Speaker 1: Hi friends, it's Nathan, a second year pharmacy student studying at the University of Waterloo. Welcome to my channel or welcome back to my channel. I know that for many of us, we've started in-person school again and that has created a lot of challenges. In my DMs and comments, you guys keep telling me that you forgot how to study, you forgot how to time manage, so I'm going to help you fix all those problems. I'm going to walk you through and provide tips on how to create a daily productive study schedule that avoids burnout. So if that's something that you need, then keep on watching. The first step is to create your template. I will link mine in the description box below. However, remember that everyone's day is different, so you're going to have to end up customizing it. However, if you do want to start from scratch, I will also give you the rundown. So in Word or Excel, you're going to make a table with eight columns. Now your first column on the left-hand side is going to be time, and then the remaining seven is going to be your days of the week, Monday to Sunday. In the time column, you're going to need to decide when you want to start your day. Now I start my day at 6 a.m. because that's what works best for me, but find what works best for you and stick to it. It should be the same time every single day, and that includes the weekends. From your wake-up time, you're going to fill down the rows in one hour increments. I start my day at 6, so it'll be 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on. At this point, you're going to have to decide what time you want your day to end. I end my days at 9 p.m., and remember, this is going to be the same time every single day of the week again. I recommend having a 16-hour day with eight hours of sleep. Now I know 16 hours sounds like a lot, but you're not going to be studying for the full 16 hours. It's just the amount of time that you are awake. Let's start with the morning. So everything is in one-hour blocks. My very first block is waking up, meditating, and getting ready. Now maybe one hour seems like a lot, maybe more than the average person. However, I really like to take time to make sure that I'm getting into the right head space for the rest of the day. And be realistic. Most people, when they wake up, they don't just jolt up from the sound of their alarm. It takes a few moments or whatever. Like for me, it takes around 10 minutes for me to- my eyes to adjust, and for me to drink water, and just take a breather, and all that kind of stuff. So just be realistic and actually give yourself the amount of time you need. You do not want to be rushed. The next block I recommend is breakfast. Now I make my breakfast every single day. I eat the same thing. It's eggs on toast, and I put a lot of ingredients in my eggs, so it takes me a while to cook. So that's why I give myself an hour. And because we're studying so much during the day, it's so important that you get the right fuel in your body. So having this dedicated block, one hour, I usually take around like 20 minutes to cook, and then 40 minutes to really enjoy my breakfast while watching the sunrise. That's how I like to start my day. The next block is admin. Now admin for me is responding to emails, replying to comments, a lot of just content creation tasks. Now for you, that could be responding to emails as well, but maybe catching up with family and friends via social media, or creating a to-do list. Use this time to really set your day up for success. And the last block for the morning is the gym. Now I really recommend doing some sort of physical activity in the morning. It'll really get your brain going, and then your body moving, and it's just great for productivity. And as well, I've been trying to wean myself off of coffee, so workouts have been a great energy boost as an alternative. So that brings it to the end of the morning at 10 a.m. As a bonus tip, I want to tell you about Skillshare, who has kindly sponsored today's video, as well as a specific class that will complement very nicely with this video. Firstly, if you don't know what Skillshare is, Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes. Through these classes, you can learn new skills, explore your passions, and try something creative. This video talks about creating a study schedule on a more macro scale. However, if you wanted to get more micro and more specific, I highly recommend checking out Productivity Masterclass, Create a Custom System That Works by Thomas Frank. In this class, he talks about managing tasks, setting up your calendar, organizing files, emailing, and so much more, so definitely check it out because it complements very, very well with this video. His class really set up a strong foundation for my second year of pharmacy school, and I'm sure that his class will do the same for your academic and personal life. Skillshare is designed for learning, so there are no ads, and they're constantly coming out with new premium classes, so it really allows your brain and your heart to run wild with whatever you're passionate about. The first 1,000 people to click the link in the description box will get a two-week free