 In med school, I was able to study five to six hours on average, ultimately graduating with a 3.9 GPA and still found time to write for e-books, got engaged and married and so much more. And in today's episode, I'm going to show you exactly how you can do the same to become ultra productive in whatever journey you're on. Let's get into it. So productivity hack number one is to chunk your learning and reviews. A common issue that students have is when they have too many lectures, not only do they get behind in covering those lectures, but then also in the process of reviewing them. And as I know, unfortunately from personal experience, whenever you get behind not only do you have to catch up with the actual watching and the reviewing of the lecture, you somehow also have to make time for all the lectures that are coming each and every day. And so one of the best things that I did for myself in medical school is on those days where I had more than four to five lectures a day, I decided to go ahead and focus on chunking. And I would alternate with the structure where I'd go to the recordings of the first two lectures and then immediately jump in to the review method of choice. Now, if you don't have a review method that you enjoy, or if you want to learn a better one, definitely recommend checking out this episode on all the study strategies that I use to get a 3.9 GPA in that school. And then after I watched the recording and did my first set of review, then I would go back into watching the recordings of the next two lectures and then repeat of the process. And the benefit of alternating like this is that one, it's easier to focus when you're transitioning from a different task each time, but also two, if I had five lectures in a day and I didn't manage to get to the last one, well now it's not a complete failure because I've managed to at least watch and do the reviews for the first four lectures. And then I can do the watching and the review for the lecture number five on a later date compared to the alternative, which is usually you get through the five lectures of material, but you don't actually get enough quality of the review for lecture one through five, much less the first few. And so if you're in a situation where you have lots of lectures in a day and you're falling further and further behind, definitely consider trying out this alternating or chunking method. And then let me know in the comment section how it works for you. Productivity hack number two is to have purposeful calendar blocking. Now, full disclosure, I am a big visual person, thus I love using digital calendars to essentially see my entire schedule. And as I mentioned a lot in this channel, if it's not in your calendar, it's truly not planned for. And one of the biggest things that students struggle to plan for consistently is making time for themselves and often leads to lack of motivation, drive, and then ultimately procrastination. One of the biggest reasons that was so productive in both college and medical school is that things that are still important to me or always part of my schedule, but it's because I purposely put them into my calendar. And the quick and easy process that I use that you can just go ahead and start doing today is at the start of each week or start of each day is the first thing you want to ask yourself is, when do I want to start and end my day in terms of work? That way you know, okay, but 7pm, it doesn't matter if I'm behind or if I need more work to do, we're just going to call it a day. It could be 8 or 9pm. You choose the time slot, but once it's done, it's your time and responsibility to go on and take care of the other aspects of your life. Number two, and this is an efficiency trick in itself is asking yourself, where are you going to make time for yourself? So that includes time to do things that are important to you. So I just maintaining your fitness, going to the gym, interacting with people that you love, or doing hobbies that are important to you. So usually in medical school, I had an hour in the morning to get the workout that I really enjoyed and the evening I usually dedicate an hour, an hour and a half to watch a new basketball game or place a video games or watch a new show on Netflix that I really wanted to do without the guilt. And the reason that this actually improved my productivity instead of damper it is because now I knew, okay, you have two less hours in a day or you have to study, you have to be more efficient within the studying that you actually do. And then finally, step three of this quick and easy process is now you can start plugging in the different activities you'll be doing for your studying and for your score work. Now I usually recommend adding a 15 minute buffer before and after each activity, just in case something goes longer or you start to procrastinate or if you take a longer break in between, it doesn't affect the latter tasks that are coming in the day. This also leads to the benefit where you underplan and often over deliver versus alternative where you have this long to do list that you never get through. 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 where in microbiology, you can click on any video. So here's Staph Aureus 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 the setting about Staph Aureus 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 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. Now, 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 of the videos 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 pick Monocas 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, you're on your medical journey and you haven't quite found it, definitely recommend checking out pick Monocas if you're interested. There'll be a link down below and our friends at pick Monocas 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 pick Monocas, that link will be down below. And as always, thanks to pick Monocas for being today's sponsor productivity hack. Number three is to use a second brain method to collect all your to do items and ideas. Now, this is something that I've talked about in a few episodes in the channel. So if you guys are interested, you guys can check the past few, but essentially I always had a big issue, especially as a student where things are just coming up, small things that you have to do for academic purposes, things you have to do in your personal life, and then always losing a track of them and then realizing that your life is so overwhelming. So I just wish that there was a place that I could just store things and then how that system go ahead and essentially prioritize. Oh, like this is the most important thing you should be doing today and tomorrow and the next week. And so if you're familiar