Modern Wisdom - #368 - Unjaded Jade - How To Study For Any Exam

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Jade Bowler is a YouTuber and an author. It's weird that we spend the first 18 years of our lives desperately trying to study and revise for exams, but no one ever actually teaches us how to study or revise. Thankfully Jade is kind of a professional nerd and StudyTuber, and today she breaks down exactly what science says are the best ways to own an exam. Expect to learn the fundamental principles for remembering anything, Jade's most effective strategies for revision, how to prepare for the final 24 hours before an exam, the biggest productivity mistakes which pretty much everyone makes and much more... Sponsors: Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at http://bit.ly/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on Reebok’s entire range including the amazing Nano X1 at https://geni.us/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Buy Jade's Book - https://amzn.to/3jzuwRf Follow Jade on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/UnJadedJade Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people welcome back to the show my guest today is unjaded Jade, otherwise known as Jade Bola. She's a YouTuber and an author we're talking about how to study for any exam. It's weird that we spend the first 18 years of our lives desperately trying to study in revise, but no one ever actually teaches us how to study or revise. Thankfully, Jade is kind of a professional nerd and she invented the entire genre of study tubing. Today, she breaks down exactly what science says are the best ways to own any exam. Expect to learn the fundamental principles

for remembering anything, Jade's most effective strategies for revision, how to prepare in the final 24 hours before an exam, the biggest productivity mistakes which pretty much everyone makes, and much more. I do know what you're thinking. What you're thinking is Chris, it sounds great all this studying and revision stuff, but what I really want is a list of 100 books that I need to read before I die. Well, let me tell you, I have exactly what you need. The Modern Wisdom Reading List is still available for free, and you can get a copy right now

by heading to chriswilex.com slash books. 100 books that you should read before you die. I always get asked what the most important, impactful things that I've ever read, and most of them are in there. Pretty much all of them are in there. Go and check it out, chriswilex.com slash books to download your free copy right now. And now it's time to learn how to revise for anything with Jade Bowler. Hi, Jay, welcome to the show. Hello, Chris. It is an honor to be here. Tell me about your university. You're doing this multi-city thing, right? What is it?

Yes, so I go to a relatively new university. It's called Manava. It's based in San Francisco, and it's like a super international cohort of people, but every semester we move. So me and all my friends, we moved to different cities that have been predefined by the university. And so it's kind of a study abroad, but built into the fabric of how the degree works. So my first year I spent in San Francisco, and then last year I lived in Seoul, in South Korea. This time I'll be studying in Berlin, in Germany. So it is this crazy world end of a degree for sure. Are you becoming one of those Russian secret agent things? Because this sounds like one of those

preps. I don't want to throw myself. I mean, that's also what a Russian secret agent, that's exactly what they would say to try and cover their tracks. That is true. I am just packaged in an innocent looking girl. Yeah, perhaps. So what are you studying? Do you still choose courses in the same way? Yes, so because it's the US system, you can do a major, a minor, and system, you can do a major and a minor, and I've chosen to do a double major in cognitive neuroscience and business brand management. So very different things, which I think gets across how in the size of I am, but I really love learning. So yeah, I kind of got the science in there, but also

more practical business stuff. I like it. Yeah, so given that you've made a YouTube channel and released a book specializing in study tips, why do you think it is that no one ever actually teaches us how to study in school? Because there's obviously a demand for this. For sure, this is a question I ask myself a lot because I think a lot in the school system will be solved if only they were dedicated classes teaching you

about the sites of learning, about how humans learn. And I think they try sometimes. There's things like, oh, are you a visual learner or an auditory learner, which often misses the point because you're asking students to work out themselves as opposed to looking back at real research about how all humans learn, and then using that as a base for you to then go away

and practice your own revision techniques which work for you. Honestly, I think a lot of the school system is outdated, so it's probably just something that hasn't been caught up with yet. Yeah, I don't know, it's part of me thinks that it would make the teachers lives a lot easier. Like, if what you're fighting with for the most part is just combating the fact

that the students don't understand how retention works or don't understand how to link different concepts together. So if I was a teacher, no matter what subject it is, why not just spend the first couple of days of whatever course it is or even at university, if you took the first hour of the first lecture, just look, this is what our learning works. There you go. It would just make the rest of the life so much easier. For sure, and especially because so much emphasis is put on your exam grades. Like, effectively, your whole school life is thinking about how can I condense this textbook into my mind and then put that onto a piece of paper to get a grade,

which is going to determine the university that I go to, potentially the job I get where I live, like the whole rest of my life, and that crucial step between first learning it in the classroom and then getting those exam results is missing from the education system, that middle part of how to revise this up to students. How would you characterize the sort of student that you were and are? Oh, I love learning. So I was kind of that nerdy student in the back who would sort of keep my head down

and just get on with my work. And I really liked what I was doing. I went to a very average state school. So I often felt quite alienated for loving learning as much as I did. And yeah, I was just kind of thought of myself as very uncool, and there were times where I tried to dull the fact that I like learning and to fit in or to be cool or more popular. But, I don't know, now I think I've really embraced it. And that's part of why my YouTube channel,

where I pioneered a space called Study Tube, which is all about learning and other students who want to get better at learning or enjoy it, it was a really big thing for me because it sort of validated this love of school. That's what the internet's done, right? It's permitted people that were niche down so hard that they couldn't find someone to resonate with

in the real world. It's allowed them to find other people that they can build a community around. For sure. Yeah. And I never expected to take off. Can you imagine my surprise when I was there making videos like study with me for half an hour, study with me for an hour,

I would literally be revising something for a test I had the next day and we'll just record it on my phone. And videos like that would sometimes get a million views. And think about how hard it is now to get a million views. Look at all of the work you have to put into a video, go into places, doing things. Yeah, for sure.

