Why I'm able to study 100+ HOURS a week in medschool (Evidence Based Strategies)

what is going on guys my name is kenji welcome back to my channel hopefully not the first time you're watching one of my videos but just in case it is i'm a fourth year medical student and biomedical science graduate studying kings college london and in this video i'll be telling you guys about the system that i have developed over the last couple of years in my biomedical science degree over there and also in the last four years of medical school that has allowed me to be able to sit on my desk for 10 to 12 hours at a time in order to study revise and pass my exams in university let's go ahead and get started i'll be switching up this video into two parts the first part is going to be talking to you guys about the system that i use in order to do this and the second part video will talk to you guys about exactly how i apply a system in order to work efficiently for long hours at a time let's go ahead and get started alright so if you guys know me you know that i spend a lot of my time in medical school studying for very long hours at a time especially when it comes up to my exam period i do spend you know 10 to 12 hours a day sat on my desk trying to revise all of the content for medical school and also my last degree as well the method or the tactic that i use in order to be able to do this is something called the pomodoro method and you guys may have heard of this the pomodoro method that i personally use is initially in the morning when i first wake up morning i have loads of energy i've just gotten out of bed the first couple of hours up until lunchtime i do a one-hour session followed by a five minute timer and again i repeat that all the way up until lunchtime after lunch once in fall and once i'm a bit more tired my energy levels have dropped slightly i then move on to the half an hour followed by five minute timer pomodoro method again meaning that i spend half an hour you know consistently working followed by five minute break and then another half an hour working and i do this all the way up until my end of my revision session when i finally completed it so the pomodoro method is just as i said it's repeating a consistent amount of study period time allocated time followed by a consistent amount of break and again repeating that process on and on and on uh throughout the whole entire version session and let's talk about exactly why i have chosen to apply the pomodoro method over just sitting down for you know four or five hours at a time a revision so the first main reason i use this method is that i can use it to convince myself to actually sit down and work if i sit down at a desk in a library or in my room knowing that i'm not going to move this chair for the next couple of hours i definitely will not be able to convince myself to sit down and work and doing that will be a lot harder but if i wake up in the morning or after my lunch if i can convince myself that if i sit down here for half an hour of you know straight revision straight work followed by a five minute break that is way easier for me to convince myself to actually get the work done knowing that it's only in short amounts of bursts followed by a break and it's kind of the exact same thing when you're working out if you're in the gym working out you don't want to be there for hours you want to actually you know use your muscle work your muscle very very hard for a set amount of repetitions and then give yourself a nice little break followed by the next repetition and for me that's exactly how it works the exact same thing with my brain with my brain being the muscle using my muscle my brain for a set amount of time properly really efficiently and then rewarding it with a little break to rest and recover followed by the next session after that the second reason i use pomodoro method is that when i actually sit down to study to work i find that very very quickly the time flies by and it honestly does when i start working 10 minutes later i look at the clock and i'm like oh i actually only have 20 minutes left this is so easy i can definitely smash out another 20 minutes take a little break to get coffee and then come back to it so time passes a lot quicker and i realize very soon after i start working that's we're very very close to the end where i can take a break and then carry on this again the last and final reason as to why i use a pomodoro method is that it stops me from losing concentration getting tired there are loads of psychological studies that show that your concentration capacity your ability to actually sit down and work and concentrate on a given topic is around about 18 or 20 minutes so for me sitting down for longer than half an hour working means that i'm more likely to lose concentration more likely to not actually work efficiently and that's why i work very hard for half an hour give myself a little break and then go ahead and subject myself to another set of time that is completely focused on the task at hand again in order to make sure one i don't get bored two i don't get tired and lastly i don't lose concentration and i don't lose my concentration span during this revision period so that's exactly why i use the pomodoro method i have definitely used loads of different methods in my university years in my last degree and also my first couple of years medical school but this is what i found to be the most efficient way of working in my own personal circumstance let's now go talk about how i actually use the palm door method in my day-to-day life in order to sit down and revise for long periods of time the way i actually track my revision sessions is by this thing over here in my hand these two hourglasses are things that i invested in they're very very inexpensive the one over here is a half an hour hourglass the other one is a five minute timer as well and this is exactly what i use to track my time so when i'm first starting off um in the morning i will flip this twice because that will mean it's one hour uh later on the afternoon i'll flip it once and as soon as this sound reaches the bottom i know it's time to take a break again the same being my five minute timer when i'm taking a break and these have been really helpful you know having a physical representation of how long i have left to know exactly how long i have to concentrate for has really changed the game in my revision strategy also having these glasses means that i'm able to use a timer a physical timer rather than having my phone as a timer in the past i've actually used different apps my phone like the forest app if you don't have these things here so an app like the forest app is definitely something you can consider the reason why i go for these hourglasses is for the fact that i can actually put my phone away and not touch it for the entire revision session and that's the second tip i have for you guys if you're revising for a good couple of hours make sure to throw your phone away to the opposite side of the room hide it underneath your bed sheets if you have to but make sure it is in a place that is far away from you being able to touch it and look at it and having these things here means i'm less likely to go on my phone and check the timer because if i go ahead and touch the timer it's not going to be the timer it's going to be the notifications that my friends have sent me it's going to be you know going on instagram whatever that is to make sure your phone is as far away as possible from you as you possibly can another way you can make sure your phone is not near you is to put it in a different room or secondly you can actually buy these things on amazon where it's like a box like a timer you put your phone inside you close the top put a timer on it and locks your phone for that given amount of time and making sure your phone is nowhere near you is another effective strategy and revision also what you guys can do is turn on do not disturb on your laptop i know some of you guys have what's up in your laptop and facebook popping up and all those different notifications so make sure