 I'm not ashamed to admit that it's taken me a long time to figure out the best way to study for me. And I think this is the case for a lot of us. We spend most of our academic career steadily optimizing our study routine to what eventually works for us best. I just wish that I'd known about these things that would actually help me sooner. Building strong habits is one of the ways that we can be more productive in our lives. The trouble is that it's really hard to form habits and actually stick to them. Knowing how to do this is key, but even more so is knowing which habits you want to try and form in the first place. In the past, I've stuck to studying habits for lots of reasons and a lot of them weren't because they were the best habits to stick to. We've all done this, you know, sometimes we follow how our friends are studying even if it's not ideal for us or we might even do things like revising topics that we already know because it makes us feel good. There's all kinds of habits that we do for the wrong reasons. It can take a lot of time to figure out which habits you want to stick to when it comes to studying. So to save you some of that time, here are my top seven habits that really changed my studying life. You might not know this, but medical schools are notorious for examining students in completely different ways. One university might want you to learn the anatomy of the whole body in your first year, but in less detail than another university which might want you to learn every aspect of the upper body in your first year. Some universities like to test students in completely different ways than others. We've got multiple choice questions, short answers, full on essays and everything in between. Some are more clinically applied and some are more theory based. The list goes on. All of this is important to remember because ideally you want to tailor your own studying strategy to the specific exam questions and content that are being taught at your university on the course that you're on. This of course helps us score as best as we can. Now one way to do this is to be guided by pass paper questions. Instead of learning all of the material from the lectures, the tutorials, etc. and then using pass paper questions in the last couple of weeks to figure out what your exam is going to look like, it's a good habit to get into to check what your pass paper questions look like early on in your studying. Looking at them will not only show you what the questions are going to be like, but more importantly it shows you the patterns of the types of content and questions that are going to be asked. This means that you can start to tailor your revision by spending more time on those high yield topics that your professors and your university love to ask you on. If you can get to the point where you have a clear understanding of the things your school want you to know and how they're going to test you from pass paper exams, then you're setting yourself up for success. It's always a good habit to get into early on whatever the course is that you're doing. Studies done by employers show that their employees are 50% more satisfied when they're working with others and the quality of the work produced increases as well. I really believe this is similar when it comes to studying for exams. It's really beneficial to work with other people. It's so tempting not to make the effort and to decide that you're going to follow your own timetable and that you don't want to be potentially distracted by others, but honestly there's so much benefit from working with other students. You're in a supportive environment and this usually leads to feeling more empowered to do your own best work and being with friends means that you're fully engaged in the tasks that's in front of you because you're all working on the same thing at the same time. On top of that, the feeling of working towards a common goal with a group is a really good one and it helps to push you and keep you going sometimes even when you might be finding studying very hard. It also helps you get that start initially, which a lot of people have difficulty with because if you're all there forcing yourself to start, you're going to start. If you guys haven't heard, I actually have a Patreon which includes access to a Discord server that has live study with me sessions happening every day. It's such a great community of other students working towards their goals, encouraging each other and just working all together. It's honestly such a lovely community that I'm in every single day talking to, replying to comments, reading on what you guys are up to and doing. If you're interested in joining my Patreon and joining the Discord server, please do check out the link in the description down below. I'm under a ton and I'd love to chat with you guys and get to know you a little bit more personally over there. Another great thing about group studying is that you can get real time feedback from your friends and they can share all the resources that they have or have created with you so that you're really setting yourself up for success. There's definitely something that we can learn from everyone around us and we really see this when you work in a group with other people around you. There have been so many things about exams and the content being taught in medical school that I've only learned from speaking to other friends on the course. Such a large part of my success in my oski exams to practical exams here in medical school is simply because I spent the time practicing with other people. So if this is something that you're traditionally against and you haven't tried before, please do give it a chance. I honestly think that it's very, very helpful. It's