So for the past two years I've studied more than I've
studied in my entire life. At least one-third of
every day I spend studying adequate to about 5,000 hours which is over 200 full days of studying over the past two years. Now, if I am spending this
much of my time studying I should maximize my efficiency during these times of studying. So in this video, I'm gonna talk about my
favorite study techniques that help me study more
efficiently and effectively. But before we get into that stuff let's talk about my first
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work more efficiently. (bright upbeat music) As a quick prerequisite the things you do before
you studying is vital. My most popular video is that video and I'll link that kind of up here. But briefly these are get a
good night's sleep, exercise and have a good mindset. If you don't know me, my name is Zach and I'm a 3rd year medical
student in Philadelphia. (upbeat music) So the first thing we're gonna talk about which I do a lot of videos
on is the Pomodoro method. So the Pomodoro method is
studying for a set amount of time and then taking a break
for a set amount of time. This is a procrastination poster because it works the intimidating large amount of work you have to do into smaller, more manageable clumps. Also it gives you set
breaks for giving your mind and body a break for a
certain amount of time. And what happens when
you take these breaks is your mind resets and usually I find that I perform better after taking this nice little break, 'cause if you just work for something like three hours straight probably all those three hours you're not gonna be working as effectively as powerfully as you could if you broke those into smaller chunks with integrated breaks. So what is the most common strategy? Well, the most common strategy the strategy I'd normally
use is 25 minutes of study, five minute break. 25 minutes of study, five minute break, 25 minutes of study, five minute break, 25 minutes of study and then you take a 20 or 30 minute break. And then you can repeat these
as many times as you want but that's kind of one Pomodoro block. Another great thing about this strategy is that you can gamify which research shows
improves your performance. You can download apps like Forest and what Forest does is for every certain amount
of Pomodoro sessions you do so say you do a 25 minute session and you don't look at your phone, you don't get distracted, you don't step away from
the focusing from the work then you'll grow a little treat. And then as you keep focusing, as you keep working you'll
grow more and more trees and you can show off your little forest to other people and see
who's got the biggest one. And this video isn't sponsored by Forest or anything like that,
it's just an app I like. Personally I like to try and complete about 10
Pomodoro sessions a day. Now, the most important
thing about this method the most important way to kind of maximize your
gains from this method is during these sessions you should only be studying, that's it. You're only studying during
these Pomodoro sessions, because there's a built-in break, right? There's a break that's coming
right around the corner which is when you can relax. When you can stop focusing. If you begin to clack off
during these study times, during these focus times it kind of reduces the mental strength of this partition time for studying. It reduces the conditioning you're building up for yourself that, "Okay when I'm in this timer,
when I'm in the session I'm gonna work hard and I'm gonna focus." If you start to mess
around during that session it kind of defeats the whole
purpose of the Pomodoro method. Save your slacking for
this five minute break. And what do you do during these breaks? This is a common question
that people like to answer. Well, you can do anything you want. Personally I think it's
best to do something that doesn't include what
you've just been doing. For a lot of us, right, that's gonna be looking at a computer or looking at a book and sitting. So what do we wanna do? We wanna not look at a computer or a screen or a book and
we don't want to be sitting. So what's the best thing to do is like go for a walk, walk outside do something active that doesn't involve looking at a screen. My second favorite option is
cleaning up your apartment. So I'll just like clean my desk area or clean my room or something like that. Or what you can do during the session is watch YouTube videos
or browse the internet. Again I don't think this is necessarily the best thing to do but it's what I ended
up doing quite a bit. You can talk with friends and family, go get a snack or do some
pushups or body weight exercises. So what are the tools? What are the apps we can
use to kind of implement this Pomodoro timer where
you can get the Forest timer which I already talked about? You can get the Bee focus
timer which is a Mac app which is what I use. Or you can get this app
called self-control. And this is a great application because what it does is
it restricts your access to the internet or certain
parts of the internet. And no matter what you do, once you start that timer
you can't get there. Deleting the application,
