 the sooner I do it the sooner it's gone and I don't have to do it or think about it anymore. Now you guys probably think I'm crazy micromanaging every little minute of time that I have. What is up guys Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. If this is the first time you're watching one of my videos hi my name is Nasser and I'm now a third year medical student studying at Kings College London. Medical school is something that's interesting to you do leave a like on this video and subscribe to my channel to see more videos from me in the future. One of the most frequent comments that I get on my medical school vlogs is something along the lines of how do you seem so calm or how do you seem like you have so much energy and never get stressed and so today in this video I want to tackle that question. Quick disclaimer before this video begins I'm not a perfect example of how to organize your time or how to be efficient these are just things that have helped me immensely in my life when it comes to balancing my work my university life you know youtube other social activities I found them very useful in my life and I hope that you guys find them useful as well. So today I want to talk about some of the principles that I have in my life some of the thought processes and techniques that I use to decrease the amount of stress that I have and to manage the workload that comes along with medical school and everything else that's going on in my life. I think one philosophy that is very important in my life that sort of gives me the freedom to not feel stressed is that I don't believe there's such a thing as I don't have time whether that be going to the gym studying going out with friends whatever it is I feel like you always have time to do something it just depends on shifting your priorities around and deciding what you want to dedicate your time to we are all in control of our time we decide what we want to do with our time if we want to sleep in we can do that if we want to go out with friends or if we want to study or if we want to play video games those are all decisions that we make it's very core to my philosophy about how I think about time management and how I think about tasks and organization and things that I need to do in my day. So the first thing that really helps me with time management and organization is that I break down my day into five, 10, 30 minute and then one hour blocks. Anything that I do in my day can be organized into one of those time periods. Now you guys probably think I'm crazy micromanaging every little minute of time that I have in my day but you know with everything going on in my life and all the things that I want to do it's kind of necessary to figure out where my time is going and how to maximize my time spent. If I know for example that I'm going to cook then I dedicate one hour of time to that and of course after that I have to eat my food and I'm probably going to want to relax a little bit so I'm going to dedicate 30 minutes to that now I know that for the next one and a half hours my life is going to be filled up by cooking and by eating and relaxing that's a period of time that I know I'm not going to study I'm not going to be seeing friends I'm not going to be chilling I've already told myself what activity I'm going to do for the next one hour and 30 minutes so in that time I remove any other obligations or stresses or tasks from my mind I don't need to think about them because I simply can't do anything about them because I'm about to cook and eat and chill and that's how I structure a lot of things during my day if I'm going to sit down and study for two hours then I just know that I'm not going to chill in that time because I'm about to sit down and study for two hours I don't think about anything else because I physically can't do it I'm at my desk studying breaking up your activities and your life into blocks like that something that can be very beneficial in organizing your time. In a lot of my vlogs I also get comments asking me how I'm not stressed when I'm like a week away from an exam or a couple of days away from an exam and the simple truth is I'm just not stressed around that time if I've already spent a week or two preparing for an exam and I've seen as much material as possible I've done as many practice questions as I can then what am I still stressed about I know that I've put myself in the best position that I can to do as well as possible on the test if I don't do well for whatever reason I can look back on my studying techniques and methods and see what went wrong figure out how to change it moving forward and do better in the future and if the test goes well I can also reflect on what I did and see how I can emulate that moving forward and adapt it to different subjects that I can continue to do well in the future. Okay the third important thing that I do surrounding time management is I make plans before I go to sleep so whatever the day whatever the time even if I've been out all night and it's 5 a.m. I will make a plan for the following day and that way I don't really leave anything to chance I know exactly when I'm gonna wake up I know what time I'm gonna leave the house I know what time I'm gonna start studying or I'm gonna start doing the activity that I have planned or whatever it is in my life I make a plan for myself and I stick to it so that I can help organize my life and organize what I'm going to be doing throughout the day also talking about sleep I'd say for about 95 percent of nights I sleep between six and a half and seven hours and as weird as it sounds the way that I think about sleep the way that I view sleep is it's not a waste of time but I feel like I can be doing better things with my time so I like to sleep the minimum amount possible that I can in order to wake up and still be awake and efficient and happy you know not falling asleep throughout the day and that way I gain some extra hours in my day to be productive and do whatever I want doesn't matter if I've had a really late night or if I'm sleeping early I always sleep the same amount of time around six and a half to seven hours so related to the point that I made about making a plan for the