Speaker 1: It's that time of year again. If you're at the start of the year, maybe you're full of all this strange motivation and all this academic energy to slay the year. Right now you're thinking, yes, I'm going to make my flashcards. Yes. I'm going to get the grades I want to get. Yes. I'm going to get into the uni I want to get into. But the thing is, we all know that in one month, in two months, in three months, as the school year goes on, as you get more work, as exam stress comes, as all of this stuff piles on, your motivation just kind of starts to wane a bit. I hope this video can help you prevent future burnout, to mitigate those future effects by really setting up the systems now to help future you. There are some really simple, easy things that you can do now to make your life easier, to say no to cramming before an exam, to say no to crazy anxiety and stress and perfectionism later. Here's everything I wish that every student would do at the start of the year. Enjoy. And if you find this useful, check out my book, The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need. Number one, set up your systems. At the end of the day, motivation is a feeling. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it goes. Sometimes you want to get all A stars and sometimes you want to drop out of school. That's how it is. But the beauty of habits is that they can give you good results without effort. So what is a habit? A habit is something you do without really thinking about it. It's a behavior which you have repeated enough that it's kind of second nature. For me, I had a simple habit in secondary school. When I got home from the bus, I got out my school clothes and I made it a habit to go upstairs and write down a to-do list of everything that was going on inside my head. I would just blurt out, I've got an end of chapter test next week. Okay, cool. I've got homework due tomorrow. Look at my planner and just write down everything. And suddenly all the tasks cluttering my mind were on paper so that I could look at them more methodically, start working through them. Some days I had a lot to do, some days there wasn't really that much, but I always had this habit that I was going to write them down anyway, so that when things did get more stressful, the habit was already there. From there I could make a timetable and slot everything into a schedule. Cool. So we want to set up some good habits, but how do you make your habits stick? For example, you want to revise a bit of geography every day. How are you going to make yourself do that every day? So the way to make your habits stick is to use the theory of habits. In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear describes something called habit stacking. The idea is you already have so many habits in your day-to-day routine, which are there, easy, without you even thinking about it. For example, you probably brush your teeth every morning. You probably, I don't know, go to the toilet when you wake up. Maybe you put face cream on before you go to bed. Maybe you always have a snack when you come home from school. There are all these habits already there. And rather than just trying to create this random new habit out of nowhere, you can chain a new good habit onto something already in your life. For example, if you want to make a weekly revision plan, but you never find the motivation to sit down and make the plan, make it a habit. Every time you've gotten a snack after coming home from school, sit down and make the plan while you're eating the snack. Combine your new habit with something already in your routine, and it's more likely to stick. Some of my favorite systems to use are journaling. So to use a planner or a journal to keep yourself organized. For example, now could be a great time to learn how to bullet journal. I personally love using Notion, which is an online tool for planning your life, for making notes, for doing to-do lists, for just everything that you can think of. But it does take some time to learn how to use. Go ahead and help future you by learning how to use these systems now. Number two is practice your revision methods now. Guys, it's not crunch time yet. You don't have your A-level exam tomorrow, you know, like right now, January is gold dust. If you don't know how to revise, that's amazing. You've got so much time. Try things out now while the stakes are low. When you've got a little end of chapter test, amazing. That is your moment to try out a new revision technique, to try, to fail, to pivot, to get things wrong. So that when you come to that actual exam that actually means something for your life, you know how to revise, you know how to study. You've tried it in the past. Three study techniques I really recommend. Firstly is flashcards. Flashcards are a lot better than just writing out your notes because you actively have to be processing the information, you can't just copy up your class notes, you have to be thinking, cool, what is the most important information from these notes? And how can I create questions to test myself on? For example, if you're doing biology, you've got a massive page of notes about the heart and the cardiovascular system, a perfect question to put on one side of a flashcard is name the chambers of the heart. You look at that question, you answer it to yourself. And then straight away, you look on the other side and you see if you've got it right or wrong. It's engaging, it's active. The process of creating the flashcard is forcing you to understand your notes first. You can do paper flashcards. You can do online flashcards using things like Quizlet or Anki, which are two amazing services. The second amazing revision technique to try out is called blurting. Take a chapter of something that you're trying to learn, take a topic and blurt down everything that you can remember about it, blurt down the key terms, blurt down the processes, blurt down the character's names, if it's English literature or the themes that you can remember, just drag out as much as you can from memory and put it on paper. And then after you've done it, check back with your notes and see how much you actually remembered. That is just such a good technique for you to test what you actually do know. And it's a very active process because you're dragging the information from your head. You're having to think a lot. And number three, finally, try teaching someone. You know, you understand something when you can get someone who has no prior knowledge in the domain to also understand something complex. It forces you to break it down into real bite-sized chunks. And that is a good revision technique. Number three, it's January. Make