I’ve been a full-time student for 15 years now. Admittedly, the first 12 don’t count for much towards impact on the rest of my life, but I’ve learned a lot about effective learning techniques and other more overlooked aspects of student life.
This is what I want to tell you about in this article. I’ve put together a list of the 3 habits that make the most positive impact upon my life as a student.
I’m going to admit that I don’t do these all the time. When I do, they’re what allows me to study, run a business and experience new things every day.
Let’s get started…
Sleep
It’s hard to get past sleep.
You can’t skip it, you can only delay it. And the longer you put it off, the worse you’re going to feel and perform.
You realise how important sleep is when you can’t keep your eyes open in lectures and when you can’t think of the next words to write in your essay due in a couple of days.
It’s something that you have to experiment with yourself to see how much sleep you actually need in order to cope when you’re studying, but there are a few things that are going to make a real difference:
- 7–8 hours of sleep per night. This is the range of hours of sleep that I’ve found you can actually function on when studying. However, this doesn’t actually mean 7–8 hours lying in bed, this is 7–8 hours of actual sleep, so you want to leave at least 8.5 hours to lie in bed for to account for the time that you don’t spend sleeping.
- Waking up — do something that stimulates your body. Go for a walk and look at sunlight. Jump in a cold shower — these get a lot of stick, but they actually work. There’s a reason that I’ve tried meditation, journaling, fasting, plus many other self-improvement techniques and cold showering is one of the few that has stuck (it releases adrenaline and cortisol which activate the stress systems in your body).
- Avoid caffeine like the plague unless you have something very important you want to complete. Caffeine loses its efficacy the more you consume it because you get accustomed to the effects. I heard a saying that said caffeine allows you to borrow energy from the future, so should be used only when this is worth it. Also, wait an hour after waking if you want to consume caffeine, because the system that caffeine affects in your body doesn’t start working until this point.
- Stop using screens as long as possible before you go to bed. They emit blue light which triggers a stress response in your body (the last thing you need when trying to sleep). Also, it’s likely that you’ll see some kind of stimulating content on many apps — this would make it harder to sleep if seen right before going to bed.
- All-nighters are strictly off-limits. Period. It’s just not worth it.
You rack up sleep debt if you miss hours. This means that it’s important to get a full night’s sleep if you go out or stay up the night before. The best way to combat this is to go to sleep earlier, rather than sleeping in later. Through doing this, you’ll sleep through more optimal hours in the night, meaning you’ll recover more efficiently.
Managing Workload
When there aren’t exams looming, it’s easy to put off work under the pretence that you’ll ‘do it later’.
You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble in exam season if you build a system to learn and study as you go through the year.
The way that I did this throughout the first year of my degree was to make flashcards per lecture in a module. I studied the flashcards from this module on a daily basis, using the tool Anki. Through doing this, I would have less studying I needed to do for exams, because I’d already learned the content whilst the module was being taught.
I don’t have experience in essay-based subjects, but I can imagine that a simple review and recap of the work that you’ve covered at the end of every day or week would do the job in ensuring you don’t lose track of the content in the course.
This one’s really important.
When I say socialise, I don’t mean going out daily and partying your life away, but building genuine connections with people around you.
There won’t be another time in your life when you’re surrounded by so many people that are your age and share the same interests and goals as you.
As much as some students might like to argue otherwise, you have more time to pursue social connections while studying. You have fewer commitments that keep you from being with people you care about.
Play sports together, have long conversations, eat together, go to events together. Build friendships that will last many years. Especially in university — the degree is only part of the story. You can meet people you’d never have met, try things you’d never have done otherwise.
The benefits of this is that you build a strong social circle which engages you and adds another dynamic to your life that isn’t work or study. This contrast allows you to engage in one to complement the other. You socialise to break the repetitive cycle of studying, and when you study you’re building your knowledge and skills for the future.
Being a student is a unique and valuable situation. You have all the opportunity to make the most of your life, if you use habits like these. You will experience some struggles, but you’ll build up experience like nothing else, ready to carry you forwards into the next stage of your life.
I hope that this article’s given you some actionable advice you can apply to your life. Thanks for reading!