Nightmare, should have just put, just put it on the list. Should have just been studying Chris. I know, with a hack. All right, so how do we learn? What are the basics? Okay, so something I talk about on my book is an acronym I came up with, which is sad,

so S-D-A-D. I mean, I do is like, revision can be very sad. It can be kind of a miserable experience. So rather than it being sad, how can you turn it sad? And each of these things stand for a little hack face of the science of learning where I've done loads of research into different academic papers and evidence-based techniques, so I've boiled it down to four things that you can look at every way that you're revising to question yourself whether it's actually effective or not. And I don't know if you want me to run through to four things that you can look at every way that you're revising to question yourself,

whether it's actually effective or not. And I don't know if you want me to run through what those are. Yes, I guess I've led a bit of mystery now. Yes, so the first one is S, which is space repetition. So this is the idea of the forgetting curve of human memory. So yeah, how we learn is humans. We often like to sit there. We like to cram, think we're studying by revising for 10 hour blocks and then going away and not reviewing this information

for a very long time, but that's not how human memory works. We start off at 100% of whatever we've learnt and then it exponentially decreases human memory just absolutely decays over time. So you can imagine, you know imagine you've had a class, you've had a new lesson on something in biology, and then two days later you can't even remember a single thing you've just looked at. And then when you come to revise it again in a month, you're starting totally from scratch

because you don't even remember what you first learned. So the idea of space repetition is you can hack human memory by reviewing this information at regularly increasing intervals. So for example you have that day in your classroom where you've learnt something new, then the day after you go back and you look at it, then three days after you go back and look at it, five days, seven days, and you slowly increase that time, and all of a sudden it's being put into your long-term memory. So that is the first S, space repetition. And that applies to any of technique

you're going to use, whether that's flashcards or even highlighting your notes. If you are going to be repeating it, it's going to go in a lot better than doing it once in a blue moon. Do you know it applies to physical skills as well? I wouldn't be surprised if it does, but I don't have a lot of expertise

on muscle memory and that kind of thing. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised because I guess it's still a facet of human learning. Interesting. All right, what's the A? Okay, so we've got two A's in here. We've got active recall. So this is, actually, I think is one of the most

important things that people should understand because so much of how people often revise is passive. It's where you're looking at information and it makes you feel intelligent because of course everything you're looking at is right. You know, you're looking at a diagram with everything already labelled for you and you're nodding away, feeling like you're putting it in your brain, you're flicking through that text, but you're rereading your notes, you're spending hours rereading

and just feels like you are full of information. But in reality, none of that is going in. And it's actually really counterintuitive how learning works. It's less about what you're putting in and breathing into your brain. It's more about what you're testing yourself on and what you're dragging out. And that is what active recall is. It's sitting down, asking yourself tough questions about the topic that you're trying to learn and trying to find the answers yourself.

And if you can't find them, you can then look at them. And then the next day, you're going to ask yourself the questions again so it's finding revision techniques which are yeah requiring that more active element. So that's something like active recall is something that I never knew was a thing when I was it when I was at uni bonkers. at uni bonkers. It is bonkers and it's crazy because you know even the aesthetic of studying I feel is highlighting you know you have pastel highlighters and you feel really good about it. That's just you Jade. That's just you. Oh maybe that's just me in the aesthetic like study tumbler world but yeah there's something about highlighting information which makes you feel like you're doing something valuable but when you look into the science of it it doesn't actually do that much for you. Yeah, it has to be repeated recall, not repeated exposure. Like that's the difference between the two and you're

totally correct. As you look at something over and over again, you become more familiar with it but familiarity and recall ability are not the same thing, but they can kind of like seem like they're the same thing as you read a page and you're like, yeah, yeah, that bit, the paragraph about the Berlin Wall or whatever it is that you're learning about. You know what's coming up, but you don't know it enough to be able to close the textbook and do it. So what's a good way for someone to do active recall, just look at a question, close it, try and answer it. So one of my favorite techniques, which I talk about in a different chapter of how to apply these methods, is called blurting. And the idea is, it's a horrible name, isn't it? But it's memorable.

I was going to say I talked about this on my YouTube channel before and I think it's the most popular revision method that's been discussed. I have people even to this day, I messaged me being like, Jade, bladding has changed my life. All right, well, let's all done to that. Let's finish off sad and then we'll get into that word that I really don't want to say. So yeah, the other A is associations,

which is the idea that whenever you're learning something new, if you can associate it to something you already know, the likelihood that you're going to remember it and that you're going to make sense of it is exponentially higher. So I use a non-study example just to explain this to people is how I'm able to remember people's names quite well. If you think you're at a party, you're going around, you're meeting so many new people, and when you hear someone's name, the odds are you've forgotten about it before

they've even finished saying it. And the way that you can remember names more easily is if the second you hear their name trying to associate it to something else that you know about either that name or the way that person looks or something about that word. An example I give is, you know, say someone is called Charlotte. So that's a standard name, very easy to forget. But if in that one or two seconds, you can think about a Charlotte that you know, maybe your neighbor's called Charlotte and your team one second just to think, oh, this person doesn't really look like my neighbor Charlotte. Or, oh, I don't know, like just something, some element

of the name that brings up an association or memory just means that the next time you see that person, you're bringing to mind this association that you've created for yourself and you're more likely to bring that word, that name back. And the way that you can apply this to studying is say you're learning something new in a classroom when you're learning something. If you can instantly think, okay, how does this link to the last class I took? How does this link to a different topic or even a different subject?

How does this work for a test question I've seen? And even just scribbling notes on the side, like, oh, I've seen something like this before, is really increasing the associations and the rate of retention that you'll have because you're building on foundations of your existing knowledge. All right, D.

