 What is up guys, Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. If you're new to the channel, hi, my name is Nasser and I'm now a third year medical student studying at Kings College London. Today's video is all about why I study in four hour blocks. And I'm not talking about four hours of half studying, a little bit of procrastinating and chilling here and there. I'm talking about four hours of productive efficient studying in a row. Now usually when people find out that I study in four hour blocks as opposed to 25 minutes or one hour, two hour, even three hour blocks, most of them tell me that's not possible. There's no way you can stay focused for that long. You probably aren't efficient. You're probably wondering in your mind and things like that. But honestly, I genuinely study for four hours in a row and I'm motivated and I'm productive and I'm efficient. And I'm going to explain all of that in today's video. I'm going to explain two things. One, why I study in four hour blocks and two, how I study in four hour blocks. So let's tackle the why first. When I sit down on my desk over here or in the library in order to study, what is my goal? My goal is to complete as much work as possible to be as productive and as efficient as possible. Now me personally, when I get into the zone for studying, I don't want to leave that zone. I don't want to get up. I don't want to procrastinate. I don't want to change what it is that I'm doing because I've already done the most difficult part of sitting down to study, which is to get into the studying mood and zone. And the more breaks that I take or reasons I give myself to get up and off of my desk, that's another opportunity for me to have to get back into the studying zone, which I don't want to do. So generally speaking, when I'm studying for exams, I do two four hour blocks in my day from nine to one and from three to seven. And that way I only have to enter the studying mood two times once at nine AM and once at one PM. Now, this is the main reason that I personally don't use the Pomodoro timer because every 25 minutes, it's basically giving me an excuse and encouraging me to check my phone or to chill or to get up off my desk or whatever, which is inevitably going to lead to me procrastinating and doing something for longer than just five minutes. One thing that I really like about my method of doing two four hour blocks in my day is that I'm done pretty much all the work that I need to do by seven PM. Now imagine doing eight hours of productive and useful work and also being done by seven PM. That leaves so much free time in order for you to do anything else that you want. That can be exercise, socializing with friends, playing video games, making YouTube videos or basically anything. You just give yourself a lot of free time and still do lots and lots of work during the day. Now I understand obviously different studying techniques and timetables and schedules and whatever work for different people. I'm just saying as far as maximizing efficiency, if you condense all of the work that you have to do into the beginning part of the day, that leaves a lot of hours at the end of the day for you to do whatever you want. Alright, I think I've preached long enough now about why I really like my four hour block method. Now let me tell you how it is that I can actually stay focused and work for four hours in a row. I'm going to break this down into five key sections. The first is to plan the night before. And what I mean by this is that when I wake up in the morning and I know that I'm going to start studying at nine am, I've already decided exactly what it is that I'm going to do at nine am, which means that there's no friction or no time wasted in trying to figure out what do I need to study what have I done enough of what is left for me to do etc etc. I've already decided that and planned it the night before. So when I sit down at eight 59, I start exactly at nine and I can get immediately into the studying zone that is actually really really key if you're struggling to get into the study zone have a predetermined plan of what it is that you're going to do during that time. So for example, tomorrow at nine am, I'm going to study for the USM of the exam, which is here. So tonight, before I go to sleep, I'm going to open this book to the page that I'm going to be starting on tomorrow and I'm going to put a pen inside of it. That way tomorrow when I take this book, which is already laying on my desk in a nice and convenient place for me to begin work, I can literally flip open to the page of exactly where I'm going to start on top of that, you can see on my desktop over here that I'm already going to go down to the video that I'm going to watch tomorrow morning. I'm going to open it and it's going to be ready just waiting for me to sit down, hit play and begin work. Section number two, don't give yourself a reason to get up and away from your desk. Before I start work at nine am, I've already made my cup of coffee, I've gotten a couple of snacks and I've organized everything around me that I will possibly need in the next four hours, so that I can minimize the amount of times that I need to get up and out of my chair. The reason that I do this is because every time you get up and out of your chair, you're giving yourself opportunity for distraction and reason for procrastination. For example, if I go to the kitchen, I'll make myself a snack or a drink, I'll knock on my sister's door and ask her what's going on. Let's have a chat. Every time I leave my room and I leave that studying zone and studying environment, I'm giving myself reasons and excuses and opportunities for procrastination. Now, this is going to be slightly controversial, I'm sure, but I honestly don't allow myself to get up and out of my desk until I've done an hour of studying. The thought process that I have in my mind is that if I haven't been able to sit down and do productive solid work for an hour, do I really deserve to go take a break? Do I really deserve to go