 Alright guys, what is going on, luxury for an empty journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress? This video we're going to talk about how to create frictionless learning in your daily life in medical school or as a pre-med. But first, let's get to that intro. Alright guys, what is going on, hopefully you guys have a great day. So the topic of this video was inspired by a question asked by one of my subscribers to my most recent video, which is how I study in medical school from start to finish. And I'll link it down below in case you want to check it out. But the question was, you know, I can follow these techniques, but I have such a struggle focusing and staying on task. And that may be you. You may be studying and have one of these situations come up. And yes, after watching that video, it's a little bit funny, but we have those forms of distraction every single time we sit down and study. So the question is how do you go from that distracted state to one which I like to call frictionless where you're sitting down and it's effortless. You know, there's momentum involved from start to finish. You don't have those common roadblocks. I'm going to give you a couple of tips that I've used in hindsight 2020. I wish I would have done sooner. So number one is that you need to identify the kind of tasks that you have on your to-do list for that day. So there's four kind of regions that a task can be. You can have things that are high impact, things that are low impact, things that require a lot of effort on your part and things that don't require a lot of effort. And so, you know, putting those four combinations, you can have things which require a lot of effort, but aren't very valuable. They're not very effective. You can have something that has requires a lot of effort, but they are impactful. And then on the flip side, you can have something that requires a little effort, but at the same time, they're not that helpful. And then you can have something that requires a little effort, but they're really effective. And it's this last category where things that are low effort, but high impact so that you want to spend a majority of your time on. So things that are high impact, but low effort are things like doing flash cards or doing practice questions. These are tasks that normally would have a huge threshold of resistance. You know, it's very easy for you to get started. And once you get started, it's very easy for you to continue, but you know, they're very effective. Things that are very low impact, but require a lot of effort are things like reading your syllabus, things where you have to spend a lot of time on to gain the information, but they're also activities that are very easy for you to be distracted that on Facebook and Instagram. So if you have tasks that are very time intensive, but also very demotivating, like reading a syllabus chapter, stack it or sandwich it with things that are very easy for you to kind of get into things like a flashcard system. Like I love doing flashcards. So I'll do flashcards before I read a syllabus chapter. Before I have to go to the next syllabus chapter, I would do more flashcards because then I'm able to do what is tip number two, which is build momentum as I'm doing the sandwich technique. I have things that are very easy to kind of do and things in the middle of that art is attractive. The second aspect of momentum is often the things that are the most helpful, right? Like practice questions, all of us know the practice question. They're huge in terms of what our final grades would be, but we often schedule those at the very end of our study day. We know we may say, I'm going to read the syllabus chapter, watch the lectures, do this, and then I'm going to do some practice questions. Often, more often than not, we never get to those practice questions because those first tasks are very heavy, very time intensive, and we just don't feel like working anymore. But instead what I like to do is I basically cut that last task of the day, right? So if it's practice questions, it's usually very easy, at least for me to get to practice questions and begin them. So I'll do half of them before I start any of my work for the day. And then I'll do the other half of the end of the day. So my first task of the day normally is to read a syllabus chapter or to watch a lecture. I'll first do half of the practice questions I intended to do in the morning, getting some momentum building, and then move on to tasks that I need to do, but you know, I'm not as excited to work on. And then I'll end my day with not a lot of practice questions left. So this kind of system is much easier to get through from start to finish versus something that's very front loaded with Tassie just don't care to do. So I wanted to touch on those two first, which is identify the type of tasks you're working on, make sure you're sandwiching them into using momentum to your advantage. So most people don't talk about that in medical school. You just kind of have to get through the work, but you can structure your work in a way that's very elegant and very easy for you to kind of go from start to finish. The next few things we'll be talking about are both tools and strategies that you can use to avoid the distractions, but also kind of have an end in site. Often when we're working, we basically say, I need to finish all this and then my day is over, but I'm going to give you something at the very end where you're going to have a clear depiction of what your day is going to look like from start to finish. And you'll know when your day is over. So first, let's get to kind of how we avoid the distractions. And I love using apps for this two apps that I'll recommend in particular one is called Forest, which is one app that I started using for the last month. And I love it. The concept of this app is that you'll set a timer of how long you want to work. 25 minutes is a good momentum time where you can get a good amount of work done without getting distracted. Every time you get through a 25 minute block using the app without going on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, you