so important to use every resource you have available when it comes to studying for exams. One thing that people often forget about is that older years at your university or college have gone through exactly what it is that you're doing right now, just a year or two before. They can give you tips on how to get ready for these exams, how to manage stress and what techniques to use and they can also provide you with resources, their own notes, you know, good stunning resources, past paper questions, whatever. You can also use the mistakes that they've made as lessons going forward and they'll probably have really good insights on what is going on at your school and they're likely to understand what they test on, what's the high yield material, etc. If you ask me now as a final year medical student versus in my first year, you know, what kind of things should I focus on and how much effort should I put into studying for exams? I have a really good idea now, which I didn't necessarily have back in first or second year. And a lot of university also have societies where older years share their resources, their notes, their past paper exam questions and they offer tutorials, peer to peer teaching and learning, etc. It's really useful to get involved in those things as well. It helps you feel like you're not going into your exams completely clueless if you know how other students have found those exams and studied for them the years before. It means that you're going in as prepared as you can. One of the things that I think people worry about with using a method like this is approaching the older years and asking them for resources or about their experiences. Honestly, nine times out of 10, anyone who you talk to or message is going to be more than willing to help. They really want to help pass on their knowledge and their information to the younger years that you could, they can help you and make sure that you're successful as possible. I found that joining your medical school societies or asking about tutorials and peer to peer learning from older year students is a good way to kind of get that in to meet those people, build relationships with them and then ask them for the information or the help that you need when the time comes. Joining WhatsApp groups or Facebook groups and things like that is also a really good way to get into those circles. Don't be afraid to reach out and talk to the older years. I promise 90% of them just want to help. For years, I hand wrote my notes and that's something that I completely stopped when I got to my fourth year of medical school just because it became unsustainable. You can check out this video over here, which talks all about that. Now handwriting notes can be a good way to stay active during your lectures, but all of the evidence on studying tells us that note taking is one of the least efficient ways to retain and recall information for exams. In my clinical years, I focused on active recall through answering questions and looking up the information I didn't know whenever I couldn't answer those questions. If your current or main method of studying is just taking notes, it's okay. I get you, I did that for a really long time and it can be a strategy that works. It just takes a lot of time and effort and isn't the best way to be doing things according to the research and my own personal anecdotal experience. Now changing your study method that you've had for such a long period of time can be really, really difficult. The reason that I didn't stop handwriting my notes sooner was because I was worried that if I did change, then in my upcoming exams, I wouldn't do as well. It might take me a while to get used to my new note taking habit and there was no guarantee that it would work better than what I'm currently doing right now. I didn't want to take that risk and by doing that, I wasn't really trusting the evidence that showed that doing questions from day one or earlier on and increasing the amount of active recall you were doing was the better and more efficient way to study. All I would say is just consider trying something new and you can always see if it works better or it doesn't and you can go back but there's a good chance that if you're just handwriting notes, there's probably a better and more efficient way of studying that will help you save time, help you remember information better and hopefully perform better on your exams as well. One point which really emphasized to me, you know, the whole handwritten notes thing isn't the best way to study was thinking about how often I revisit my handwritten notes to take a look at them and the answer to that was absolutely never and the reason for that was because they're just so difficult to find the specific information that you want at a glance when you need it quickly. Whereas with digital note taking, you know, electronic notes, you can just control F any word you want into your huge expansive notes and documents that you have and so that made it a lot easier and more common and frequent for me to go back to old notes that I'd written making them actually useful instead of just a one-time thing that I wrote to study for an exam and then forgot about. It's worth exploring other options before you just stick to the root of going down endlessly writing handwritten notes. I mentioned in the previous point that I was handwriting my notes for the longest time because I was worried to change my study method even though I knew it probably wasn't working as efficiently as it should be. I think it would have been a good idea to review my studying methods much sooner and more often than I did. I think that it's so worth taking the time out to really think about whether your current study