your revision resources now. Imagine when you get to exam season or final season or Easter, future you is not going to be a happy you. If you have to look back at a year's worth of content and try and create something to learn from. If you like flashcards, make your flashcards now, make them as you go. If you like posters, make your posters now. If you've done past paper questions and you've got questions wrong, learn from them now. Create an easy resource that you can look back on and your future self is just going to love you. You'll be like, thank you for making my life so easy past Jade. At A-level I got into the habit of every single day that I had a class to come home and to make my flashcards there and then, I was very strict with this because I know myself and I know that if I let five classes slide, six classes slide, I would just stop making flashcards altogether because it's just too much work to catch up. And that's how you allow yourself to get behind and that's where you feel stressed. So make them as you go and it's just a small bite-sized chunk and future you will just love you. Number four, understand the basics of the science of learning. We all have so many myths about what good studying is. We often think the longer we spend studying, the better the study session. You know, it's better to spend 10 hours slaving away at the revision rather than spending half an hour on a subject. Two key points to understand. The first is the more active, the better. We love things like rereading our notes or passively highlighting because it's easy, it's passive. You're not dragging information from your brain. You're not really testing yourself. You're just looking at information and nodding to yourself being like, yeah, I agree with that. That is correct. But you don't really know if you've got it in your head. Whereas things like flashcards, you know, they're asking you a question. They're dragging that information out. Things like blurting, you're really having to question how much information you know. So teach yourself revision techniques, which are active and get in the habit of using them. Secondly, this is the forgetting curve of human memory. It was discovered by a guy called Herman Ebbinghaus and it looks really complicated, but it's not. It's basically saying when you try and learn something, your memory is at 100%. You've just told me your name. I'm going to remember it for like two seconds. It's at 100%. But as time goes on, my memory is going to exponentially decay until I've forgotten your name, even though I want to remember it. And that is the exponential forgetting curve of human memory. But how do you use this knowledge to your advantage? You can reset your memory by going over the same information at regular intervals. For example, I'm trying to learn your name. If I remind myself of your name an hour after meeting you, it's going to get my memory back up to a hundred percent. Then I remind myself of your name six hours after meeting you. Then a day after meeting you, then two days after, then five days after, then a week after, and slowly I can leave a longer gap in between each of these intervals. And this is called spaced repetition. You're repeating the review of the information with larger spaces in between each time. And that's a really simple hack for whatever revision technique you're using to be more effective. Apps like Quizlet and Anki do this for you automatically. Like their flashcards just have spaced repetition built into them. But if you use something like paper flashcards, now could be a great time to create a spreadsheet and look at the dates that you're going to go over certain information. The more the science of memory you use, the easier your life is going to be. The information is just going to go in. And finally, number five. Guys, it is so important to create the right mindset. Why do you want to be here? Why do you love learning? Why are you trying? What's your motivation? Why do you want to do well at school? I mean, you've clicked on this video. So clearly some part of you wants to do well, even if it's out of fear for future you going into exams. What motivates you? Is it something intrinsic? Is it something about you just enjoying the subject or enjoying the process? Or is it something extrinsic? Is it something outside of you? So you want to get into this amazing university. You want to get X amazing grade to show your parents. You want to get this very specific job that requires certain grades. Like what is your source of motivation and how can you identify that to yourself? I highly recommend writing down right now, what motivates you to study and why. This is important because you're going to reach moments in your academic life where you want to quit, where you want to give up, where you're questioning why you're even here or why you're trying. And simple things like having written down why you're trying can be the kickstart you need to keep going. You can create a vision board on your wall. For example, if you want to be a doctor, put aesthetic photos of a doctor up there and be like, that is going to be me one day, you can create daily affirmations for yourself, for example, every day, waking up and thinking I am hardworking. I am worthy of getting the grades I deserve. I am calm. I love learning. I'm happy to be here. I'm grateful for my education. And it can sound cheesy, but honestly, repeating these things to yourself regularly eventually does change the way that you view academics. Or at least it did for me. At the end of the day, school is hard. Being a student is not easy. And I really commend you for being here, for clicking on a video like this, because you're already being proactive. You're thinking about your future self. You have goals. You want to do well at school. And I really hope this helps just thinking about some easy things you can do now so that you make your life easier. If you're interested in anything in more depth, I highly recommend picking up my book, just because I'm kind of limited in video format going into, for example, the science of learning or how to do these revision techniques successfully. But yeah, I go into depth in this book. On videos like this, I love flooding the comment section with positive, inspiring motivation from other students about why they want to be here, why they want to try. It motivates me. It motivates others. If you have two seconds, please write down in the comments, what motivates you to study? What motivates you to want to try hard this year? Why do you want to get the grades that you want to get? Maybe you'll inspire someone else. Thank you so much for watching and have a wonderful day. Bye guys.