 Have you ever sat down at your desk with the intention of studying for a couple of hours? You're 10 minutes in and you're just not feeling it. The whole process just feels boring and you can't seem to keep your focus. We've all been there before but there's different methods and tricks that you can use to help you continue to study for hours without getting bored. Staying engaged when you're studying and not getting bored is crucial to you being successful long term. Especially when it comes to exam time, you need to be studying more than usual and be doing it consistently. Not getting bored here is key. Throughout my time in university, I've spent countless hours studying and rarely have I found myself getting bored. And it's all because of these five tips that I'm going to share with you in this video. The first thing that you need to make sure that you're doing is varying your workload. Don't spend all day on the same topic. You want to make sure that you're doing a little bit from a variety of topics during the day. You're more likely to get bored if you're spending hours and hours and hours studying the exact same thing. And the aim is for you to stay engaged for as long as you can and stay studying and motivated for as long as possible and this just isn't going to happen if you're looking at anatomy of the upper limb for the whole day. There's also a higher chance that you'll face multiple hurdles if you're studying the exact same topic, which can be tough to overcome. What I mean by this is that, for example, you might be working all day on anatomy. Anatomy has its challenges. A lot of them come from the fact that there's odd naming systems and simply because there's just so much to memorize and learn. On top of this, you need to know which nerve innervates which part of the body, which muscles are attached at what origin and insertion and how these muscles all work to instigate movement. It's a tough thing to do. No doubt about it. And spending all day on it means you're kind of facing an uphill battle with no respite. The amount of anatomy and the challenges of studying it aren't going to go away, but learning them in bite sized pieces over the course of a few weeks instead of all just being calmed into one day makes it a lot easier. Another way to vary your studying is to not spend the whole day using the same study method. Instead of just going through lecture slides all day, you know, try explaining these concepts to your family or friends, fellow students. You can go over exam questions, test yourself using Anki, watch a sketchy video or YouTube video on the things you don't quite understand. Changing up how you are learning and receiving information in this way, I think is so stimulating and it helps keep things fresh over the course of a long study session. Now, the best part of keeping your studying varied is that it helps you retain information that you're studying. Many studies have shown that obviously space repetition, but also varying the topic and module or schedule for your studying can help. Gamifying your studies can be so useful for you to stay engaged and not get distracted easily. We tend to learn better with games because they're fun. So it's best to try and use resources that help make your work into some sort of game. This could be puzzles, quizzes, flashcards, whatever. It could even be creating a paper to-do list so that you look forward to crossing off a task after you've completed it, sort of gamifying completion. It can seem like a slightly strange concept, but there are lots of wider benefits to making your studying into a game. It's important to look forward to studying and games like doing flashcards or doing past paper questions might be kind of fun in comparison to just going over lecture slides, endlessly and taking notes. Coming into studying with a good attitude like this and looking forward to your work can help you maintain interest and not get bored over the long term. Now, you can gamify your studying to actually learn the content, but you can also come up with your own version of the game, whatever it is, by challenging yourself with your studying habits. For example, something that I often do is I challenge myself to study for the next hour or two hours or whatever in order to unlock a reward of eating a snack or going to get a coffee or some time on my phone or whatever. I do this type of thing all the time, trying to find little ways like this to help push you towards your goals and keep you engaged and consistent with your work can be really helpful because it kind of gamifies the whole experience of studying and gives you something to look forward to. I've talked about extensively in another video, what the best music to listen to is when studying, you can check that out somewhere over here. But regardless of what music you choose, music can be a really good tool to keep you from being completely distracted and getting bored. If you really need to get work done, but you're feeling bored or unmotivated, then it's probably better to just listen to some music in the background, even if it's a bit distracting than not studying at all. Doing something is always better than doing nothing. Now, once you get into a rhythm of studying with your music, then it becomes something that, you know, is going to help you get into the zone. You can add music as part of your study routine, and it might even be something that helps you associate studying with something that you're looking forward to. After all, tasks that might be inherently boring to you can be made way more