day before going to sleep I also use a planner and a calendar to organize everything that I'm gonna do in a day I write down or put into my calendar pretty much everything that I have to do in a day and that way it's a constant reminder for me to know what I have to do what I've done and it just really helps me keep track of everything over the last couple of months I've been using an app called tick tick and it's sort of like a to-do list tracker organizing thing very very useful for that random time in the day when something pops into my head that I just remembered or something that I want to do I'll quickly write it down in the apps that I don't forget and I give it a time period for when it wants to be done and I'll organize it into different things depending on what it falls under life medical school etc so I basically write down everything that I need to do in my day and that helps me keep track of all the different things going on you know between medical school life exercise chilling with friends etc now probably the biggest tip I can give for time management and organization and everything like that is to just not procrastinate and I know this is way easier said than done and some people have a much easier time not procrastinating than others but at the end of the day if I set myself a task and I know that it needs to be done I'm going to want to do it as quickly as possible I mean like ASAP if I think of a task and I can do it right then and there then I'm going to start doing it right then and there because the sooner I do it the sooner it's gone and I don't have to do it or think about it anymore and a good way that I find that helps me do this is I set specific times for me to do something so let's say I have to send an email or I have to go through a lecture I'll tell myself that on Sunday at 6 p.m after I'm done chilling after I'm done cleaning the house or whatever I'm going to do that lecture or for example if I have to do an email I'll say okay look I'm really hungry I'm gonna have dinner now I'm gonna sit down for 10 minutes with a YouTube video and then I'm gonna write that email and sort of making these promises to myself or saying that I'm going to do something writing down that I'm going to do something at a specific time makes me feel like I'm obligated to do it or that I have to do it when that time comes another thing that I do in my life is I try to make use of absolutely any time that I have and the best example of this is probably when I'm commuting on the tube or on the bus that time is really dead it's difficult to pull out a book and start studying because it's so loud and you're moving and if you don't get a seat it's basically impossible so during that time I either listen to audiobooks or I use an app like Blinkist to get condensed versions of non-fiction books that I'm reading and that way at least I feel like I'm doing something useful I'm doing something in my time instead of just staring at the wall and listening to music or whatever I also use that time to open my notes app and write down YouTube video ideas build out some scripts for YouTube videos and stuff like that just to make use of that time so I'm not literally staring at a wall wasting my life away as I commute because if I do things like that when I'm commuting well then I don't have to do them later and I can use that extra time for something else now one of the reasons that I'm able to be so productive and efficient during my day is that like I said before I dedicate time to chilling I dedicate time to relaxing and one of the things I also dedicate time to is exercise exercise is so huge for me because I literally feel like I'm sweating out the stress that I've built up during the day or during the week or whatever it really helps me sort of reset down to a baseline level and then from there I can begin building up stress again exercise like that is something that is so different from studying it's so different from work it's something where you can really clear your mind and just be in your own zone not thinking about all the other stressors in your life and then linking with chilling and being able to enjoy yourself is that you should do things that you find fun in your day you need to have a balanced life if you're going to be spending so many hours studying at medical school or at university or whatever it is that you're doing if you don't have that fun activity in your day if you don't have something that you can look forward to to help you relax to help you just be chill and enjoy your life you're not going to be able to spend hours and hours and hours studying or working because you're just going to be drained you're going to feel like you're burnt out and it's so important to have both of those things together and trust me I know what it's like to be holed up in my room studying for endless hours a day I did that for a whole year when I was studying at the University of Toronto and it was probably one of the worst years of my life and so that's why now I put such a heavy emphasis on keeping a balanced life and making sure I do lots of different things so that I never go back there again I hope this video gives you a little bit more insight into how I organize my time and how I managed to keep my stress levels to an absolute minimum in my life and for medical school and for work if I said something today that you think might be useful for your own life you know try and integrate it and maybe you won't do it all in one go you know you can start doing it slowly slowly working it into your schedule into your routine and yeah hopefully it helps improve your time management and your organization in your own life as well also please know that this didn't happen overnight you know this is something like 20 years in the making 20 years of practicing studying balancing different things in my life organizing my time etc these are things that I've built over a long period of time and I didn't just wake up one day and I was like this all right and I hope you found this video useful if you did enjoy it please do leave a like on this video and also subscribe to my channel to see more videos from me in the future and I will see you in the next one peace