restarting your computer will not let you get to
that part of the internet or that application. So some quick caveats to this method some people like to do
the 50 10 minutes methods. So you'll study for 50 minutes and then break for 10 minutes
or some kind of other mashups. It doesn't really matter. It just equates to about
every 10 minutes of work you should take around a two minute break. So if you study for 60 minutes maybe you take a 12 minute break. Finally and the most important thing is this will only be
an effective technique if you make it an effective technique. It'll only be effective if during this time you're
studying and only studying. Bottom line is study in
study break increments. This can be 25, five or 50,
10 or 60, 12 or whatever. Just study and then break,
study and then break. (upbeat music) Tip number two is the Feynman technique. And let's start this out with a quote. And this is a quote from Albert Einstein. "If you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough." Well, who is Richard Fineman? Well, Richard Fineman was a
renowned physicist and teacher. Albert Einstein and bill
Gates were actually students of some of Fireman's lectures. And why were they students of this guy, why were Albert Einstein and
Bill Gates students of the guy? Well, he was such a good teacher. And the reason he was such a good teacher is he could explain extremely
complex ideas in simple ways. The Feynman technique is exactly that. Can you explain some
complex topics simply? Would a child understand you? Some people like to say imagine you're talking to a five-year-old. So here is me using the Feynman technique to explain the Feynman technique. First, identify the information. What are you trying to learn? Second, how would you teach it? Imagine explaining this
information to a friend as simply as you can. Avoid jargon and prioritize brevity. Now, when you're doing this explanation did you find anything tough to explain? Was there something that actually you didn't know how to
explain in a simple way? Do a little more studying
rework this explanation until it's simple and you understand it. Then finally try teaching it again. Let's use an example
from the master himself when he explains inertia. "If an object is left
alone is not disturbed, it continues to move
with a constant velocity and a straight line as if
it was originally moving." Now, if I was gonna try and
use the Feynman's technique to explain something like diabetes, I might do it something like this. So let's take a bowl
of cereal for example. Now, when someone eats a bowl of cereal usually there is sugar
in this bowl of cereal and some of that sugar
you'll use right away. Maybe you'll use it to walk and get up. Maybe you'll use it to do some thinking. You'll use it right away. But a lot of that sugar you
won't actually need right away. So your body says, "Hmm, I might need some of this sugar later to go running or jumping or run away from a tiger. So I'm gonna store this sugar for later." That's where insulin comes in. Insulin allows you to
kind of store this sugar, store this energy for later. In someone with diabetes they may not be producing enough insulin or that insulin isn't working well enough. So what might happen with
someone with diabetes is I'll eat this more
with a bowl of cereal but they won't be able to
store the sugar for later. And so someone with diabetes might not be able to
access this store to sugar. And because they can't
access the stored sugar they can't access this stored energy and so they get sick. Because this stored
sugar the stored energy is not only used for
kind of moving our body and jumping and running away from tigers, but it's also used for our brain to work and our brain to do certain things. This is of course an extreme
oversimplification of diabetes but I hope it kind of made sense to someone who really knows
nothing about diabetes. And that's the goal of
the Feynman technique that you can kind of take an extremely very complicated
topic like diabetes and kind of melt it down
into something simpler that maybe a child would understand. The way to get the most
out of this technique is to take it seriously
and use it consistently. I like to imagine that I'm with one of my friends and they're
actually asking me to explain it and then I'm explaining it
in front of other people. So if I mess up, I kind
of get in trouble, right, 'cause I don't want to
explain something badly. It's actually kind of like making these YouTube videos, right? Because I have to explain certain things on these YouTube videos,
but I have to avoid jargon and need to make the explanation brief so people don't lose focus. So I'm actually learning
quite a bit about these things when I'm making these videos which is one of the reasons I love making these YouTube videos anyway. So what tools can you use for this? Well, one great tool is your phone. You can call a friend,
you can call someone and just try and explain a topic to them. So bottom line, try and imagine explaining what you just learned to a child or someone who knows
nothing about the topic. (upbeat music) So technique number three
is a not to do something. And I've made an entire