procrastinate and fill up my drink and get more snacks or take some time off? No, I need to first do a bunch of productive work before I can even think about the idea of getting up and procrastinating. And usually when I push myself to say that extra 15 minutes, I actually end up studying for another 30 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever before getting out of my chair because I want to finish, for example, the video that I'm doing or the section that I'm doing or the page that I'm writing. I just give myself reasons to continue studying. You know, I'm almost done with this section. I'm almost done with this video. I'm almost done with blah, blah, blah, blah, and I just try my best to keep myself situated at my desk. You know what? Now that I say all of this out loud, I'm starting to sound a little bit crazy, but just stay with me here. The point of section number two is to only get up and off of your desk when you really need to. Section number three is for the love of God, just get rid of your phone. Your phone is your worst enemy when it comes to studying time. If you hear any notification, if you hear a buzzing, if you even look at your phone, or if you even think of your phone, you're so likely to just without even thinking reach over and grab it and check it. I'm guilty of doing this all the damn time. And because I'm a human and I'm prone to checking my phone and getting all of these addicting notifications and numbers and messages, I have two ways in order to completely eliminate my phone from my studying environment. Step number one is to put your phone out of sight. If you can't see your phone, you're less likely to think of it, you're less likely to notice it, and you're just less likely to check it overall. Step number two is to put your phone out of reach. That creates a huge barrier. You have to now get up and move in order to get your phone, which I know sounds kind of stupid. You're probably be like, oh, it's just two steps away over there on the bed. But the truth is when you're sitting down any extra effort or friction you give yourself in order to go check your phone, you're going to do it less often. Wow, I've been talking a lot this video. All right, section number four is about giving yourself rewards while you're studying. Genuinely, no joke. Probably what gets me through studying sessions the most is the idea of rewarding myself with either something to drink or something to eat or going out with my friends or playing video games or whatever. Just having these rewards that I make for myself that I can only unlock once I've done a certain amount of studying. For example, like I mentioned before, I literally don't allow myself to go get a refill of my coffee or brew a tea or anything like that until I've done at least an hour of studying. It's just now an ingrained rule in my head, like, dude, you're not going to have coffee or more tea unless you do more work, so you better get that done first if that's what you want to do. My mentality when it comes to doing four hour blocks is very simple. If I work from zero till two hours, well then all I have to do is do the exact same thing that I just did one more time and I'll be done with my four hour block. It's the same thing like when I go for a 10K run. If I run five kilometers in one direction away from my house, well then I kind of have to run the other five kilometers in the opposite direction to get back home. And that way when I sit down for a four hour block of studying, really all I need to focus on is getting through the next two hours. Because once I've done two hours well then I just have to repeat what I've already done and I'll be done with four hours. I know it sounds really simple and it sounds kind of stupid and you guys probably think I'm crazy right now, but if I just do two hours of studying then I can repeat what I've done and then I've reached my goal. Okay and the fifth and final section is about setting standards for yourself. For me personally, once I've done a four hour block of studying, I know that that is something that I am now capable of. And so next time I come to studying, if I study for three hours or two hours, then I'm like, well this isn't really as best as I can do. This isn't pushing myself to my maximum efficiency or capacity. I've done a four hour block before. That means that I'm capable of doing it again. And I keep up that standard and I keep studying four hour blocks because I know that I can reach that level of capacity and productivity. It's the same thing like once I've done a 10 kilometer run, I know that I'm capable of running 10 kilometers. And so I keep running 10 kilometers every time because now that's my new baseline. That's what I'm capable of achieving. I don't like to give myself excuses or reasons to do something at a lesser level than what I've done before. I feel like I've done it once. I'm capable of doing that and so I can keep up that standard. Now obviously you can probably see with a slippery slope that comes along with this line of thinking. I'm not crazy. I'm not a robot. I obviously have times when I can't study for four hours. If I follow everything that I'm saying about 80% of the time then I'm doing a fantastic job because the other 20% is just real life. Things happen, things come up, you need to change and you need to be flexible. But this is my line of thinking. This is my philosophy and this is what I try to upkeep as much as I possibly can. Okay and that is it. I hope you guys have found this video useful. I hope you've enjoyed it and if you did please do leave a like on this video and subscribe to my channel to see more content from me in the future. If you have any tips for how you like to study or know something that works very well for you and would like to share it with the rest of the community please do so in a comment down below. I love reading and replying to all of your comments and that is it for me. I will see you guys in the next video. Peace. What video are we doing today? Why I study in four hour blocks. Let's go.