D, desirable difficulty. So this is the idea that we don't really like to challenge ourselves naturally. You're always going to reach for what feels easy. And so that means if a subject, you're really good at it, you're more likely to go back and study it than that subject that you really hate. So it's a constantly questioning,

does this feel really easy for me right now? And if it does, how can I make it harder? So maybe you're looking at a flashcard set and it's just got quite easy for you, then it's time to move on to test questions or practice papers or something that while you're doing it feels like a challenge and that's how you know you're spending your time well. I like it. Okay, so that's the four fundamental pillars of how we study and how we learn.

What are the most effective study methods? Okay, so I list 10 in my book, one of which is, I know you don't like the word, it's awful. Lighting, it is awful. But you know what, you're going to blur out your knowledge, so it is memorable. So blur, blur, that knowledge, Chris. All right, so let's learn that one first. Yes. Okay, so the idea is you take something

that you're trying to learn, trying to remember. Maybe it's a process in science that's just not sticking with you, and you're like, cool, I'm going to revise this. What you do is you write yourself a few prompt words about the process or about the chapter. And then you affect to be right down, you blur it down, everything you can remember from your brain, like everything based off these prompt words. So you're listing out the process,

you're listing out keywords, you draw diagrams, whatever you can remember if it's English literature and you're trying to blur a theme or about character, you're just writing down whatever you can remember. And then you're going back and you're comparing what you've written down to your notes or to a textbook. And straight away, you can see how much you do and don't know. Like, there's no lines yourself anymore. There's no reading the textbook.

Is the aim to try and replicate the textbook as closely as possible? Is it just sort of a road memorization here? What we're actually aiming for? Yes, it depends on the subject. So unfortunately the way that our academic system often works is a lot of road memorization is necessary. So especially science topics, you have to get things almost word for word as the markskin wants it in order to get a grade. And so these are the moments where you do want to be able to produce that from your head. You don't want to just understand it, you want to be able to, yeah, recall it.

So blurting is where you can write that down and then compare it to your notes and straight away see what you're not strong in. But I think it's also a good way to test your understanding, because it's one thing to say that you understand how a historical event happened and understand the causes, but when it comes to writing it down or explaining it to a friend teaching someone else, you instantly see these gaps in your knowledge, and then writing it down is just a more formal way of testing yourself and then looking back and being able to fill in those gaps. All right, what's another one?

Flash cards. Simple, easy. I'm sure you're familiar with flash cards, right? Are we talking Anki? Are we talking highlighters on the top of a piece of paper? Yes, so you can do both. But the beauty of Anki, I don't know if all the listeners are familiar with it. It's a flash card software that already has the idea of space repetition built into it. So you've made your flashcard and they will go back and test you on things that you get wrong. They're going to test your regular intervals, so it supports the science of learning within the app. But you can also do this with, you know, with your classic pen, your paper, and the beauty of flashcards is you can put test questions on it, you're writing something on one side, and then it invites that active recall from

yourself because you're not seeing the answer straight away, you have to turn over the flashcard to get the answer out of yourself. So that's a really good technique. Alright, give us one more. Maybe like quite a niche one, just because that's fun. All right, give us one more. Maybe like quite a niche one, just because that's fun. I don't know if you've heard of Sherlock's mind palace. I have heard of Sherlock's mind palace. You have, yes. So the idea is, it's like object association.

So what Sherlock did in order to remember a lot of facts is he would create rich retrieval cues, and those retrieval cues can be objects. So thinking about in your house, imagining yourself walking into your living room can be a prompt for you remembering a fact or a piece of knowledge. So if you think every single time that you're going to look in your mirror, you're going to repeat a certain fact to yourself in your head, then when you're trying to recall that fact, you can just think back to a certain location and it will just be a prompt for you to remember that.

How similar is that to the association's thing that you brought up earlier on? That just sounds like a direct, sort of a direct correlation. Oh, you mean the concept of association? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like the most direct way to do it, you do it, you do it. Exactly, exactly. Yes, which is why it's kind of supported by evidence and science of learning that it works. So if you were to go through that sad framework on each of the techniques I just mentioned,

it sort of ticks all the boxes as being something that is actually effective. It's interesting. I did a talk earlier this year, and I searched the internet to find out what's the best way to remember an 18-minute talk. And tons and tons of people suggested to do some sort of a mind-palace, but just through your house. So you're walking into your house and the first sentence is there at the front door and then you turn into the living room.

For me personally, that felt like it was almost as much work to create the board through the house as it was to remember it. I just ended up going for brute force memorization through a bit of space repetition and active recall. That was perfectly fine. I'm going to guess that there must be times where people can over complicate the learning process by trying to use too many tools or by trying to use inappropriate tools. Yes. I find techniques like this should be used really sparingly.

If there's something that just for whatever reason isn't going into your head, I think there was one process or something that I just couldn't get my head around, like, you know, ask friends and it just wasn't going in. And then turning to techniques like this, which are a little bit different, almost to make it fun too, because it's not fun to go over and keep learning something that you don't understand or you don't like. Yeah, so you shouldn't use this for everything, but is proven to be a good technique when used effectively? Cool. How should people schedule their study timetable? Okay, so this again is personal preference.

Some people like to schedule minutes a minute, but something I discuss in my book is sort of your do's and don'ts for timetableing based off of other people's experiences and research. Yeah, so what you've got to do to create a good timetable is practice. You need to get good at estimating how long things take you to do. When you've got 24 exams, sorry, at GCSE, some people take 12 or 13 subjects, you've got a lot of things to juggle, and the beauty of a timetable is you're optimizing your time before that exam to make sure that you're going over everything most effectively. But in order to plan stuff, you need to know how long it's

going to take you to go over flashcards, or how long is it actually realistic going to take you to do some blurting for that thing that you don't remember. So yeah, so I really recommend just, even for today or for tomorrow, look at your afternoon and just try. Like gong Google calendar schedule, like five to ten minutes for whatever you're trying to learn and instantly you'll probably see your underestimating how long it takes you to do stuff. Then you can go back, you can improve upon your methods of how your estimation works.

