studyblr

We’ve all been there: You have stuff you need to get done, you know you need to get it done, but no matter what you do you just cant get yourself to take out your stuff and do your work. 

I have this problem quite a lot, so here’s a post to help some of you out!

Articles

Read this to get some quick motivation (tw: curse words) It’s sure to get your blood pumping and give you the vigor you’re lacking!

Harvard’s solutions on how to stop putting stuff off

7 helpful study tips 

8 helpful study tips

Manage your time studying

How to seriously study

Detailed article on how to get motivated to study

10 study motivation quotes for all types of students

3 scientific backed study motivators

Videos

Unbroken

Dream (EXTREMELY INSPIRING)

Be Phenomenal

Why Do We Fall

Mindshift

Be Hungry

Stop Killing Time

Destiny

Vision

You Will Win

Study Spotify Playlists

Deep Focus

Peaceful Piano

Intense Studying

Productive Morning

Electronic Study Music

Study Time Starts Now

White Noise

Epic All Nighter

Focus Now

Late Night Focus

Genius Time

Nice and Easy Workflow

Motivating Study Blogs

@elkstudies, @getstudyblr, @minimaliststudies, @nehrdist, @tbhstudying, @highschoolering, @saturdaystudying, @stxdybug, @dangostudy, @raavenclaw, @academla

There are so many more studyblr’s, but those are just some I can think of off the top of my head!

me: ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WRONG. ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE I’M TIRED OF THIS. IF YOUR ALLEGED VENN DIAGRAM IS SO RIGHT THEN WHY ISN’T THERE AN INTERSECTION OF ONLY ENVY AND GREED AND NOTHING ELSE

me: MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE THIS ISNT HOW VENN DIAGRAMS WORK

me: U WANNA SEE A VENN DIAGRAM OF SEVEN? I’LL GIVE U A VENN DIAGRAM OF SEVEN

me:

Hey there!

If you have a math, or science related subject (like I always do), you’ll find that you really can’t escape analysis and problem solving, especially if you’re majoring in something science or maths related. So I am here to share some tips that actually made studying technical subjects a little bit easier and manageable for me in college:

Practice solving. If you have a subject that requires you to solve, you really have to practice solving, there is no easy way out of this one. This allows you to develop your own technique in solving the problem. You can start by doing the problems you did in class, then venture out to some examples in textbooks, then further into the problems in the textbooks until you get the hang of how the concepts and theories are applied. 

Listen during class. I know, it’s boring. But you have to do this. This way, you’ll be able to understand the topic once it is presented to you. In my opinion, it’s better if you let an expert explain it because they know the important bits in the lesson. Then study it afterwards on your own to develop your own techniques.

Ask your professors. Don’t be afraid to ask questions in class. Or if you’re shy, you can ask them after the class. However, it’s important that you ask them about the lesson when you already did your part; meaning: you already studied the material/solution over and over again but there’s just something that you can’t seem to grasp. 

Study before the class. Studying the lesson in advance doesn’t hurt. Plus, it works because you already have an idea about it. However, I don’t do it usually. What I do is that prior the discussion, I study the lessons that are going to be essential to the next topic. Example: Say that our topic later will be about introduction to thermodynamics (which includes derivation of various thermodynamic formulas); what I’m going to study instead is the different integration and derivation techniques, and different basic thermodynamics concepts like laws of thermodynamics. This ensures me that I know the prerequisite lessons of the next topic in class.

Absorb the conceptual parts of the topic first. Before diving into the problems itself, try to digest the concepts or theories behind it first. This way, you can understand which information is important and easily think of a solution because you know the problem’s framework. Even when your professor gives you a problem that seems different from your other sample problems, the concepts will still be the same throughout.

Reverse engineer the solution. Reverse engineering is reading and understanding your solution from bottom to top. I do this to make connections while going through the solution. I usually ask myself “‘where did this come from?’, ‘why did this happen?’, or ‘why is the answer like this?’” It allows me to look into the parts that I missed which are usually concepts or theories that I forgot to apply in solving the problem.

Look for key terms or phrases. There are some problems that put in information that may seem unimportant, but actually is really important. Examples such as the phrases constant velocity, constant acceleration, starting from rest, accelerate uniformly, reversible isothermal, adiabatic conditions, isobaric/isochoric compression/expansion, etc., are easy to miss but actually gives you vital information especially when solving a problem.

Try to ask yourself how or why it happened in every step of the solution. You can do this to gauge your mastery of the lesson. If you can answer yourself confidently, then you’ve studied well enough. But, if you can’t or if you feel that it’s not enough, then you better get your pen, paper, and calculator to practice some more.

If you have to draw it, draw it. Some problems need the use of your imagination, and these problems are the ones that get tricky most of the time. It’s easier to draw each of the time frames that are important so you get the sense of what’s going on between these pictures. This way, you’ll know which information you’re missing and which ones are you failing to take into account.