all of that is off by turning on do not disturb once it finally has reached the five minute break i make sure to still not go on my phone because again that's gonna turn five minutes into 15 minutes of looking through instagram and that's exactly what i don't want during my five-minute break what i actually do is do something that'll make me more productive in my next revision session that might be going to the kitchen to refill my water bottle it might be making a quick coffee it may be lying down on my bed just to relax and rest but all of these things are things i will do during the five minute break to make sure that my revision is going to go well on the next session and it's essentially doing anything that i need to do that won't take much time during five minute breaks to make sure that during the half an hour working session i'm not distracted i don't need to leave my seat and i'm able to do that 30 minutes of work the next tip that i have for you guys is to make sure you work a time that is best for you the worst thing you can possibly do when actually revising is to work on someone else's schedule because you know that all of your friends or medical students are getting up at 5am to work definitely don't do that work a time that is best for you in the book why we sleep the author actually gave a lot of good evidence to prove that we as human beings have biological clocks inside of us that govern the time that we're most likely to be productive at the govern what time we should be waking up at and if you're someone who works you know later on in the day better than someone who works you know early on in the morning then make sure you don't pressure yourself to actually do that for me personally i know i'm not a morning person the perfect time for me to sit down and work is starting at 10 a.m i'll normally wake up around 8am you know have a nice breakfast and do what i need to do in the morning and then move on to start working around 9 45ish 10am and then i'll work for the next you know 10 to 12 hours working throughout the afternoon into the early evening and that for me works absolutely perfectly i don't let the pressure get to me of all my friends who wake up super early to work and revise that's just not for me so tip here being find a revision schedule that works for you and don't take on anyone else's the next tip i have for you guys is to make sure that you actually reduce the friction required to actually start working the more friction you have you know to start working the less likely you are to do it the friction to actually start working and picking up where you left off is very very high then the likelihood of you actually going ahead to sit down to work is a lot lower so for me personally the ways that i reduce friction to actually start working is for example making sure that by the end of the day when i'm finally done working my whole entire revision table over here is nice and clean everything's out of the way my room is nice and tidy and most importantly i know exactly what i need to start off revising the next following day i'll literally have all the tabs i've used up to revise on my desktop ready to sit down and start working for the next day i have all my papers out all my books out everything that i need to do to actually start working is there in front of me so the actual friction of starting work is extremely extremely low and this can also be applied to two distractions so for example i have my xbox there on my table as you guys can see i definitely should not have that if playing xbox or playing games is something that gets in the way of your work make sure the friction of actually you know using it is extremely high so you know take your xbox away unplug it all put it in your cupboard and you'll find that the energy taken to actually play xbox is way higher and you're a lot less likely to do that so anything that involves friction you know like i said your phone your xbox anything like that anything that will get in the way of your vision make sure there's a huge amount of friction to actually starting that task starting at starting that activity compared to you know working when you want to work all the things you want to do to actually make you more productive make sure there's a tiny amount of friction so when it comes to actually revising the next day or in the next revision session you're way more likely to go ahead and get started more efficiently and that's exactly why i can work in 30 minute bursts because as soon as i sit down working from that second that i start from the second i flip my timer i know straight away i'll be working efficiently compared to actually you know having to set things up every single time move things around no as soon as i want to start working my table is ready for me to go ahead jump straight into it and move on to the next 30 minutes of work the last tip i have for you guys to work long hours is to make it fun make it enjoyable for example the one thing that i always do is to try and reward myself whenever i'm working i will plan things like gaming xbox sessions my friends you know after work in the evening during my lunch period i may go for a walk or go to the gym i literally bribe myself to work by providing myself with you know rewards or things that i'm looking forward to after my revision session and that works tremendously if you're someone who likes swedes who likes treats you can say to yourself that if i cover 10 lectures or if i cover you know maybe 10 past paper questions i will give myself a little chocolate do what you need to do bribe yourself in ways that you need to in order to get stuff done the next thing you guys can do to make it fun as well is to study with friends of course don't choose friends who will distract you he'll talk to you all the time but i personally do so many revision sessions with my friends with my flatmates and we all sit down together and we work for a set amount of time sometimes we actually apply the pomodoro method together we'll do half an hour of work together followed by five minutes of chit chat or going to get a coffee together but work with friends who inspire you to do work who will keep you concentrated and lastly of course will keep you accountable for what you say you will do the third way to make it fun is to study with music i definitely don't recommend having loud rap music in your ears when you're working i definitely can't work with uh very loud music or distracting music but if you have like you know nice background music that will set the setting well lights like behind me that will set the atmosphere in the way that you would like then go ahead and do that as well and lastly when you actually sit down to work in your half an hour during the five minute break go cut yourself you know an apple go grab yourself some nice snacks you enjoy sit down for a half an hour have a coffee while you while you actually work and all of those things should hopefully make your 30 minutes of revision a bit less painful so that is pretty much it guys that is how i work long hours a day as a medical student i do hope you've taken something away from this video if you have please make sure you're subscribed please drop a like on the video turn notifications on as well to make sure that you're up to date whenever i post if you have any questions at all or any suggestions as to what you might want to see in the future please leave a comment down below i'd love to hear from you thank you so much for watching and i'll see you guys on the next one you

Channel: Kenji Tomita

Views: 5,468

Rating: 4.945652 out of 5

Keywords: study with me, medical student study with me, mediacl school, king's college london, medicine, medical school in the uk, med school vlog, how i got into medical school, king's college london medicine, medical school uk, medical school life, medical school vlog, medical school london, medical school vlog uk, a day in the life of a medical student, how to study long hours, how to study, how to study effectively, how to study for exams

Id: vIafAOIe9fQ

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021