I'd say always be super generous with yourself as well when you're planning things, like leave an extra 10 minutes. Something which I see people not doing a lot is leaving shuffle time, like plan shuffle time in between activities. Shuffle time is you putting away your folders, you getting out your textbooks, you opening up Anki. So when you're going from one activity to another, people will often on their timetable, just sort of put it at the same time.

So like, when I get to 6 p.m., I'm gonna stop writing flashcards and I'm gonna start, I don't know, blurting, but then they don't leave this five to ten minutes and then all of a sudden you're running to catch up with your timetable because you're a few minutes behind. So leaving like ten minutes in between is just a really good way to be generous with yourself, to leave time to, I don't know, go get a drink of water. How should people break this up? Should they break it up by topic?

Should they break it up by learning style? Is it best to spend an entire day on, let's say that it is GCSEs or it's university or whatever, is it best to stick to one module for an entire day? Or are you supposed to interleaver? Talk to me about that. Yes. It's called you bring up interleaving, actually. So there is science which suggests that if you go between topics,

you're more likely to recall them than just being deep in one for too long. So I think the best way to do it is firstly, write down all the topics that you've got to learn, like every chapter, every module, and sort of plan how you're gonna do your timetable by looking at how difficult you find things, how much attention they need, and the urgency.

So this is a process that I go through in my book of ranking your subjects somewhere, you're at with them. So if you know that one thing is gonna, is a lot harder, you can rank it as a red or an amber or a green, and based off of that funnel it into your timetable, based on how long it needs, and then when you're looking at individual days of planning it, I think it's also worth thinking about when you work best. So some people that's early morning, some people do work better late at night and thinking

about tackling the hardest subjects at the time that you're, naturally work better late at night and thinking about tackling the hardest subjects at the time that you're, naturally the best and most on it. So for me that tends to be the morning. So you could put those tasks in the morning, especially the ones that you're not looking forward to, like writing practice essays or lengthy ones and then interleaving it in between with subjects

that just have a lower cognitive load for you based off of how naturally you find it. What about taking breaks or moving in between stuff like that because getting out of flow and getting back into flow can be difficult and sometimes taking a break can be more detrimental, but then after a while you get diminishing returns. Have you got any advice on how long people should

try and block for? For sure. So this actually runs into the next chapter, which is the Pomodoro technique. I'm sure you're familiar with it. It's an amazing productivity hack, but also a great way to plan your timetables. The idea is that you set a timer for 25 minutes, which is one Pomodoro, and you choose just one task to focus on for the full 25 minutes. And if you get distracted, you start the timer again. And it really encourages you to not be half-remising, where you're half on your phone and half doing one thing

or jumping around between topics. So you spend the 25 minutes doing that one thing, and then you're a watch yourself for the five minute break. And I find five minutes is a really good amount of time to actually relax but not get distracted. So you know, you're being intentional, you're going to the toilet, you're getting a drink, you're doing whatever but because you've set the timer up, you're not going to get distracted. Like you're not gonna overly scroll or get too lost in messaging someone or face timing a friend because you know that you've got your next Pomodoro already ready to go and it's only

one task that you're going to be focusing on again. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you think people make with regards to productivity? Oh, so many. I think one of the biggest mistakes in productivity is thinking that you have to be on all the time and almost the definition of what productivity is. To me, productivity is spending time well. That's the definition. And when we're thinking about the grind or the hustle in exam season, that can often be equated to just sitting there and doing work of some kind. Studying smart or studying harder, I think productivity is often

equated to this study harder. We'll provide, like, flick the textbook more, keep inhaling more information, just do do do, and not stopping to question what the productivity is and what the output out of it should be. And I go through an equation in my book of how I define productivity and what makes up successful productivity. I can go through that if that's helpful. Yeah, absolutely.

I think just to kind of book and that, I think you are correct that the hustle side of productivity suggests that you should have your nose on the grindstone, but the number of times that I was in uni and I'd look across and people would be in the library for the entire day just to be able to say that they'd been in the library for the entire day, but they hadn't spent more than an hour or a couple of hours doing their revision. So you've had a miserable day in a place that you don't want to be surrounded by crap they hadn't spent more than an hour or a couple of hours doing their revision. So you've had a miserable day in a place

that you don't want to be surrounded by crap food where you haven't actually achieved anything. And then you get home and you completely ashamed of yourself and super guilty. You've had a rubbish day, but you haven't even been able to benefit from the fact that you didn't do revision, which is actually what you did.

You didn't get much revision done. And you just decided to kind of, I don't know, tether yourself to the library in the desperate attempt to make some revision happen. For sure. Yeah. And I think what's truly productive is getting the meaningful output, getting that deep work, but also scheduling like fun stuff, you know, like getting it off of the desk and relaxing or doing mindfulness watching your favorite TV show, spending time with friends,

all these equally productive activities because they mean you're also spending your time well and that you're going to be refreshed when you do go back to sit down at that desk. What's an overhyped productivity tool or strategy? Ooh. I think screen time blocks on social media are a bit overhyped. You know where people will set a limit of like 30 minutes a day

for Instagram or TikTok? Because I think people are almost setting a challenge up for themselves to like use that up and then like I encourage you like oh I've got that amount allowed today so you sit there and you go on it and then when eventually the little thing pops up to tell you've reached your limit you can just click it away and just continue scrolling and it's really easy. So I think thinking more about systems of how you're learning and systems for going on social media as opposed to, like short-term hacks and short-term limits.

