Study Schedules - An Alternative To 12 Hour Study Sessions

You've probably seen it before. An Instagram reel or a YouTube short of someone sitting at a desk for 12 hours straight, surrounded by piles of notes and flashcards. And if you're anything like me, you thought: Wow, that's impressive! Let me try that. Then, you start studying, but about 3 hours in, you start to yawn, your eyes start to close, and before you know it, you're taking a nap or watching tv instead of studying.

Now, you might feel unproductive, but what if I told you that in those 3 hours, you got almost as much done as the person studying for 12 hours?

The problem with endless studying

What I've found is that at best, I can remain focused for about 2 hours. After that, too much of my mental energy has been used up, and I can hardly get anything done. Turns out, this is actually quite normal.

Research by performance psychology researcher Anders Ericsson has shown that we are limited to only doing deep, focused work for around 4 hours per day. So, the maximum time we can spend each day on actual, effective studying is about 4 hours. This is very far from the 10-12 hours which some people will recommend. To add to this, this 4 hour limit is for people who have trained the skill of doing deep work for a long time. So, your limit right now may be more in the 2-3 hour range.

This means that, when designing a study schedule, we shouldn't go for much more than about 4 hours in one go. And, I highly suggest that we split that time into at least two distinct blocks of 2 hours, with a long break in between.

How to design your study schedule

Now, I'm not just going to give you a plan of "study for 30 minutes from 9:30 to 10:00, then take a 15 minute break", etc. Because, chances are, you'll never stick to it. So, when designing a study schedule, there's two criteria to adhere to. One: Don't do more than 4 hours per day. Even better, do 2 hours in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Two: The schedule must be flexible enough to allow for unforeseen circumstances.

When exactly you study each day really doesn't matter. All that matters is the total volume of deep work that you accomplish. As a general outline, I would recommend that each morning, you study for 2 hours, with a break after one hour. The same counts for the evening study session. This break will ensure you remain fresh and alert for the following study session.

If you're looking for a guide on how to take breaks, I highly recommend you check out this post.

The trick to consistency

What I would suggest is that instead of constantly having to force yourself to study, you try and turn studying into a habit. In the long run, you'll benefit a lot from this, however, it takes some time initially. If you're willing to invest that time, then keep reading.

The key is to start with small efforts. Don't dive straight into four hours per day. Start with 30 minutes each day - 15 minutes in the morning, and 15 in the evening. Chances are, you'll always be able to find the time for this. Now, one thing is crucial, especially at this stage: ALWAYS show up. Don't skip a single session. Show your mind that there's no choice on this matter - you ALWAYS study at those given times.

You'll see that very quickly, your resistance to studying decreases, and you just get it done and over with. At this point, you can slowly increase for how long you study each day.

What if you miss a session?

If you miss out on a study session due to actual unforeseen circumstances, it won't really have too much of an effect on your studying progress. However, I've found that if I skip a session simply because I don't feel like it, I'll be way less motivated to study in the future. This can then lead to a chain reaction, where one skipped study session turns into two, three, four missed sessions.

Again, this is why I recommend that you start out with small sessions, as you're a lot less likely to skip them. It's also why I advise you against creating a fixed schedule, as then, if you miss a session, you won't do it at a later point. To ensure you do complete all your study sessions, try and get them done and over with as early as possible. So, if you're planning to study in the morning, aim to start around 7 AM. This way, if something gets in the way at 7 AM, you can still start at 8 or 9. And if something gets in the way of that, you can still start at 10 or 11.

By comparison, if you plan to start studying at 11, and something gets in the way, then you've already missed your morning study session.

What to actually study in each session

You'll already get a massive amount done if you study each day for 3-4 hours. But, the purpose of this blog is to make studying as effective and efficient as possible. So, in accordance with that, I want to quickly go over how I suggest you optimally allocate your time.

This depends mainly on what stage of studying you are in - learning, memorising, or applying. As a general rule, I recommend that you learn new information in the mornings, and spend time memorising what you know in the afternoons. In the early hours of the day, your mind still has a bit more energy, so it can understand new topics quicker. Memorisation, on the other hand, just depends on the strength of the neural connections in your mind. Those will determine if you remember information or not. Thus, there's not really an optimal time for memorisation, so I recommend you save it for the afternoons.

As I've discussed in a previous post on memorisation, which you can find here, it's quite important that you keep going through the flashcards, or keep doing brain dumps until around 90% of the information is in your short-term memory. It's not detrimental if there's some facts that simply won't stick, those will come with time. But, you do want the majority of the information to be in your short- term memory.

This is why I advise against setting a specific time for memorising a topic. For example, deciding you want to spend 30 minutes going through your biology flashcards, then another 30 minutes on your chemistry flashcards, won't be all too effective. This is because you might not get 90% of the biology information into your short term memory in 30 minutes - whereas 30 minutes for the chemistry flashcards may be way too much time.

So again, don't over-plan. Don't set apart strict times for each topic, as you won't be able to predict how long you'll take for each topic. This will also prevent you from over-complicating your study schedules. Because, creating a really detailed, intricate study schedule may look productive, but are you really going to stick to it in practice? Most likely not.