with the channel, you know what my favorite tools to do this is with the notion where I have different files and collection systems for things that I learn as a physician, things that I'm tracking in my fitness, for example, I'm about to run a half marathon. So all of the trainings and runs that I've set out for myself will be within notion, but also things like the books that I've read and different things that we do within the business. But one of the most important things that I actually have in my personal workplace is essentially having a system where I know all the activities that I have to do within the main categories of my life. So for example, academics, I may have an upcoming paper, which I actually do. So I should actually add it within my workplace, but also things like personal. My wife and I are moving to start our new job in the next two months. And so we're going to have to find a new moving company, new electric company. And just to add to the busyness and the hecticness, my wonderful wife's birthday is coming up in the next few weeks, as well as our own wedding anniversary. And so just planning things such as gifts and a trip that we're going on needs to make sure that it actually shows up in my priority list. So you guys can see the very different tasks that I have within each of my priority systems. And usually what I do is on a Sunday, I essentially say and move things to, okay, like this is the week you need to find your moving company or find Priya's gifts or go ahead and plan your vacation. And then you also need to replace your filters in your car. And then each morning I'm saying, okay, cool, what are the things from this week that I need to do today? So maybe I just need to make thumbnails for the new video because the video is going to come out in a day and a half. I need to get the moving company just done with because they're not open on the weekend and that kind of stuff in addition to using some of notions, more advanced techniques. Sometimes I just like very nice, clean and simple. And so sometimes what I'll do is I'll add all the tasks that I think of within this more complicated database that's still very simple. And then I may go ahead and add them in kind of a very simple checkbox technique. So here I have a personal list of all things that I do. So for example, tomorrow I need to go to the Kia place to fix my wiper fluid like container because it's leaking, which sucks. I need to make sure that I get a long run for the half marathon of the running next week and things like birthday cards and things that we talked about. And then every morning, if you guys are interested on what time I wake up and how I do my daily activities, you guys can check out the episode that I've done on my morning routine as a full-time physician. But I'll come into this list and I'll essentially put things in the order that I want to do them and then check them off as I go one by one. So this is a very nice, but simple way to say one. Let's go ahead and store all the things you have to do, even if you don't need to do them today or even by next week, you at least have them in your collection system. And then having a system where I get to come back to these things on a daily and a weekly basis, I don't forget things. For example, I had to do a TB test by the end of the month. If I didn't write it down, I'd probably forget. And so I need to make sure that it's on my list. And so when I realize that this is my deadline, I can then add it to my daily and my weekly list. And if you like this approach and or if you really like using Notion in the next few weeks, I'll be making a very step-by-step approach on how to use Notion and how to optimize Notion for the life of the students. So if you guys are interested and excited for that step-by-step video, make sure you hit that subscribe and notification bell on YouTube to be notified when that video goes live. Productivity number four, make the first task the most important. Now this is a concept that's inspired by a book that's literally called Eat the Frog first, which literally is disgusting, but also very important where there are going to be things that we do. And as students, we are great procrastinators and the longer we wait to do something, the more we have a tendency to procrastinate. So usually on that calendar or whether I'm using my Notion system or whatever it may be, the best thing that I did for myself is saying what is the most important thing that is going to move the needle for yourself on an academic, on a personal, on a fitness level. So for example, I knew that I was going to get more stronger. I was going to be mentally more sharp if I have my gym workout in the morning and much less likely to work out if I scheduled it at 5 to 6 PM. That is a personal thing. On the same basis, when I would study, I knew that the most important thing I could do for myself is to do my review method. And again, if you guys are interested, definitely check out the 3.9 GPA episode where I break down every study technique I used and which one's actually got me the most results. But once I knew the study strategy that was the most effective, it didn't make sense for me to wait later in the afternoon where I knew I'd be tired and less energized to do so. Instead, I was like, well, let's wake up and go ahead and do that first, then go do your workout. And that's essentially stacking two effective things. And now even if the rest of the day was a failure, if I didn't go to class or didn't pay attention or just didn't get any work done, my first two activities at least were really effective to move the needle forward. And thus, the day was at least a minimum of a win. And I use the same approach as a full-time position. I know when I have to get to the hospital, my main focus has to be 100% on taking care of my patients. But I also want to make sure that I'm growing the empty journey and providing you guys helpful content. So usually when I wake up, the most important thing I can do is to come up with new ideas and come up with new YouTube scripts and things like this. And so when it's time and I have more free time, I can just jump in to actually doing the recording instead of coming up with ideas later on. Now, another great way to boost your productivity is to find a study system that is super simple yet super effective. And if you haven't found that yet, you can check out this episode right here on how to use Anki like a pro. It's my favorite technique, as well as all the techniques that I use to get a 3.9 GPA in medical school. You guys can check that out here. But as always, my friends, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I was just a little help to you guys on yours. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.