It’s okay to be messy and slow while practicing. Not all of time you can solve in a tumblr-esque manner because, dude, tumblr notes or solutions are soooo pretty to look at, BUT, what’s more important is that you understand each step of the solution and how the answer came to be 8.0658 m/s directed 32° south of west. So it’s okay to have dashes, strikethroughs, and crosses on your scratch paper, as long as you’re learning, a messy solution on a paper you’re not going to submit to your professor is fine.

IF YOU’VE REALLY GOTTEN THE HANG OF SOLVING IT, try to solve a fresh set of problems as fast and accurately as you can. Try to solve as if you’re in an exam. This is also to gauge how well you’re prepared for it, but you need to do this accurately. I repeat, accurately. It doesn’t work if you’ve finished it in less than an hour but all of your answers are wrong.

1. You are very lucky and privileged to have access to almost unlimited knowledge and you should appreciate that. 

2. Be one of those rare people who step over their insecurities and succeed. 

3. Only 5 minutes. Only today. (Repeat it 5 minutes later and every day). 

4. You will know what to do as soon as you start. Ideas never appear from inactivity. 

5. Make yourself proud. 

6. One hour every day doesn’t feel much but it’s 365 hours a year. You can’t not succeed after so much work. 

7. It’s not supposed to be easy. Nothing good is easy. 

8. If you had a child to look after, you’d make them study because you want them to accomplish something. Don’t you love yourself? 

9. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear” George Adair 

10. Every mistake increases our chance to make progress. 

11. If you give up now, you’ll have to return to this later anyway but from the very beginning. 

12. Let the process be your result. 

13. Every moment you thought your fears would suppress you has become the time you made it. 

14. Maybe you think you can never find something to use your skills and mindset for. But if you continue investing in what matters to you, it will find its way out there. 

As requested by some of you who read my post on Types of study methods to suit your current position, here’s how to study journal!

First of all, study journaling is an idea that I came up with somewhere in the beginning of December, and then used it for a week and checked its mechanics - which is why I think I can say that it is a nice way to boost your productivity and academic skills.

And I’m saying academic “skills” because I don’t really think that anyone has any less capability to do well in studies, it’s just a matter of time when you actually realise the right method to study. And once you do that, it’s like bam - you got it!

This idea hit me first when I heard about bullet journaling, and many studyblrs also kept mentioning to keep track of your study sessions and stuff, so I just mixed it all up and conjured this “studyjo” (lol that’s the worse name).

Here’s how you can studyjo :

1. Basic af essentials

A journal, duh.

The whole concept of studyjo is to boost your productivity, not your fancy ish, so picking a cheap ass journal isn’t gonna kill you.

My dad has a thing for collecting diaries and journals, so I usually pick one from the storeroom - which is why the one I used was of the year 2015. I mean, we’re gonna make our own custom calendar inside anyway so it didn’t matter to me.

You want a fancy ass journal? Go for it. A cheap ass composition notebook? Go for it. As long as it has pages and you can access it from your class/college /home/car/train/any spot on earth its eligible!

Writing tools, duh.

Use a brush pen, sharpie, markers or a pencil - doesn’t make a difference as long as it writes well.

So there’s a lot of you guys who think embellishing our notes/bujo is a waste of time, then by all means keep it simple.

I like colours because my eyes automatically want to look at them which complies me to go over my tasks again and again.

Of you think aesthetic is your thing then by all means use it to your advantage.

That doesn’t mean that you’ll stress over maintaining the pretty pages, we’ve already got enough stress to work with.

2. The basic spreads

Yearly calendar

You must have a page for yearly overview, where you can mark down all exam/assignment/project /event dates.

Sometimes the teachers tell us about our assignments 6 months prior too, at that point the monthly spread isn’t helping - use the yearly spread.

I write our finals dates, important exams, any birthdays, college events, orientation dates, class meeting dates, open House dates and holidays, etc in this calendar.

Keep a little notes section below your calendar to write down extremely important stuff that happens through the year.

Motivational quotes (if they help you) are the best to write down here, because you’ll be looking at them throughout the year.

Dashboard

You are a student, which means that sticky notes are your BFF.

I note down all my deadlines on a sticky note (when in college) and put it on my dashboard.

You can also keep any board passes/bits of paper you receive from the school.

Use one of those envelopes as a pocket and store all miscellaneous papers inside it. I also keep some question papers there.

Store flashcards (the thin ones ofc) in that pocket if you’re going to be carrying the journal everywhere with you.

I also keep a list of doubts that I have in some concepts so that when I meet the respective teacher I can just whip out my doubts list and get it cleared.

Monthly spread

This is where you start the planning.

Make a checklist /whatever sort of list you want of all tasks study related that you need to do. This includes assignments, homework, project, studying a topic, study dates, etc.

It’s best if you sort that list subject wise, but mine is just a general list tbh.

Learn how to break down your tasks. If you have a test on Chapter 1 in Friday, do section A of that chapter tomorrow, section B two days later and section C the day after. And make three separate checkboxes for each section.

