 If you feel like you have no life in school or time for yourself, then here are the top things you need to make time for and exactly how to do it. Let's get into it. Number one, exercise. Particularly when I was in medical school, I realized that I was getting higher grades and had more focus and energy when I had a consistent fitness regimen. I know it's particularly easy for working out and for your personal fitness to be the first thing you give up when school gets busy and you have exams or quizzes, but it's actually the last thing you wanna give up. But simply just looking at the evidence, looking at the science in case you're interested, I'll link down below if you study these down below. But students who have a consistent fitness regimen like exercise throughout the week compared to those who don't, have a much better chance of improving their retention, overall memory, and just doing overall better in school. And so if you're on your journey and you found yourself saying something along the lines of I wish I had time to work out, then here is a very simple way of how to counteract that. One of my favorite things to do to include exercise predictably into my calendar is to use a digital calendar, such as Google Calendar, and essentially have blocks of time where I can see what I'm studying, but also say times where I purposely wanna block off or other things such as exercise. So when I was in medical school, I would specifically pick the times that I knew I was gonna go to the gym before I actually scheduled in my time to watch lectures or study. And knowing that I already said that this is not time to watch a lecture or do more practice questions or prepare for a test, this is the time that you're gonna go for that exercise or go for that run, which again is going to help you in the long term. So book that first and then go ahead and book all those different study sessions that you wanna do throughout the week. I promise you that extra one hour a few times a week is not going to be harmful to your grade. And if anything in the long term it's actually gonna help. Number two is your support system. Now by no means does anyone give up their support system by choice, but particularly they're really easy to give up when things get really hectic. It's obviously if you have a great family or a great significant other, somebody who is just understands when you're busy, it's very easy not to use them when school gets hectic. But if you wanna avoid being that student who says that I haven't talked to my parents in X amount of weeks or haven't talked well to my significant other throughout the week, make sure that you actually make each of those a priority just like we did for the gym. One of the things that I would do in medical school pretty much on a daily basis is that every evening I would video call at least phone call my parents and just make sure that they're doing okay as well as just giving them updates in my life. It just allowed me to feel grounded and always knew that there was somebody in my support system that just kind of knew what things were going on, especially when things were hectic. In similar fashion for important people such as my now wife who is my fiance back in medical school, I would just make sure that there was things that we were doing on a weekly basis. Maybe it was just a dinner on a busy week of an exam but saying I'm gonna take this time off or I'm gonna go eat some really good or I'm gonna go out and watch a movie and just booking that on my calendar just like I would do for a gym workout. Again, I never felt like I was sacrificing my support system because I was a hectic, busy medical student. Number three, sleep. Now this goes without saying and again, if you guys are interested in the science I will link them down below but the studies are pretty profound that those who are getting consistent sleep do much better particularly with their long-term memory and just the ability to make connections. So if you have a good sleep hygiene and a good sleep schedule of anywhere from seven to eight hours not only are you going to feel more refreshed but you'll also more likely to retain that information from lectures as well as make connections between everything you've learned in that block ultimately is gonna help you for that quiz and test upcoming. If you're finding it particularly difficult of getting a consistent amount of sleep because your setting is starting to interfere when bedtime usually will come arise one of my favorite things to do is to include a clockout time. This is basically a non-negotiable time that says once I have passed this time I will no longer be studying. So for example, if you're going to bed at 11 or 1130 maybe consider making your clockout time 930 or 10 so you still have some wind down ability versus the alternative which is you basically study until you have to go to bed go to sleep, go to school, come back basically study all the way until bedtime and that is a very likely person that is going to have burnout throughout the process and the extra benefit of having a clockout time is now you have to ask yourself how can I efficiently use all that time beforehand before that 930 or 10 o'clock slot that I've given myself to study I promise you those extra hours that you're doing when you're already sleep deprived are not gonna be that effective for overall retention and likely pretty much everyone that's listening to this episode has tried to cram for a last minute quiz or test but as we know longterm doesn't actually help us anything it just creates bad habits but using that clockout time is going to force you to be more efficient during your studying as well as give you some wind downs before you actually have a consistent sleep schedule Now before we get back into today's episode let's take a quick second to talk about today's sponsor which is Picmonic Now if you're unfamiliar with Picmonic and you're on your medical journey they have hundreds and hundreds of videos for literally any class or material that you may need and what makes Picmonic so unique is that in addition to having so many videos on literally any topic you need so for example here we're in microbiology you can click on any videos so here's staff warriors and the videos themselves are very short so this video is about one minute 54 seconds but essentially we'll break down the most high yield components that you have to know in this setting about staff warriors in this very nice story format using images so here's a very nice Oreo cookie that essentially will link an image to your brain on an important concept about that and the future videos you may find that the same memorable images is included in another related video so then you can link together concepts for example here this venom jar with green represents food poisoning so any bacteria that may cause food poisoning may have this image in their overall picture and video so you can say okay I know all different bacterias that have food poisoning and then whenever you feel comfortable with a relatively short story you can easily go into the review and quiz phase and actually quiz yourself on