fun with music. For me personally, when my motivation is running low, but I know that I need to keep going, then putting on some lo-fi hip hop beats in the background solves this problem 90% of the time. Yes, I'm not as focused as I would be without the music, but at least it keeps me going and actually kind of makes the studying a bit more fun. If you can, I think listening to music without lyrics is probably better because with lyrics, it's very distracting to listen to words and read words at the same time. But hey, some people don't have a problem with that, so do whatever works for you. Try and find something that motivates you but isn't too distracting, and that should do the trick. Sitting at the same desk, looking at the same wall every day for the six weeks before your exam sounds terrible. You're likely to get bored just because of the repetitiveness of the routine itself. Changing up your study location can be a great way to just shake things up a little. Try studying outside, especially on a nice day like this. You know, this can be so motivating because it's so different to what you're currently used to and it can really give you the boost to keep you going. This could be at a garden, a park, your library, or even at an outdoor space like a cafe. If this isn't an option because you live in London and gardens aren't a thing, or if you live in the UK and the weather is usually really unpredictable, then, you know, you can try going to a library or a friend's house or a coffee shop, anything to just change your environment a little. This works wonders. You could even try just working in a different room in your home or in the communal area of your halls. I remember in my first degree at the University of Toronto, when we got bored of studying in our rooms, we would just move to the hallways and, you know, all sit in the hallway with our laptops or our notes and just study over there. You can also try empty lecture halls or just random rooms that you find throughout the buildings, communal sitting areas, lounges, things like that. It can really help make a difference to your routine. It helps with boredom because you're exposing yourself to something new, which means you're less likely to call it quits when it comes to studying after just a short while. Changing location can also be a motivator because actually getting up, getting dressed, organizing your bag and leaving the house, going to the library, for example, means that you're probably going to want to make the most out of your day, out of your journey. We also can't forget the effect of being surrounded by other people who are studying, going through the same thing as you, which can be really motivating in itself. Seeing other people around you working helps get your mind in the right place and makes you want to do more. And this takes me on to my next point very nicely. I've said this loads of times before and I'll continue to preach this as something that's incredibly beneficial, study with other people. It's so motivating in itself. And because you're not only having to engage yourself in the work, but also engaging others and they're engaging you, you're probably going to be able to study for a lot longer. It's also holding you accountable for actually working because your friends will be wanting to work and making the most of your time together and you'll see them working. They'll see you working. So it's just a nice accountability bubble. You can also learn so much from other people on your course. This sort of study environment really does boost your productivity and can keep you from getting bored over long periods of time. If you see everyone around you is studying really hard or taking a break, then you're likely to do the same thing as them. And so doing everything together as a community is really, really valuable. When you study with your friends, you'll find yourself taking on their healthy habits. Also be careful because you might take on their not-so-healthy habits or their bad traits for studying and things like that, but just keep an eye out and do what works for you, what you think you would benefit from. The feeling that you're all in this together sort of studying and working towards an upcoming exam is irreplaceable. And I think it can keep you studying for longer and more motivated than a lot of the other techniques I share in my videos. I do have a Patreon which gives you access to a Discord server where people are studying in these community-based groups every day, all the time. And of course, there's tons of other things you can do in the Discord server over there. If you're interested in joining a group of like-minded people, I'll leave a link to that Patreon and Discord in the description down below. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you found any of it helpful, you can try and incorporate maybe one or two of these tips into your own studying, into your own life, and maybe then you can use them all together. I found all of these things really helpful when trying to not get bored while studying in like nine years of higher education or so. If you found something that really works for you and you're happy to share, then please do so in the comments down below. I'm probably going to be studying for the rest of my life as a doctor, so I'd love to see what's working for you all as well. That's it for me, guys, and I will catch you in the next one. Thanks. It helps so much with boredom because you're exposing yourself to something new, and so it's helped. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.