trial of Skillshare Premium, a perfect opportunity for you to take the class I mentioned or any other class that interests you. Thank you, Skillshare, and let's continue on with creating a study schedule. Now on to the day. We're going to talk about weekdays specifically first, and then we'll talk about weekends a little bit later on in the video because weekdays are the bulk of the week. So right now, your template will be looking pretty blank. You have your morning filled out, but the rest is blank. So you're going to schedule in your classes first. Now if you have in-person classes or if you have online synchronous classes, then you're going to schedule them as you do. However, if you have asynchronous online classes, then you're going to modify it slightly. So you're still going to keep the day that the class is actually assigned to. So if you have class on the Monday, keep it on the Monday, but instead of putting it at the time that it would normally be, instead put it right where your morning routine ends so you're not wasting any time. Once all your classes are inputted in, you're going to have blank spots here and there. Now this is the golden tip. Are you ready? So those blank spots are going to be your study times for the class you just completed. Of course, if you have back-to-back classes, this won't work, but if you don't, then this is what is ideal. You just finished a lecture, so the content is fresh in your brain. You're going to use your study time to re-read your notes so that you solidify your understanding. You're going to do the practice problems that was discussed in lecture. You're going to make Anki cards on the content you learned. You're going to basically use this study time to reinforce what you just learned in the lecture. This not only keeps you in track, but once you're done studying and your next class comes about, that'll act as a study break so that you're done with this class and then you're moving on to the next class. It's all about creating systematic and almost natural study breaks. When they're not actually breaks because you're still doing something else, you're just switching from one mode to another mode or one course to another course. Furthermore, this strategy also gives you a natural cutoff time. So if you know that you have two hours in between lecture one and lecture two, you're going to use those two hours to your maximum productivity so you can get everything done. Now this is called Parkinson's law and it'll keep you productive and it'll just maximize your efficiency. If your classes are asynchronous, then manually give yourself one to two hours after every single class and that works very naturally because if you are watching your videos at two times speed, then your lectures aren't even that long and you have extra time to study. Here's another tip, so make sure you're listening. Study for the class on the day that you have lectures, which means that you're smartly allocating the appropriate study time to the amount of time the lecture or the professor thinks you need. So for example, my therapeutics class, which is like the largest class that we have, it goes over our conditions, we have lectures three times a week. That's a lot of lectures, which means that I should be studying three times a week at minimum. And in comparison, my health systems class, we only have one lecture a week, therefore I'm only going to study one day a week. So this just allows you to smartly study for the heaviest courses and not so much on the lesser heavy courses. And this is the whole idea of working smart, not hard. This is giving you cutoffs again, so Parkinson's law, when you know you only have three days to study for a course, you're going to use those three days to the maximum potential. An important thing to note is that even after all of this, you may still have some blank spots. Now those blank spaces, keep them blank because those are going to be used as your makeup days or extra study sessions. So if you weren't able to complete something yesterday and then you have a blank spot or maybe half an hour, an hour blank spot, you're going to just complete the unfinished work in that time. So we talked about the day, but we haven't talked about lunch. Now for lunch, you want to schedule in your lunch very strategically. I schedule my lunch at 1 p.m. and it's always in between lecture one in its study time and then lecture two in its study time. By doing this, my lunch is acting as a natural break between the two courses. The whole philosophy behind my study schedule is creating these natural breaks that don't feel like breaks, but are giving my brain a break essentially. So you're maximizing productivity, but you're also avoiding burnout. That's why I can study for such long periods of time because I'm adding these natural breaks in. The evening. You need to decide when you want to leave campus, when you want to close your laptop, when you want to close the books. You get what I'm saying. Essentially when you want to stop doing work. Now again, we're always about those cutoff times because we're using Parkinson's law to maximize productivity. When you know that you are not doing any work past a certain