Dummies guide to wholesome STUDYING. ( also, how I aced my FMGE (med) exam).

Throw away the phone.The smart watch. Delete Netflix. Now study, voila, you’ve got your recipe for A+ grades.

Only if it were that easy.

But it ain’t that difficult either, grab a coffee, and read ahead. Imma share some insights and mistakes that I made so that you don’t have to.

Some of the things might seem obvious but it’s quite underrated and overlooked. And after 7 months of continuous studying, I’ve found some tweaks to push myself harder a wee bit, because every bit matters when preparing for a tough exam.

1. Planning matters, but what’s more important is a routine. A stimulus to shove your body into the right track, it could be a set time to wake up, or hot drinking water at the beginning of your study session, changing from pyjamas into pants. If not one, maybe try all of the above. Make it a habit, a soothing ritual, something to loosen the strings before you sit down at the desk.
2. You’ll have to love what you’re studying, if not the chapter then the subject, if not subject then love the goal towards which you’re aiming at. You should have a reason to make the effort seem worth your time.
3. Try dividing the hours into blocks, 6am to 12pm = 1 block. 12pm to 6pm = 2nd block. 6pm to 12am = 3rd block.
   Work on completing the micro goals in each of these blocks, that way you can keep track of how the day went and how you’ve fared at the end of the day. Keeping track of each day on a long journey is important.
   I used to try and get at least 3+ hrs of studying done in one block.
4. Planning what needs to be done the next day is quite an underrated action. This is a ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ day saver. Even if you’re a person who likes to plan just at knack of time, having a plan pre made the night before gives you something to fall back to incase you couldn’t come up with anything. More importantly planning ahead saves you a ton of time and mental energy.
   Never underestimate the time that the question “what do I do today ?” takes to get answered.
5. Having an approach to that of the examiner will be the advantage you’ll have over your competition. Think like an examiner while going through your study materials. This also includes doing questions that the examiner has previously prepared (past papers) or books that have expected questions for your upcoming exam. Remember that if you haven’t made questions yourself about the content you studied, means you haven’t completed the content.
6. In continuation with the last point: I’ve found a simple hack: I used to make questions out of a topic on a separate page during my first revision of the topic and later during my second revision of the topic, instead of going through the content again, I used my question page to recall the content. I became 100% confident, if I could successfully answer them correctly.
7. Comparing what you studied and recalling the topics help you consolidate and organise the info in your brain. By comparing, I mean learning to differentiate how topic A differs from topic B. And why topic A came to be what it is. This was the single best mental hack I came up with to score how well I knew a topic. Another way of thinking is to imagine that you’re explaining topic A to someone, or a kid has asked you what topic A is and you’re answering him. Comparing info helped me organise the content into tiny drawers in my brain and guided me in knowing which one to pull out at times of need.
8. Do more qbanks and strategic revisions. There’s no work around for that !
9. Take short breaks, find out what helps rejuvenate your mind, for me it was a short nap, after which I was as fresh as cucumber for the remaining day. There’s no point in studying when you just can’t seem to do it. Take a break, a short one, do something different (whilst conserving your energy) and then try and get back to your work.
10. Plan visualise the goal, make micro goals for each day and strive ahead.
11. Plan for your goals, sure. But have you planned for your worst days ?
    Plan on what you can do on days when you feel demotivated, when you just can’t seem to study. Give yourself limited time to procrastinate/ loathe yourself/ do whatever it is to get over the negativity, maybe 4 hrs or 6 hrs. After which you make up your mind to not waste the day and start studying. Find out food/ exercise/ self grooming/ shower/ any action that could take the edge off of the negativity. For me it was a long shower that helped me reset my mood and get back 50% of my will to study. ( the other 50% will be on vacation till the day resets XD.)
12. Stay away from the cursed furniture called the BED.
13. Paperback books helped me more than pdfs. The pages in a book, the action of flipping them and knowing what to expect after the next page played a role in retaining more info. Flipping pages and rapidly brushing through them helped me follow through an action associated memory of the content. The more senses you can invoke while learning the more you’re likely to retain with ease.
14. Cleaning up my mind, room, desk helped me declutter my mind at times when I felt stuck during my preparation. So let the room get spoilt, fill it with rubbish, save it for the moment you get stuck. XD
15. Having a person or maybe a couple to talk to is a good stress reliever, specially if they’re in your same boat. Talk to them for 15 mins, don’t underestimate socialising.
16. If time permits, maintain your body, stay fit. The mind is as the body is. I needn’t mention how the food you take affects your study.
17. Make your life to the bare minimum, let it literally be just study, eat, sleep. There is no time for distractions, you need to train your mind to think of time as money, you can lose it, waste it. During my last leg of preparations, dinner was the most exciting part each day, dinner was my break, my leisure time, something I craved for, my vacation for the day. Dinner.
18. Take a mock test during each month of your preparation and increase it’s frequency as you near your exam date. This should serve you as a graph to make sure your preparations are heading the right way.
19. Switch subjects when you feel bored and then later get back to it. Try doing multiple ways of learning for each subject. Ex: you can learn a topic via flash cards, mcq method, listening to podcasts or lecture videos. It always doesn’t have to be a book.
20. Tiredness can sometimes simply be masked laziness. Not every tired moment require a break, sometimes you need to power through and don’t let your flow break.
21. Have a flask with hot water in it, drink from it every 20 mins, drink more pee more, that’s fine, the aim is to keep you running and not stagnant, cause if you remain stagnant then sleep/tiredness follows after.
22. Do not underestimate the value of sunlight or proper lit rooms, a desk and semi comfortable chair.
23. If you’re watching a lecture, even if you have pre made notes, keep writing along with the professor. Check Point 13. Also use good headphones for lectures.
24. Wear headphones to block out other noises. I used headphones as part of Point 1.
25. Make a handwritten calendar and work up your progress and to do’s on it.
26. While going through the pages of your textbook, it can get a bit weary and tiresome to remember everything on each page, to tackle this, write down a single most important point, a small sentence, that you can’t afford to forget, for each page, maybe at the top of the page. This will help you at a later date to summarise the entire page and scan out what’s important during your last few days of revision. Ideally this single sentence should be either 1. The most expected question for exam or 2. A sentence recapping a large topic or 3. A sentence giving you an intro of the page.
27. Join study groups, you can find tons on reddit/telegram/discord. There are live library/ group sessions always being conducted on discord. Join the call, mute the audio and keep the phone aside, do your thing.
28. Visualising your goal helps by a long mile, I did this in a creative way, I photoshopped my face into a google pic of what my career would want to be, if you’re trying to qualify for a masters program, then photoshop yourself into a master’s graduation gown or your future work place. Stick up the photo somewhere, this should give you your drive to study.
29. No phones/screens during the first and last hour of your day.

These don’t necessarily formulate an entire study plan, but it fills in the tit bits concerning your journey ahead. Studying is simple, don’t try complicating it. These set of instructions work for really intensive exam preparations, studying is an art, and so is exam taking. Try to link both of them and master them through enough practise. Don’t try to predict your results and get bogged down, simply work hard on the day you wake up and we’ll figure out the rest the next day. Make each day count and remember, small steps at a time.

Additionally incase you come across the “motivation” hurdle, feel free to check this workout out.

credits attached in image.