What's your system for controlling social media use? Yeah, so it comes back to time-tabling for me, just thinking about my priorities. So if I know I've gotten an exam in a few days, the priority should be doing effective revision. It doesn't need to take up the whole day. But if I can put that into my, into my time table first, you just feel great when you've got like the most important things done. And then social media is great too. It isn't just procrastination. Like it's also super enjoyable and you should be able should be able to go on a mindless scroll.

So I think it's setting up the other stuff first and planning that in advance. So you don't feel guilty when you are doing so-called mindless activities. All right, so what about productivity hacks for studying what you're best ones? Yeah, so the Pomadaura technique is definitely one of the best, but I also love the idea of sanctity of space.

I don't know if you've heard of this before. It's the idea that you have only one location for a certain thing. So if you think about the way you're setting up your brain, when you go to the kitchen, you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna eat, or I'm gonna make food. Generally, when you lie down in bed, you're thinking, oh, I'm going to eat, or I'm going to make food. Generally, when you lie down in bed, you're thinking, oh, I'm going to relax or I'm going to go to sleep.

So it's thinking about when you are at your desk, what do you want to be doing? What is your brain coming to associate your desk with? Is it scrolling on your phone? Is it also calling your friends and studying? Like, when you go to the library, are you thinking, oh, cool, I can go meet my mates and we can go chat there and sit there and just chill. So if you can develop one space,

which is where you go to do your deep work, then that is one of the best techniques because you're creating a sanctity, a discipline around doing a certain activity there. And it means you're less likely to overstay, you're more likely to be productive and do the work when you need to. Yeah, so I highly recommend that even if it is, you're like staying behind at school or a library, like if home isn't the best place to create that space. But think about the environmental triggers that you have when you go to the gym, everyone during COVID. No one has ever worked out as hard in the house as they have when they actually go to the gym.

And it's because of the ritual. You pack your bag and you get in the car and you put Spotify on and you listen to the thing and you say hello to the receptionist and you put your bag in the locker and it's all part of the priming, those environmental triggers, primate. It's interesting, there's an equivalent in powerlifting. One of my buddies is a really high level powerlifting competitor and he has a playlist of about four or five songs that he only listens to when he's going for a PR or when he's competing. So these songs, if he hears them come on in a supermarket,

he'll just sprint out of the supermarket or he'll turn the radio off because he only wants to hear that when it's time to be 100% switched on. Yeah. And as you say, it's a ritual, right? So like for some people, they'll have a certain playlist,

like a study playlist or a certain jumper that you're gonna put on like an outfit. Have you got a revision outfit? I don't buy a revision sock. Just like, you know, like a slumpy, like cute outfit. We're like, yeah, okay, cool. Like, especially when you have to wear school uniform in the UK, there's just something so nice

about coming home and like ripping that off and doing something comfy on to get the work done. Okay, what else productivity hacks for studying? Pomodoro technique, keeping your space sacred. Ah, yes. Are you familiar with the 80-20 rule? Yes, but not in terms of how it relates to studying. Yes, so this is kind of the whole concept of work smarter, not harder.

I don't know if it's so for everyone listening, who's not familiar with the 8020 principle, perito principle, the idea is that 80% of the outcome or the grade that you're going to get generally comes from 20% of the input. So if you think about all your total time spent learning something in a classroom or preparing revision resources or going over those sources, doing practice papers. Not all of that is going to directly contribute to you getting a mark in an exam or not. So it's kind of working out what the 20% of your entire revision process is and optimizing that. So that comes back to using these

techniques which are guaranteed to work, setting up your space to allow yourself to get into that deep work. Yeah. And then finding ways to optimize that 20% to get the most in terms of grades and translating it to the exams. How do you identify that 20%? Yeah. so I think it is going back to like firstly the framework asking yourself questions of the the sad technique So does it fit into one of those four pillars? Exactly is what I'm doing fitting into those those four pillars then it's likely fitting into this 20% of good revision What would be an example of something that that people might do that doesn't fit into that? I think making your resources can take a super,

like a very long time, whether that is creating your anchid decks or creating flashcards, setting up a whole mind palace, that is the necessary stuff to do the 20% but there are ways that you can optimize that. If you think about, you have friends who are taking the same courses as you, can you come together and create an anchor deck for the same course and optimize that part of it so that when you're doing the 20% which is going to get you the grade revising it, you've already optimized your time. Yeah, people definitely obsess over how stuff looks. I've seen your notion, so I appreciate that there's an aesthetic that some people prefer to work in,

but you can definitely over cook that. And you can spend so much time just making stuff look nice. but you can definitely over cook that. And you can spend so much time just making stuff. Look nice. And it's low-key procrastination. I am working, yeah, but you're not doing the thing that actually matters. You're not doing something within the 20 that creates the 80. Yeah.

Oh, this is, I actually have a whole section in my book about ditching the aesthetics, because I had a lot of friends who would labor over how their notes would look and spend so much time directly copying up what they've done in class onto a new piece of paper or onto a new flash card and they have music blaring in the back and it becomes a fun activity which is great if you want studying to be the fun part for you but thinking about the 20% which is going to get you the grade if you're just purely looking to optimize your time, then definitely cut out the S. That's it.

Titch the highlighters. Yeah. There's no science on the highlighters being that way. So we should be skeptical, highly skeptical of anything that's highlighted, right, fine. I'm going to explain. There you go. What about coursework and homework? Obviously, not everyone is assessed purely through exam.

