’ll complete less work or it’ll take longer to complete the same amount.

But remember to be reasonable. If you’ve planned an overnight stay at your library or a general rush till exams, you won’t be able to sustain it for a long period. To combat that, refer to point one.

An impromptu Q&A session

“But you’re doing so little work – this doesn’t apply to me!”

Fortunately, it still does. If you’ve ever planned anything and never completed it (although you feel you should have) then it applies. Creating unrealistic plans is normal and unless you actually have unlimited energy, it’s fine to plan less and complete more.

Dealing with chronic pain means I’ve had to change how I view plans and making my time more efficient. This is one way I’ve managed to stay with the crowd despite being in pain all the time.

“But what if I can’t plan less! I have so much more work to do than you”

That’s where the second condition comes into place.

Not every plan can work on such little energy. Deadlines and loads of work exist. If you’ve actually completed a plan that meets the demands of your current situation, mould it around that.

If not, continue to assume you’ll have less energy when creating it. And stop procrastinating.

Yet, don't use this excuse to return to an unrealistic plan crammed with work from the time you wake up to the time you sleep.

“What if I have scheduled commitments?”

If you have a variety of things you want to do (clubs, learning new things, blogging etc), reducing the amount of energy you’ll have to complete it seems ridiculous. It isn’t.

In this scenario, you have to exercise prioritising and say no to some commitments. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you won’t do them, get frustrated at the ‘little free time’ you have or burn out very quickly and blame yourself.

Admittedly, it is difficult saying no to things especially when you seem to have a lot of time for trying new things. Those things won’t disappear straight away and there’s no point in planning them if you’re too tired to complete them.

It’s alright to say no.

This is a big thing for IB students. Especially if you feel that extracurriculars are extremely important. However, there are a few more things important than extracurriculars and even grades. Your health.

Running on low energy and being on the verge of burn out for two years is damaging. It can have adverse affects like putting you at risk of depression and other health problems that happen as a result of stress.

Take the time to assess your priorities throughout the school year and decide what you want and need to do. While the IB is a difficult time for many, you do not need to assume it'll be difficult and aim to fulfil that prophecy.

"I'll try to do that but which would you pick, sleep, study or social life?"

This is genuinely one of the biggest lies about the IB ever. It's sometimes funny to joke about how little sleep you get but there's nothing to be proud about when it comes to getting little sleep.

You can have all three. I recommend you have all three.

Studying is important for getting good grades.

Sleep is important for every activity you do. Sleep debt is a thing. If you consistently go without sleep, it's not much different from not sleeping at all. For example, if you consistently shave 2 hours off your sleep for a week then at the end of the week, your attentiveness is the same had you not slept for an entire day.

Socialising with other people can be fun and a welcome break from reading books all the time (which is inefficient since concentration levels drop throughout the day).

Plan less and give yourself more time to enjoy your day. Your grades will thank you for it.

“Am I allowed to continue working past my smaller plan?”

Yes. A minimal plan makes it easier to start working. It doesn’t necessarily put a limit on how much you should continue working. Though, it should make you more efficient with the hours planned – reducing the need to continue working much more.

The next day, return to the minimal plan. A good plan is sustainable.

“I’m rubbish with times. What if I oversleep?”

Ignore times and focus on activities. Instead of planning the hours, aim to work on a project for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

If that is too difficult, aim to do an hour of the project during the course of the day. The earlier the better of course as you don’t want tiredness to excuse you from working.

“Did you write these questions yourself?”

Some things are best kept secret.

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Action Steps

The take away from this is to reduce the amount of energy you’ll need to finish a plan so it’s easier to start and easier to complete.

What can you do now?

1. Create a plan for your ideal day
2. Assume you’ll have less energy than normal
3. Create a new plan.

A small amount of completed work is better than a large amount left wished to be completed.

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This Article was originally posted on IB Survival, it has been re-posted on IB Survivors with the authors' permission. For more articles like this one check out his wordpress, or read more articles we have below.

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