video about this before and I'll link that somewhere
in this kind of general area but you wanna avoid rereading
highlighting and summarizing. Evidence shows that
pre-reading, highlighting and summarizing are poor techniques when compared to other
studying techniques. So what tools might you need for this? Well, a good tool would maybe have a furnace for your highlighters. (upbeat music) Study technique number four
is what I just talked about is use practice testing
and use active recall. Practice testing and active recall are kind of two of my favorite
three pillars of studying. So what are these two things? Well practice testing is exactly that, it's taking practice tests and these can be practice
questions from your teachers, practice questions online
anything like that. An active recall is when you have to work to recall something. So when I ask you what is two plus two? You kind of figure out in
your head, "Okay, it's four." Even though it's a little
bit of work, it's still work. And that work is active recall. Now say instead I put on
the screen across here, two plus two equals four. Now all you're doing right now is you're just reading that
two plus two equals four. Sure, there's a little
bit of work and reading it but you're not having to do any processes. You're not having to do any
kind of working in your mind 'cause it's already given. Two plus two equals four is already given. You don't have to think about, "Okay two plus two equals four." And then you get four. Brain is working harder
and you are learning more from what those two plus two equal than reading two plus two equals four. When you are doing a tough problem, you feel your brain working, right? When you're doing a tough
test, you feel it working. But when you're just reading or when you're just watching
the video like this, it's not as much work and you can probably
feel that for yourself. Isn't watching this video easier than the homework assignment you did or the test you did, or the essay You kind of wrote three words and then clicked on the YouTube video? Probably is. Sort of some tools you can use to implement active recall
and practice testing, well, you can use practice tests from your teacher or from the internet. You can use On-key for flashcards. I also have a video on
like my nine day study plan before tests, which I'll link in this area but this integrates active
recall practice testing and space repetition. So bottom line use active recall and practice testing as much
as you can when studying. (upbeat music) I don't think it's possible
for me to go a single video without mentioning On-key so I won't. Just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, I
will talk about On-key. But all space repetition
is, is exactly that you're focusing on learning things at different time intervals. So if you review topic A on Monday maybe you'll review it again on Tuesday and then maybe you'll
review it again on Thursday. And On-key is a great way to use this because it applies these spacing intervals that have been worked
out by very smart people and also it does it all for you. And you can do flashcards
and all kinds of good stuff. So now just take this
space repetition technique and apply it to everything you learn. Seriously, apply it to
every thing you learn. It's what the evidence supports. It's what top performing
students at my medical school do and it's what I do. So bottom line it use On-key or other things to
integrate space repetition to everything you learn. (upbeat music) Tip number six is make connections. And I'm gonna reference something called Hebbian theory here. Theory is that the more
connections we make to a piece of information the more likely we are to retain
that information over time. Now this isn't an exact science, it's not a proven thing, it's a theory. The more we can connect our
memories and connect ideas, the more likely we are to
retain that information for a longer period of time. So how do we take advantage of this? Well, what I like to do is whenever I'm learning something specifically on a flashcard
or something like that, I try to make connections between other topics
that I've been learning and that's linking these two topics making me learn it better. And hopefully if we
believe in Hebbian theory making this information stick longer. Now this method could
also be called chunking but I'll go into that a little bit later. Bottom line is make connections between facts and
information in your brain because it might help this
information stick around longer. (upbeat music) The technique number seven is planning. For me, planning removes
stress from the next day, provides actionable goals and lets me accomplish
more when I'm working. It also importantly allows
me to jump right into working as soon as I wake up instead
of kind of figuring out, "Okay, what am I gonna do? What's important?" And in general, the
more specific your tasks the more specific your goals, the better. So for example, if you
wanna study biology. A better thing than
saying study biology is, "Oh I wanna study chapters two