What are some of the tips that you've got for coursework and homework? Yes, I think routine is the best one. So I wrote a whole chapter about habit formation and drawing on a lot of incredible books, like Atomic Habits. I don't know if you've read that book. And sort of breaking down what is a habit?

Like if you look at the loop, every habit is three things. You've got a routine, which is you performing the habit. You've got something that cues you're doing the habit, and then you've also got a reward. So something that you're craving out of getting this habit done. So if you look at how you brush your teeth every day, what you're looking for is the feeling of cleanliness

or that minty freshness. And then you've built a routine maybe straight away after getting out of bed, you're going and brushing your teeth and then you're getting that reward, you're craving it. And thinking about when you come home from school, for example, what are you doing first? Are you taking off your school uniform?

Are you like getting a snack? Are you talking with friends? Do you go on your phone? And if you can create a routine around getting homework done at the same time every day for a similar amount of time, it just takes out all the stress and the friction. All of routines and habits are eliminating friction because you're making things no longer a choice. You're not choosing to come home and either do your homework or go on your phone.

You've decided that every day you're gonna do your homework for like half an hour and then you've got a whole afternoon to do whatever you want. So yeah, if you can think about when you come home, what is it that you're doing right now and how can you use something that exists in your routine to create a new homework habit? So if the first thing that you do when you come home is get a glass of water,

maybe you can say to yourself, when I grab that glass of water, I'm going to walk straight upstairs, put it down on the table, and get out my planner, and see what homework I've got to do for the day. And then that's more likely to stick to your routine because you're attaching this new habit of getting your homework done at that time to an existing habit of getting your glass of water every day. And then the more that you can repeat this

preferably over 30 days or a month or so, then it will just start to not become a chore. You know, you come home, you get your glass of water, you come home, you put it down, you do your homework, and you don't think about it. And then all of a sudden you've got a whole afternoon evening to do whatever you want. This is the equivalent for people who are doing continuous professional development, whether it's at work or whatever as well, right? You finished work, you drive home, you get home, what am I going to do? One piece of advice that I would try and give people is to probably reduce the number of steps

between doing the thing that you already do and doing people is to probably reduce the number of steps between doing the thing that you already do and doing the thing that you want to do. So let's say that you do get home, oh well, I might go for a walk for a bit and then make food and then do a bit of stretching and then I'll go and revise. It's like no, no, no, just get to the thing that you don't want to do as quickly as possible. It's the reason that morning routines work. You do the thing that you're trying to do before you can realize that you don't want to do as quickly as possible. It's the reason that morning routines work. You do the thing that you're trying to do before you can realize that you've started doing it.

They're like, oh God, before I knew it, I've actually done the thing and now I've finished. I think that a lot of the time, it is kind of like low-key procrastination that people don't really tell themselves it is when I'm gonna do this first. And I'll do that well yeah, because I do deserve a stretch because if I ease my back out if my back's a little bit loose

I'm going to be more upright when I'm sitting in revise it's like no just get it done for sure Good good wife it's got your seal of approval that'll work so a lot of students are probably frozen by perfectionism and a fear of failure, and it sounds like at least at school, that was something that you struggled with. How can people get past that? Yeah, oh, it's such a tough one,

because there are expectations from everyone to do well, you know, like even if you're not that invested in school, you still know that it's gonna affect your life in some way, whether that is next steps, apprenticeships, university, and there's often a lot of weight around the grades that you're getting, and I know that for myself, I developed quite a healthy perfectionism around getting that next better grade. Even if I got 80%, well, why didn't I get 81% or 82%? And I think the way that the school system currently works, where you are just given these numerical values

often off of what you just wrote memorized, you can come to associate your sense of self-worth in these grades that you're getting. And it's not good, it's not healthy. And some things that really help me are taking a step back firstly and thinking about the whole system in perspective and your place in it. Because I think when you're 14, 15, 16, all your whole life is sort of going to school and then doing stuff outside of school and that's it. So it's no wonder that you are placing

so much thought into these exams. But when you see it in the grand scheme of your life, there are so many skills and parts you as a person which are far more valuable than this great you're going to get. And I think it reduces the perfectionism when you see that you doing your best in that moment with the resources that you've got, with the time that you've got is enough. It really is enough. Like you are gonna succeed, whether you get the 80% or the 81%,

whether you miss a grade, and you don't get what you're expected to get, whether you go to a different university or plans change, or you can do it your best, and things are gonna work out for you. You've got a whole personality, people, skills, other interests that school can't grade you on. And so especially people who aren't that academic, it's just worth seeing yourself outside of this very narrow system that you're currently in and trying to put less pressure on it.

Still motivate yourself to do well within it and optimize your techniques and develop habits like good discipline, but also not get too caught up in what these grades could mean for the rest of your life. That's a microcosm for the rest of your existence. People obsess over a very narrow band of things that they're trying to do, whether this be becoming a chart of accountant while they're trying to do, whether this be becoming a chart of accountant while the work at one of the big four accountancy firms or whether it's getting

to a level of body fat percentage whilst they're in the gym or whatever it might be, we presume that we magnify the impact that this particular one pursuit is going to have. And obviously when you're younger, if you are 14, 15, 16, you don't have that breadth of experience, but I don't think that the compulsion goes away. As you grow up and you get through your twenties, one of the things that I noticed that happened, I never had the perfectionist trap for academia ever. Very, very sort of average student, two-one at uni and then a master's with a pass, like a high-part, oh no, I'm not a merit, sorry, a high merit, but I never once felt that lack

when it was, oh, I got 67 instead of 68, I'm like, thank the fuck, I got 67, I was gonna get 57. Made it through. Yeah, exactly, survived another year of university, that was kind of how I saw it. However, where I did get that perfectionist trap was in business. So I attached my sense of self worth very quickly to the success of the

business, what's the revenue looking like, how busy is it, what are the sort of reviews, is it popular, and that compulsion, it's just like this mechanism which exists that pulls people along, mechanism which exists that pulls people along. And just because you've escaped it, for the students who are resonating more with me and saying, well, I don't have this perfectionist concern with university or school or whatever my development's. It's like, yeah, wait until you come up against the thing that you actually do, because there's probably something

out there that is going to compel you to be completely obsessive about it. And these rules still apply. There is far more to you than that one pursuit in your life. You are going to succeed and you're going to be absolutely fine. There's no mortal catastrophe waiting for you on the other side of a failed exam, or a business that doesn't do quite as well as you thought it was going to. So just sort of let it go. Yeah. And you know what, you learn more from failing.

