#studytip101

Well guys winter break started almost everywhere I think so it’s time to give you my experience on how I stay productive during such a busy period with so many things to do and so much place to go. 

What does staying productive means?

Productivity comes in so many forms, it can be just planning the week, organising all the school materials or changing the study place and try to go to the library. 

For me staying productive means organising all the study material and start to at least read them and take some superficial notes. I do also listen the lectures and type them down not all of them but the ones I missed during the semester. 

How can I manage to stay productive?

We all know that staying productive means a lot of concentration and dedication because keep studying after the school/uni finish is something that every student dislike. Personally I find myself more motivated to stay productive if I can do something even just reading some slides during those dead moments between festivities. 

I obviously take a break between the last day of the semester and the “study hard” time. For example this Year I will start to study from the 26th to the 30th morning and afternoon, no evening, and then from the 3rd to the 7th I do just afternoons and evening. 

How I organise?

Print a calendar or use a digital calendar on your phone! I can’t stress enough how this is so important. This gives you a visual timeline and how many days are left for real studying and where your deadlines are. 

What I use: 

@emmastudies​ monthly calendar printable and time work log/ pomodoro printable

Filofax / Tempo personal daily

Count Only 

Iphone/Mac Digital Calender/ Outlook / google they work all fine

Temup

Gather all your material. Another important thing is to group all the material in one place. I like using binder because I can hold textbooks, slides and my notes all together, if they are digital I still print them out and place them in the binder. 

Take a calculator and a sheet of paper. You might think why these materials.. Well I tend to divide the work evenly between the days so let’s say I have 3 Groups of Slides (30 pg each) 2 textbook chapters (around 70 pg)  and 35 exercises/mock questions and four days. I know that I can do around 15 pg per hour including summarising each paragraph in a small sentence on the margin and Highlighting. I have totally 160 pg so I divide that number for 15, 10h 15min of study excluding the exercise. Once I calculated that I write it down on the piece of paper and start to see when I can do those 10H session between those four days. 

Take again the calendar. Once you repeat the step above with all your material start to plan achievable goals for each day in your calendar. That means that if I know that I have to go out with some friends in the afternoon I won’t cram 5h of study that morning, I would probably do three hours in the morning and when I would come back if I feel I would see the plan and check if I was behind on something and manage it. 

Tips and Tricks I learned during the way. 

I always have been one of those content procrastinator, I would come home and watch Netflix, Youtube videos and tried to stayed out all day to not study. I started to change when I started University this year after changing my major, I was so motivated to start with a good step and I brought home some really good results. Here few tips and tricks.

The smaller the task the better. This seems something really strange for a productivity tips but it’s so true. If you set mini goals it’s easier to get through.

instead of writing 

Chemistry chapter 3 pages 74-113 

write 

Chemistry: 

3.1- 3.4 pg 74-82

3.5 - 3.8 pg 83-100

3.9 -3.11 pg 101 - 112

excercises pg 116-120

Don’t cram your days. Planning unachievable study goals or too much task for a day is a common thing when you start planning. I start to break down my big task and saw that most of the time I wasn’t completing them just because I was setting too big goals both with study and in general. 

Use a productivity app or make two accounts on the laptop.. Most of the students tend to get distracted when studying both with the phone and the laptop. 

Productivity app: This is really good for two aspects: It blocks you from using certain sites or apps and it tracks the time you really study. Sometimes we really think that we study 4/5 hours but the time we spend really on the books is maybe 1-1 and 1/2 hours. 

Forest, Momentum and 

Two accounts on the laptop: I have in my laptop two accounts one with games/apps and social sites unblocked and the other where I have all the study/university related things with most of the social not logged in and with those sites blocked.

Boost your energy with breaks and food. Another things students tend to avoid because you “loose time” but the brain need to pause and get back on track as our focus decrease after 50 minutes. Don’t cram study sessions try to do like 50 min, 10 min, 50 min, 10 min and after three times a 20 min break instead of 10. Don’t absolutely skip meals, it’s something that is not good first for you health and second for the brain, you’ll deconcentrate easily as the brain doesn't have enough sugar to work. 

Keep track of exams, mock and don’t stay too much time without reading a subject. This might sound strange but a way to stay productive is keep pushing ourselves to do better, but how can we do it? well keeping track of everything we can so scores, percentage of an essay, errors we do in mocks and exams is a great way to boost yourself because if you see you are going better is the way to go, if not it’s time to change something. Another way to boost your productivity is to make an habit out of it, so don’t abandon a subject more than 4 days in a row!

It’s almost Christmas so so much more time to take notes and be productive during winter break. A lot of you guys appreciated my notes on Instagram so I decided to dedicate a post to them because . at least for me, they are not only pretty but really useful. Hope you will take time to read this small guide. A little sidenote: I’m a OCD regarding the school material, I organise everything since the 4th year of Italian High School so my method is study proofed. Enjoy the holiday break!

Which material I use?

A little disclaimer before we start: it’s not necessary buying the same exact  stationary to do pretty notes the cheap alternative works fine.

Paper-Notebooks: In my posts you can see me using three types of paper/notebooks mainly, Moleskine Charier notebooks, Muji notebooks and loose leaf paper and Whitelinespaper notebooks. I do absolutely prefer lines than squared in particular the narrow ones.

Pens: I absolutely adore the Pilot brand, I use mainly the Energy 0.5 needle tip but I use also the G-1, G-2 and Hi-tecpoint v5 grip. I like a lot also the Muji brand and the Bic Gelocity. I strictly use a gel black pen because I can see it more neatly on my pages.

Highlighters - coloured pens: another essential for my notes are Highlighters and coloured pens. I use them most for dividing paragraph, making titles and underlining important words, information etc.

How I structure my notes?

Talking about structure I First decide the color of the notes, all that chapter/section will be in that color, even flashcards and study guide. For example here Genetics is greish/blue. I will use all the color around that tone for that section, General idea of chromosome, Mitosis and Meiosis is the same as the title, Mitosis specifically, second image, is petrol green with a teal tint and meiosis will be bright teal. So I can distinguish al the sections of the bigger chapter. 

Structure

I start with writing the main title of the section big on top with the section/part and two

 I write the main title of the chapter

I continue with the main points of the chapter in general

Keywords are in another color or highlighted.

subtitles are in black highlighted and underlined

I always keep a space around half page for diagrams and mini images

Il like in this case I have a diagram full of images I tend to draw them in pencil first, coloured them in with Prismacolor pencils and then outline them with my Energel pen.

After the paragraph end of the chart I go back taking notes regularly so:

subtitle

Keyword, definition

main important facts

and so on and so forth. I tend not to write down word for word about the lecture because that I already did in my laptop notes, these are less condensed stud guide if we can say that. 

How I organise them once I finish writing?

I take them out of the notebook if I write them in a notebook, in this case they are removable pages without holes for the binder, and then I place them in a file folder with plastic sleeves. In each saleeve I place the notes of each chapter/section. It really depends a lot on how much note I take because some section are bulkier then others. I have one for all the biology/chem subjects.

the class notes are organised in a binder for each subject where I have also the textbooks and the slides of each professor. 

Hope this help some of you who wondered how I take notes. Let me know in a message if you wanna see something more.