and three of biology today. Oh, I wanna do 20 practice questions and I want to do 100 flashcards." And I take it a step further by planning out my entire week on Sunday in an app called Notability. And what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay I know I have these certain things, these certain plans that I think, these certain things that I have to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday." Now I'm gonna write down those things and I'm also gonna write what I would like to get accomplished on
those individual days. Personal and life events. I like to use a handwritten
notebook or a calendar or an app called Notion, which I will be making
a video in the future, kind of everything I
do and how I use Notion 'cause I love it. Bottom line, try planning out
your weeks, the week before and try planning out
your days the day before. This will reduce stress
and kind of allow you to more easily jump into
what you need to get done that day or that week. (upbeat music) Finally study technique number
eight are mnemonic devices. And I'm going to include a
jumble of different techniques that you can use that I use all the time. But these are kind of smaller things. So I didn't think they needed
individual subcategories. Specific tools I use and the specific tools I mentioned are actually the techniques and strategies used by the memory champions of the world. If you don't know there
are memory competitions where people have to memorize like decks of cards and certain orders or as many numbers as they
can in order, it's crazy. But what they use is
these memory techniques. So the first thing we're gonna talk about are memory palaces or imagery. This is why sketchy or picmonic are such popular resources
in medical school because they use this amazing imagery, this amazing memory technique memory strategy for
remembering information. And one way to do this is a memory palace. So in my apartment right now, right, I can picture kind of the kitchen area. I can picture my bedroom and
I can picture my bathroom. So maybe if I don't wanna
remember certain topics or certain concepts, I
can attach certain images or these concepts to
different parts of this room. So maybe if I wanted
to remember a printer, a soccer ball and an Apple, and I want to remember those three objects in order or something like that. Okay, then I do it, the
printer first in the kitchen, the soccer ball in my bedroom
and the Apple in the bathroom. But that's not enough. You need to make it real. You need to make it integrate as many senses as you possibly can. Usually the sillier the
crazier, they are the better. So maybe I'll picture that my printer is sitting on the stove on fire as I walk through the apartment. And then in my bedroom the soccer ball has replaced my pillow. So now I have to sleep on a
soccer ball when I go to bed. And when I go to the bathroom when you think of a bathroom,
I think of a toilet. So in the toilet inside is an Apple. That's kind of weird. Why
is an Apple in the toilet? So now when I walked
through my memory palace of my apartment in my head, I'll be like, "Oh boy
the printer's on fire on the stove printer. Oh, there's a soccer ball
instead of my pillow. Why, why is that their soccer ball?" And I'll walk into the bathroom in my head and I'll see the Apple inside the toilet and I'll see that's kind of weird. Why is an Apple on a toilet, Apple? Importantly this doesn't
work with concepts. It only works with specific
pieces of information. It's a memorization technique. This is why sketchy and other kind of medical
school things work so well for remembering civic facts about bacteria and things like that. Because for example, one
thing you might need to know is whether a bacteria is
gram positive or negative and what they do in the image ingeniously. So as they just make the image
purple, if it's gram-positive or like more red, if it's gram negative. The next mnemonic technique is acronyms. One acronym I don't think
I'll ever forget is ROYGBIV. And these are just the wavelengths of the visible colors of light. So R is red and this is
the lowest wavelength and V is violet and this
is the highest wavelength. And all an acronym is, is
just using the first letter of a set of words or a
word, couple of words to remember certain information. Next there's something called acrostics and acrostics is similar to acronyms except it uses the first letter of a set of words to remember something. Just to make this medical oriented. The one medical acrostic that
I remember from medical school is some anatomists like effing
over poor medical students. And these are just branches of the external carotid artery count. Finally, we have chunking and chunking is exactly that, it's just chunking information
into more manageable block. What do you think is an easier way to remember these random 10 numbers? Two, three, four, four
eight, three, Oh, nine eight Oh or two three,
four, four eight three Oh, nine, eight, Oh. It's easier to do the chunking. (soft music) But that's it. Those are eight techniques that I've used consistently in the past
two years of medical school and I've kind learned over the past nine years
of higher education that have helped me
immensely with my performance and understanding and
retaining information. That is it, thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one.