It's just the truth, you know, like when you do badly in a test or a paper or you don't get the grade for the university, you're going to learn. You're going to learn good things either way. And I think we have this assumption that success is where you learn and that that's like almost an achievement for having learned all the lessons you need to. But in reality, it's in doing worse that I think you develop more as a person. So just doing your best and seeing the outcomes and either way, you're gonna get something out of it.

Floyd Mayweather is the only person who's got an unbroken record of wins, I think. And pretty much everyone else has got some fails in the eye. We're out here struggling. Yeah, I know, yeah, I everyone else has got some fails in the line. We're out here struggling. Yeah, I know, yeah, I'll try not to be punched in the face. Right. 24 hours leading up to an exam. What should people do?

Oh, okay. So I think so much about going into an exam is all about mindset. You've had all the time in the world to do your last minute cramming, to revise everything, and while I do think you should go over a few things, like a few concepts that you potentially feel weak on, what you should focus on the night before is setting yourself up for being calm. So I'm a big advocate of mindfulness, meditation, like it's not just a hippie thing where you you sit there and and pretend you're breathing, like it's it's an amazing technique with a lot of sides behind it to prove that even spending two minutes of just with your eyes closed

and doing intentional breathing. So breathing in for a count of six and breathing out for a count of eight and just repeating that, that can change your brain chemistry already to be calmer. And I think this is a skill that you should develop so that by the time the night before an exam rolls around and you are starting to feel that anxiety or pressure about what's to come, you sort of can lean on that breathing technique and find some calm within it. So, why are you wanting to become? So your brain works a lot better when you're calm. You can access information more easily,

you're more rational, you see time more rationally too, you're not rushing to get things done or when you're hitting that exam room and there's a question that you don't understand, instead of getting stressed and panicked and seeing every part of your future suddenly falling away from you, you can come back to that breathing technique, find a sense of calm and then work through it

as methodically as possible. If someone is feeling that anxiety and they know that they're a little bit behind in their knowledge for the exam the next day. What would be the best strategy for getting the most information in the quickest? Yes, so I recommend having a cheat sheet. It's a bad name, you're not cheating, but just having a sheet of paper where as you've been going over, going over all the topics, there are things that you feel weak on, you just shove them on the cheat sheet, on the cheat sheet, and then the night before an exam, you can just

go back through those. And I really do recommend blurting, it's really in technique. You pick those things and you just write them, you write whatever you can remember about that topic, and then you go back, you check your notes, whatever you don't remember, you add it in, and then you do it again, you your notes, whatever you don't remember, you add it in, and then you do it again, you just blight it out again to yourself, you write it down, hopefully remembering those new things that you've just looked at in your notes, and you just keep doing that until you feel like you have more of a grasp

on that last minute concept. Have you ever pulled an all-nighter before an exam? Not a full all-nighter, no, but like I've definitely done the cramming, and it's not, I think it's overrated personally. As a revision strategy. Yeah. It's not enjoyable.

It's not enjoyable. Yeah. Like you're trying so hard to lean on your short-term memory, but then you're sacrificing the thing that compounds your memory, which is sleep, because when you you're sleeping everything that you're learning is going in you know it's if you're skipping the most crucial part of the night then the next day you're not gonna be as rational you're more prone to stress especially for the leaning on coffee you know got a higher heart rate and so i don't think it is the best strategy but i understand why people do it feel compelled to stare at as much information and put it in your hair as much as possible. I remember one exam. There was this drip somewhere in the house that I was living in at uni.

And it was dripping randomly about once every seven seconds, really loudly. And it kept me up until 40's like Japanese water torture. And I ended up sleeping on the couch woke up three hours late to Bleary eye to one of the boys came down and I said aren't you pulled an all-lighter like not quite kind of Kind of but it wasn't revising all right, so We've done some breath work We've made sure that we feel nice and calm and cool and controlled cheat sheet sheet and some blurting to, I hate that word,

to get. But you remember it. Yeah, but remember it in the same way as stepping in a pile of sort of something unsavory is memorable because it's terrible. So we've done that on the night time. We've tried to get as much sleep as we can do, waking up the next morning, what then? Okay, so something I really recommend is positive visualization. So the idea is close your eyes, kind of similar to meditation,

and you imagine yourself in the exam hall. And for some people, just the thought of doing that will bring up feelings of fear, because you know, you're imagining a past exam where you ran out of time, or where you didn't understand something and just noticing whatever feeling comes up and then instead doing the opposite and visualizing it going really well. You're visualizing yourself being really confident in that seat, you're visualizing going through being calm, being rational, being methodical with all these questions,

approaching something that you don't understand, working through it, and just imagining the best version of yourself in that example. And I think the whole fake it till you make it thing is amazing for mindset on the day of an exam. But more practically, something I go through in my book is kind of a, it's like a tick box under the acronym of Morning. So for my memory, it's M is materials. So you're going to go through, you're going to check that you have everything from your pen to your calculator,