time, you're going to try your best to get it done in the time you're given. My log off time is 7 p.m. and this works really well for me because I am a morning person. I do my best thinking, my best work in the morning when the sun is up, and then once it starts getting dark, I get sleepy and it's just, I know when to call it quits and 7 p.m. is when I call it quits. And then it's time for dinner. So my dinner again is a one hour block as with everything. So it gives me time to actually cook my meal, avoiding takeout, and then eating my meal and enjoying it while watching Netflix or something. And this is just kind of a pat on the back for a successful day. Your last block of the day should be showering, winding down, sleeping essentially, and showering, first of all, is so incredibly therapeutic. I don't know if you've heard, but Adele is releasing her new album soon and seeing Adele when you're stressed in the shower, it's different. Let me just tell you that. And then winding down. So this is doing something that you enjoy that really just relaxes you. So that could be skincare, that could be reading, maybe even, you know, going on social media for a while and just catching up with friends and family. Just whatever allows you to get into a calm state of mind. And lastly, turning off the light and going to bed. And for me, that is 9 p.m. I know, I know I'm a grandpa, but it just works really well and I need my eight hours of sleep. I do want to mention weekends because they are unique in the sense that you don't have any classes. I like to use the weekends for personal enjoyment and extra studying, which I think is the perfect way to spend a weekend. So my Saturdays are devoted strictly to content creation. And then on the Sundays, I do my extra studying. Anything that I have missed, or if I have deadlines, exams, whatever, I will dedicate more studying on Sunday. And this is just a great way to kind of end up your week and really patch up any holes that were created during the week so that you don't fall behind in your next week. Try and schedule at least one day, preferably the weekend, where you just don't think about work. You're either not doing work or you're just doing a little bit of work and this will be your kind of real break. Now remember, breaks are productive. I think in the study community we don't talk about that enough, so breaks are productive. I'm telling you that right now. We are not robots. We can't keep going on forever. We need to recharge. The last thing I want to talk about is flexibility because I know this study schedule is rigid, but it's rigid for a purpose. It allows you to stay on track and if you do fall behind, you know how to get back on track. And this is ultimately how you create a study schedule or a routine that sticks. However, that being said, I understand that life throws curveballs at you, things change, plans change, and there's just spontaneous moments and that's fine. You just have to be adaptable. So if it's deadline season, if it's exams coming up, then yes, spend extra time devoted to studying. You might be sleeping a little bit later or if you have a friend's birthday and you want to devote the whole weekend to celebrating with them, that is fine too. With this study schedule, let's say if you did go to brunch when you were supposed to be studying, you know that okay brunch replaced you know study time one, then you can put study time one in another spot and you can make up for it. It just keeps you accountable and it keeps you very clear of what's going in, what's going out, what you're missing, what you're not missing, and it'll keep you on it so that you can just make it up in the next week or whatever time you have. It just keeps you on it and as students, we have to be on it. I would be a hypocrite if I told you that I follow the schedule perfectly. That is definitely not the case and it was made evident by last week's video where I was cramming two weeks of class in one day in a study vlog. So if you haven't checked that out, I will link it above and this is the beauty of the study schedule. I realized I was behind. I knew how to get back on track and then I know what point I needed to get to to be on track again. So this is what the study schedule is for. It is not to constrict you. It is to give you freedom and to give you flexibility and to really just maximize your time. We only have 24 hours in a day so you've got to make the most out of it because we students, we all, trust me, we all wish we had more than 24 hours in a day. Sadly, we don't so we've got to make the best of what we have and that is how you create a productive daily study schedule that avoids burnout. If you enjoyed the video, please make sure to give it a like. Let me know in the comments below if you decide to try my study schedule and let me know how it goes for you and if you want to see more study advice videos and study vlogs, make sure to subscribe and hit the bell icon so you get notified every time I post a new video and if you want more day-to-day content, day-to-day motivation, make sure to follow me on instagram at nathan.wu but that's it for me and I will see you friends in the next video. Bye.