methods are actually working for you in the best way or if you're just continuing on with them because they've worked in the past and you're worried about changing them going forward. For the longest time I was just on autopilot, tending lecture, writing handwritten notes, listening to the lecture, writing handwritten notes and that was it and I didn't really think about whether this was a good strategy or not. I knew a lot of other people were being directed by past paper questions, were using anky flashcards or whatever but I thought you know this the method that I have it works for me why change it and it took me up to my fourth year of medical school to realize that there was a much much better way of studying than what I had been used to all of this time and so I wish I had kind of taken a second to just think about it a little bit earlier review my own techniques and make a change. I've tried using so many electronic or digital tasks and to-do list apps but I just never engage with them the same way that I do when I just use a simple pen and paper or post-it note. I find it so useful having these lists right here on my desk that I can look at every day when I'm sitting typing and doing things on my desk they're right here in front of me and I can't miss them. Spending the five minutes that it takes to think of my list and reflect on what it is that I need to do for the day is very very helpful. On top of that there's something really satisfying about just taking your pen and crossing off something on your to-do list or taking it off and seeing and knowing that it's done. I see this list on my desk throughout the day every day and it keeps me accountable because I can see it and look at it and it reminds me of what I need to do. If you've got a digital to-do list or app and you're not looking at it as often as you'd like or it's not serving its purpose as much as you think it should then I highly recommend that you just ditch it and go back to a traditional pen and paper. Ultimately though whether you use a digital to-do list or app or you use pen and paper it doesn't matter it's all about what works for you so check which one you find more helpful and which one keeps you accountable and use that one. It's so easy to get lost in the thought that you hate this particular module that you're having to study and you can't really see the point of getting it done and you know what's beyond that. I think it's important to remember that that particular module is just a step towards the wider goal that you might have going forward. I think being clear about your goals and using them to motivate you instead of you know being tunnel-visioned on directly what's in front of you right now can really help with motivation and studying over a long period of time. If you can reflect on what it is you want and why you're doing the thing that you're doing in the first place then I think you'll feel like you've gone a long way in terms of reframing the tasks that you've set for yourself for that day or for that week or whatever. One thing that you can do to help is to keep a visual reminder on your desk or somewhere in your room that you can glance at a couple of times a day or once a day to kind of remind you of the bigger purpose that you're doing. In the case of medical school you know this could be a stethoscope or a photograph of before you got into medical school maybe the day you got accepted and how happy you were that day or something along those lines just something to help you remember how far you've come and you know where you've always wanted to be. I forget where this quote is from but it's something a longer reminder of you're currently living the life that you used to dream about when you were younger you know so thinking about it in that perspective kind of helps put the day-to-day struggles into context. For me you know university was never about being the best in any particular topic like molecular biology or anatomy or anything like that it's always been about becoming a competent doctor one that patients can feel that they actually trust when they see and feel comfortable and confident around and even wider than that it's always been about helping people and contributing something positive or good to the world as cheesy as that sounds which is something that I've always tried to do with this youtube channel as well you know contribute value to people's lives in some way shape or form which have hopefully been able to accomplish and back to the theme that we were talking about before having this silver plaque here on my wall that I can see pretty much every day when I'm on my desk helps remind me of sort of the impact that I've had the work that I've done and helps keep me motivated and going with creating videos just like this so yeah think about you know why you're doing the thing that you're doing in the first place what got you started where you were and how far you've come and it just helps motivate you and keep things in perspective those are just some of the habits that I wish I had learned sooner and ones that I've kind of accumulated over what has now been nine years of university I'm hoping that sharing them will mean that you guys don't have to spend so many years as I did without them and that you can start incorporating them into your own life and into your own studying as soon as possible if you guys have any studying habits that have personally changed your life or made a big or significant impact on you then please do share them in the comments down below and that is it from me I'll catch you in the next one space those are just some of the habits that I wish I'd known sooner and that I've actually learned along the way of what has now been over nine years of