The smaller the task, the easier it is to accomplish it.

Have 5 checkboxes for a huge task, so that even when you’ve done a portion of the task you’ll feel that sense of achievement when checking it off.

Keep them short and to the point. Nobody is gonna read a huge ass paragraph on completing that math homework.

Study session tracker

The main purpose of studyjo is this tracker.

Everytime you sit down to study, note the time at which you started, the topic you think you’ll study now.

When you finish studying, note the time again and write down what you actually studied.

Rate your study session as per the satisfaction it gives you.

After some sessions you’ll actually want to study because you wanna add another session details to the tracker.

This works - I had three 2 hour sessions in a week because I wanted to add to my list of accomplishments and feel proud of myself.

Leave little comments on what you think you could’ve done to improve the quality of session, or what concepts you want to do next.

3. The not so basic but recommended spreads

Monthly calendar

Good to have a month wise calendar for better planning.

I note all weekly quiz dates and birthdays and upcoming holidays here, along with some plans for posting on this studyblr too!

You can totally try inspiring quotes here, along with some plans for the month.

Add little goals to achieve this month. My goal for December was to master derivatives, and I’m pretty sure I’m doing derivatives better than before.

Goal tracker

This is divided into two parts : major goals - which you add near the yearly spread and baby goals - which you can add near the monthly spread.

Major goals are generalised and just for motivation.

Minor goals are broken down major goals with details of how to achieve it and they’re the ones you actually will achieve too.

My major goal for 2018 is being consistent. I broke it into a minor goal as ‘study session of at least 30 minutes every day’ without missing!

Productivity tracker

Using graphs, charts, tables and other such diagrams to mark every day you think you spent doing something productive is very amazing.

I make a graph of each day that I got some work done, marking the wasted days with read and productive ones with blue/green.

This helps me point out the days where I’m usually not productive (which happens to be Wednesday and Thursday for me) and the days where my work is super flexible and productive (Monday is awesome).

You can fill in boxes for every day you studied for 1 hour minimum or something, if you like.

Project planner

This can be essential too sometimes. This is a spread you dedicate to planning out a long ass essay or a presentation or a speech or maybe a project.

Make tree diagrams/pie charts and write down notes on how you can structure your project - the conclusion, beginning and middle being the skeleton of each project. (want another long ass post on project planning? *everyone groans*).

Make detailed plans for the project and include dates that you can dedicate for the project making and all.

Mark those dates in the monthly calendar if it helps.

4. Random pile of tips

A weekly date strip is very useful for me. I write down the dates of the coming week on a strip of paper and stick it to the margin of my checklist page.

Mention your name and contact on the cover if the journal in case it gets lost.

Use sticky notes to leave little messages for your future self - I write stuff like ‘keep going girl you got this’ and 'I’m hella proud of you babe’. It makes you smile lol.

Add a pen pocket to the journal if possible, that’ll make it easy to note things down on the go.

You can keep a mindfulness sort of page where you can dump all your feelings down?

Or a water tracker cuz damn this potato is always dehydrated.

Try writing down why you want to study - to impress the teacher? Get a good grade? Show off to others? Get closer to your career goals?

We all want to do stuff for selfish reasons sometimes, it’s okay if you note them down because what I noticed is that whenever I wrote down stuff like 'prove to them that I’m awesome’ or 'make the bio teacher adore me’ I actually wanted to work towards it. Maybe it’s just me. Worth trying tho.

Keep the last two pages for emergency note taking and instructions given by the teacher just in case you have nothing else atm.

Voila, here - your studyjo is ready!

To be effective and miserable is not how to spend your precious time and will. To be focused on your ineffectiveness is to ignore what could actually be making you happy. Allow yourself to enjoy the process of learning, the satisfaction of practice, and even the futility of meeting the barriers of talent.

-Staying up all night working through a problem, surrounded by pages and pages of failed attempts but unable to sleep until you’ve figured it out

-The delicious hunger of constantly feeling like everything you’re studying is at the very edge of your comprehension, slippery photons slowly taking shape in your imagination as the mathematics coalesces into a tangible concept

-Reading a section of the textbook saying, “this is all we know about this topic so far”, and the flash of fire, the need to know, the need to discover burning under your skin

-Forcing your way through derivations in a desperate attempt to understand the elegance in the equation that is printed on the page

-Forgetting the world while working on a particularly fascinating problem only to resurface hours later, suddenly aware of your empty stomach and dry eyes, wondering vaguely when the sun went down

-Half empty lecture halls populated by the same group of students who never miss class, whose eyes all have the same parched look, drinking in every mark the professor writes, starving ears devouring every word that echoes in the silent room

Energy Management

A human-based organization method

click on images for better resolution; images also available here (link to google drive)

Other posts that may be of interest:

Getting stuff done: How to deal with a lack of motivation

Flexible time-blocking: A more breathable way to get things done