Hello everyone. I’m in year 11 rn and attend a top 20 school. I’m looking for advice on studying, consistency and creating study schedules. I plan to study physics, chemistry, 4u maths and English advanced in year 12.
I am having trouble with planning my time. I am not sure how to balance between revising old content, studying new content and keeping up with other commitments like tuition and gym. How many hours a week should I spend on revision of old content (or how I could incorporate the retrospective revision timetable to revise)? How many hours a day should I be studying? I am also failing to consistently follow my study plans as I feel like I’m overworking myself, leading to lack of motivation.
I’ve watched and read from lots of people about balancing time and studying, including people like Ali abdaal but I’m lost. Thanks everyone
First of all, I know you’re also asking about exactly what sort of techniques you should develop towards your practice, but honestly believe that such techniques will be made up along the way as you do it throughout your high school career.
As for actually doing these practices in a way that is authentic and in a way that feels natural to you, rather than forcing yourself to become successful, I have the biggest lesson I’ve learn thus far towards answering all of your struggles with this:
Everything that you begin that eventually spirals into a full-blown passion, mastery, and way of life with 100% ease is… through being a playful person.
People often associate being playful as being immature, but in reality it’s those who play the most in life who are the most successful. Take Elon Musk for example, he’s literally trying to go to mars. Of course, he has devoted himself in a serious sounding way, but that passion originates from his playful side where he would first look at the thing, think to himself, ‘that’s cool!’, and then try to play with it. His first play with the idea of interacting with Mars was to simply take a photo of a plant that his machines would have planted for a nice ‘money shot’, but since he had to try so hard to get the rocket off the ground, over time the possibility grew in his mind until he was like ‘That’s pretty cool and all, but now that I’m thinking about it, I may as wel put people on there. That honestly sounds more exciting to me’. Once he decided that that is what he wanted to do with Mars, he continued his journey with a new aim in his mind, one that was more close to his heart than the last.
After putting in so much time, effort, and energy into the project, he grew so emotionally invested into it that it transformed into his entire view of existence, ‘nothing else matters now. I need this to happen.’, and this stage is what we call passion/devotion.
Now, how does this apply to your school?
Firstly, you need to change your associations of things:
If you’re playful towards things, then you’ll naturally start out of curiosity. Once you start playing with it rather than acting out of some serious agenda/drama you’ve come up with in your head to say “I must do this”, you’ll naturally do that thing more and more since you genuinely enjoyed engaging with it before.
Why would you do something that you don’t like anyways?
People who overthink would then ask themselves the question, “Then why study since I don’t want to do it?”, and to that my response is, “Why do you dislike things?”.
You should enjoy everything, (of course, don’t take that literally, I only mean to apply this logic to things that are appropriate. For example of something that isn’t appropriate, no one should enjoy a funeral.).
Agin, the next step after playing with the thing consistently is letting it evolve into a passion/devotion. As for whether or not your aim takes on different forms along the way, thejourney will still happen regardless, which if it feels like an adventure, they you’re doing it right.
In order to have your view of existence mature into something that is purposeful, you need to, NATURALLY, have most of your life revolved around it.
What does this look like? (I’m terms of ‘naturally’)
Imagine this:
You wake up one day after turning studying into a hobby with the aim of trying to be an otherworldly genius (that aim is an example), and the moment you do wake up, you automatically feel certain about the fact that you are going to study, because to you, the only thing that matters is winning, in progress towards the success of your ultimate-goal/dream.
So, you get out of bed and do your morning duties as everyone should, and then you get to begin your life.
The studies that you anticipated to engage in have now become the things that distract you, rather than you getting distracted from your studies.
Once you have reached a point where your view of existence towards studies is maintained for a major potion of your day, that means that majority of your life throughout your days will be towards studying.
This is all practical, but action doesn’t matter if an playful nature within yourself hasn’t been set first.
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