the various different high yield components and in addition to having a very unique and easy way to remember information for your quizzes and tests you can also add all of the videos you're watching into a relative playlist so if you're studying for a microbiology class you can go ahead and essentially click all the videos that you add and add it to those playlist and then whenever it's time you can come back to your individual playlist and either watch those individual videos again or ask for specific quiz questions related to the videos that you've now said that you've mastered or at least learned the first time and that's just scratching the surface in terms of features that Picmonic has to help you on your medical journey other cool things include having a weakness guide so you can see which topics here are the weakest in as well as their study scheduler so you can actually say these are the topics I need to know and here's my test day and then it will essentially will give you a study schedule based off of that. So if you're looking for an all-in-one resource for your on your medical journey and you haven't quite found it definitely recommend checking out Picmonic if you're interested, they'll be linked down below and our friends at Picmonic have also been nice enough to include an extra 20% discount if you use the code the MD journey at checkout. And so if you're interested in learning more about Picmonic that link will be down below and as always thanks to Picmonic for being today's sponsor. Number four is outside school learning. Now most students think that because they're so engrossed into college or medical school or residency that they have no time for anything besides the field that they're studying which is absolutely false. And if anything, it just makes the process more mundane unless you have a class you're absolutely in love with it's very likely to be unmotivated or demotivated because the topics that you may be learning from block to block may not be as interesting compared to others. And so it's very nice to have something outside of the field that you're learning. So for example, just being a doctor doesn't mean that I love every medical topic that's known to man. There are some lectures that I'm given that's like please, please be over. And to counteract that because I still have to study for I still have to know those for my patients having things on the outside, I'm still learning keeping things interesting is very important. Now that obviously brings the natural question of like how the hell do you do that? I barely have time for my own classes much less my own personal learning. And one of the best recommendations I can give on that point is to use very small things and small bits of time to include that learning. Some of my favorite resources to use include apps such as Scribe, which is basically think of it as Kindle and Amazon Audible put together but for a very cheap monthly payment. And using this app, I have access to tons of ebooks as well as tons of audiobooks, many of which I listened to at 2x between my drive to the hospital or at my walks or as I'm working out or doing chores around the home. And my personal level, some of my favorite things to learn about outside of medicine that's the field I'm in include things like real estate, personal finance, cooking, personal development, personal growth, as well as improving my communication for things like my YouTube videos and podcasts. And speaking of podcasts, if you're not somebody who needs to read an entire chapter book and keep yourself engaged, sometimes just listening to amazing conversations between two amazing individuals in a specific field is perfect. And so when I'm not filling an audiobook I usually will go into Google podcast and listen to anything from Tom Billings and the impact theory of how to improve, how to eat better all the way up to real estate to just listening to other medical topics and fields that I'm not that familiar with. But the biggest takeaway here is that you only need small bits of time. Remember, education happens over repetition, over small bits of consistency. And so it doesn't really matter if you're sitting for an hour listening to audiobook versus if you're just listening for two to five minutes on your walk into work, on your walk to school or when you drive from place to place. Number five, personal growth. Now this sounds a little bit similar to just outside of learning but there's much more that goes into this. If you guys have watched the channel or if you've been familiar with the channel you already know about my idea of the circle of perfection. Just how we always say that there's no such thing as a perfect circle. We always say there's no such thing as a perfect human. Both have their level of imperfection. But just like a circle, you can essentially buff out the rough edges and make it a little bit smoother, a little bit more perfect. But once you identify those rough edges that you really wanna work on, then you can work on them not necessarily on a daily basis but on a weekly basis. So for example, one of the rough edges that I'd love to improve over the next year include my cooking skills. Frankly, my wife does a majority of it and she loves doing it. But I also shouldn't be excuse of why I shouldn't learn how to do it on a good level myself. And so using that, I can say on a weekly basis maybe come up with a new recipe that you really wanna cook, learn a new skill like how to use your knives or how to bake or whatever it may be. So again, you have these themes of repetition and consistency. I'll then have an element of my life where cooking is no longer as big of a weakness as it used to be. And through the process I'm becoming a better version of myself which again, just because I'm busy in school or busy in training and busy in academics doesn't mean that those parts of my life are not important to address. Now if you find that any of the things that we've talked about including exercise, support system, sleep, outside learning as well as personal growth are things that you're sacrificing because school has gotten tactic and you wanna learn how to improve that then make sure you check out the absolutely free handbook down below. The handbook is an absolutely free guide at 30 plus tips and step-by-step advice on things like how to study better, how to be more productive and so much more essentially how to be a more optimized student so that you can enjoy your life while going through the career goals you have. So if you guys are interested that free link will be linked down below as well as all the programs we offer here at MD journey including one-on-one coaching if you want better grades. And if you're looking for better grades then make sure you check out how I got a 3.9 GPA in medical school step-by-step using all the strategies in this episode as well as how I use Anki like a pro step-by-step as well as some advanced strategies to really get those grades that I got in medical school. So if you're interested in getting some good results check those out. And as always my friends, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.