especially if it's a maths exam. There is no greater stress than someone having forgotten their calculator on a calculator maths exam. Secondly, in Morning is, oh, organized early. I think waking up even 20 minutes earlier than you might usually do, it just reduces stress. It allows for that early bit of traffic in the morning or something going wrong. Thirdly, revise. This is optional, but I think leaning on your cheat sheet again, going over anything last minute that

you feel a little bit uncomfortable with. You can do this on the bus to school. Fourth is no stress conversations. I think this is honestly one of the biggest things that makes people get into that exam, scared, anxiety, height before an exam is you know, you're making up to you and being like, oh my God, Jade, I heard that the question's going to be about insert topic that you know that you have no idea about and it's just

really hard. And you're like, oh my God, whatever this comes up, like I'm done, my features gone. Or people asking you to explain concepts and you're realizing that you don't know it. I think there is something so stressful about that lead up. So if you can, trying to step out of these stressful conversations is a really good way to set yourself up for success. And then in the morning acronym, I is for inhale, exhale, leaning on breathing techniques as you're going into an exam hall is great just to set yourself up. And then the end and the G, just to like finish off morning.

N is for a nice reward. What are you gonna be doing after this exam? It's not gonna last forever. Tonight you can go home, you can watch a series. And then G is for Go for it and just smash it. There's an equivalent to the no bad conversations thing before CrossFit workouts. So in CrossFit, there is a big event called the Open, and they release the workouts shortly before you actually have to do them,

and then everybody all over the world does them together. And what happens on a Friday night in gyms, people will arrive, and everyone will warm up in a room together. So the 7pm heat will be warming up, foam rolling, and talking about whatever, whatever. And everyone that's in there is usually saying some variant of this is really gonna hurt, how many reps are you gonna go for? Like have you got a particular process

that you're gonna go through here? How are you gonna split it up? I'm gonna try and go and broken. I'm gonna try and do this. And yeah, when you're trying to keep heart rate low and focus on having distractions that just make you feel more and more sympathetic, that make you feel more and more concerned and neurotic, it's not going to work. That's sure.

But it is hard to step out of them. Yeah it is. And the number of times that people have stood outside of exam halls, I remember at uni, standing outside of exam halls and just, I don't know, part of it, it almost feels like a pressure release valve. But I think another bit of it is that you're giving yourself the opportunity to almost for one people about why you see this again in CrossFit. So people will say, man, I'm really not looking forward to this workout because like last week, last week I was doing some overhead work and my shoulders just

sort of still not quite there and today's got a lot of overhead work in it. And what you're basically doing is for wanting other people to look, if I don't perform in this particular workout, I've put out into the world my excuse for why I shouldn't be as culpable as perhaps I would have been. And it's kind of the same thing that are, dude, I don't think. And the number of people that there's so many different archetypes, the guy that goes in and you know has done tons and tons of revision, but says, yeah, I haven't really prepared that much. The really, you know, the really smart person that you know is going to walk through the exam. The stupid person that doesn't really matter and always seems to get lucky. You know there's all of these different archetypes and what you're doing is allowing your mindset to be dragged away

by each of their different identities. And you know what it comes down to? It's fear of failure again And you know what it comes down to. It's fear of failure again. Because no one wants to fail. Even if you've spent 10 hours cramming the night before, you will always have this feeling of, I've not done enough. And something about giving that excuse to other people, as you say, is like a get out of free card on Results Day. And gives people that that reason for you to not have done as well, but it's mainly for yourself. What about in-between exams? So giving yourself a little reward after the exam might not work if you're just going back to back to back. Is there any strategies for maintaining motivation throughout an extended exam period? Yeah, I think firstly a nice reward should always come. It doesn't have to be

massive. Like I had a friend who binge watched Friends throughout the exam season and she would reward herself by like watching two episodes after any exam and then the rest of the evening was spent revising for the next one. And I think it is nice to have something that marks a separation from today and tomorrow. So no matter how it went today, you can sort of sit with it. You know, okay, it went really shit. Like it's fine. We'll just get on with it the next day. Yeah, so let yourself to grieve if you feel like it went really badly. Let yourself celebrate if it went well and then refocus to the next one.

I recommend even putting out the revision resources for the next days exams. So there's no friction, like you can get home, you can have your little reward, and then you just sit down and you just get on with the next one. I like it. Anything else, anything that you think we have in COVID for people that are struggling with their exams in the revision?

I know I've briefly touched on it, but I really think it's the idea of just doing your best. And when I say this to some people, after they've done an exam that went really poorly, they're like, over, that wasn't my best. That wasn't my best performance. You know, I've done better in past papers. And they're kind of missing the point. It's not about your best of all time, it's not your personal best, it's your best in that moment

with those circumstances. On that one day where yes, you're going to be tested on the last two years of knowledge that you did your best in that moment. I think people really need to remember that and cut themselves some slack. If people remember that experience, so go back to the exam that you've failed in and if you can actually put yourself in there, were you thinking as you looked at the piece of paper, I'm really not bothered about trying my best at this? No, you tried to wrangle every single megahertz

of mental horsepower to try and deploy it onto that paper. You were giving it everything that you had. What you're saying is that it just didn't come out to the way that I thought. The outcome wasn't the best. But the performance usually is. It's very rare that you actually go into anything and don't give it full beans. And if you do, then all right, it's a learning opportunity. For sure. Yeah. Love it. Jade. Thank you very much for coming on. The only study guide

you'll ever need, simple tips, tricks and techniques to help you ace your studies and pass your exams will be linked in the show notes below. And if people want to check out more of your stuff, where should they go? Yes, you can find me on YouTube at UnjadedJade. I'm also the same on Tix-Toch Instagram and most other social platforms. Cool. Enjoy Berlin. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Grace.