basically will grow a tree. And it seems silly to some people, you know, why the hell do I care about a tree? But the more 25 minute blocks you have in a row, you start to grow a forest, hence the name. And the more times that you are on the flip side are starting to get distracted and you end up on Instagram and Facebook when you're supposed to be studying, the trees that you work hard for are will die off. And so that kind of represents the momentum you're losing. It's a very like visual way of understanding how well you're working. If you work five to seven hours a day in medical school, then you can put that timer on and realize how much of it was actually used effectively. And you have a nice visual representation of that. So try out the app. I'll link it down below. I love it. It's free on Android. I'm not sure about iOS, but make sure you guys check it out if you're interested in. The second is kind of an anti distraction app. So there's plenty of these on the market. They're also free, but something like Stay Focused, which can be found on iOS and Android is basically if you're using it on your phone, you choose the apps that you don't want to be distracted by. So your Instagram, your Twitter, you know, pick and take your pick. And then the app allows you to schedule specific times of your day that you know you're going to be working. So typically maybe you get home at four or five o'clock in the evening and you typically study until seven or eight before you do dinner. You can schedule those time slots between five and eight o'clock for the app to turn on. And that way, you know, YouTube, Instagram will all be blocked off. So if that sounds like something that you need in your study regimen or worked wonders for me, I highly recommend you guys check it out. I also link it down in the description. So I have two more tips for you guys. Number four is about creating an environment for those tasks that you just don't like doing. So for me, I absolutely hated watching and streaming lectures. I never found them to be that effective for how I learned. And so it was very easy for me when I streamed at home to get distracted, to end up on another website, be on my phone or like take a nap. Right. So the way I would go about it, it was creating an environment for those tasks, the tasks in particular. I would go to the library. My institution has like these little cubicles, which are pretty isolating. And I would just take my laptop, my headphones and nothing else. I'd leave my phone in my backpack and I would watch those lectures in that environment. Is that cubicle with nothing else going on? I could just focus on this task I needed doing. So then I could leave the cubicle after watching the lectures and feel pretty happy about myself that I got a huge kind of resistance task done of my day. Then I could go home and work on things that are very easy for me to work on. My flash card is my practice questions. So try to create an environment, whatever it may be for you. You may have to isolate yourself from home. You may have to go home if you tend to study with friends. So figure out what environment typically distracts you and try to stay away from those situations, in particular for these kinds of tasks that you just absolutely hate doing. So my final tip, tip number five is about scheduling your hours. Now, I've already made a video on this before and I'll link it down in the description of how I schedule my day from start to finish at medical school, as well as a pre-med. And if you're anything like me, then you absolutely hate uncertainty. You want to know when you're going to start working and when you're going to stop. You also know you also want to kind of have a plan like what am I going to be doing when and you just want to be able to just work without any resistance. So that's why I love scheduling my hours. Usually I do the night before sometimes in the morning of and I basically say, OK, these are all the tasks I want to do. You know, I try to sandwich my high impact and busy work in between, just like we talked about. And then I assign, you know, every 30 minute chunk of my free time to a specific task. I may assign 30 minutes to doing a specific amount of flashcards. And then I may assign an hour and a half to do the syllabus lecture. But the basic point is by the end of the day, I know, OK, I'm going to be working today till 5 p.m. I'm going to be working today to 8 p.m. It's very easy to stay motivated when you know there's an end to the site versus saying, I'm just going to finish all of this. It's very easy to get distracted if you don't have a finish line in the deadline. So try out that, you know, check out the video to form more specifics and more like you can see my Google calendar in that video. I'll link it down again in the description. But scheduling your hours, I've found to be super effective to remain motivated throughout the day. But those are my five tips, guys. Hopefully you guys enjoyed them. Again, the whole idea is to create a frictionless environment. So you want to identify what tasks are going to easily demotivate you and make sure you don't stack them. You want to be able to continue to use momentum in your day. Use apps if you have to, and you want a visual representation. Try an app like Forrest. Create environments for those particular tasks that really give you trouble. And are more likely to distract you. And then finally, try to schedule your hours so that what you can get a nice visual representation of what you're going to be doing, when you're going to be productive and when it's OK to call it a day. So hopefully this video is helpful. Let me know what you guys think. Comment down below in the description with anything you've learned as well as any questions you have. I'll be happy to make a new video on the topic. But if you enjoyed this video, make sure you like it. Subscribe to the channel for more videos like this. Check out the MD journey dot com for the blog. For a lot of free resources as well as blog posts coming out on a weekly basis. And I'm going to stop blaming like I always do. I will see you guys in the next video. Take care, my friends.