Successful Steps to a Highly Effective Study Break
We are only a few months away from the exams, which means it’s that time of the year again. Crossing out your calendar day by day and praying everyday that your study break will come soon. However for most of us, we face the same imminent problem: how do we spend our study break time efficiently?
I’ve seen friends and classmates spending most of their time gaming and procrastinating during this break, and when they receive their report cards, it’s already too late to change anything. So to prevent that happening, here are a few tips to make sure you spend your study break time well:
1. Plan Out Your Timetable/calendar
Buy a timetable or a calendar to plan out your revision schedule. It’s surprisingly effective if you do it correctly. Make sure you give yourself enough sleep and break time, along with enough time to cover all your subjects. Remember to cater to your own needs, if you’re stronger at one subject and you feel like you need less time, allocate that time to your weaker subjects!
2. Make a study playlist for yourself
Music can be a real motivation when morale is running low for you, and making a playlist can really help you study. Choosing the correct type of music is also really important. The main goal of having music is to avoid the noisy environment distracting you. However if the music you’re choosing is already loud and distracting, it defeats the whole purpose. Ideally, classical music or relaxing tunes with no lyrics should help you focus. Spotify and iTunes are great tools.
3. Purchase all your revision materials
There’s no point of studying if you don’t have enough pens, paper or notebooks to last you for your whole study break! Gather all the equipment you have at home and write a checklist of stationary or any relevant materials you need to purchase and spend one afternoon buying all these stationary. Personally, I love doing revision shopping at large MUJI shops, because they have a wide range of stationery available, from folders to large notebooks, from highlighters to ballpoint pens.
4. Organise all your workspace
According to many studies, clean workplaces have positive impacts on employees. Similarly, Having a clean and tidy workspace is essential for your revision, ultimately you don’t want all your notes to go missing or misplaced when you need the most. Do a spring cleaning and bind everything that’s useful while throw out everything that’s unrelated.
5. Find trustworthy friends to study with you
“You’ve got a friend in me...”
That’s what friends are for, right? A lot of people underestimate how effective it is to study with your friends. Not only can you teach and help each other out, but also having interactions with other people will help you incorporate information better. Obviously friendships can be strengthened. However, choose the right friends to study with! If you end up fooling around everyday it ends up being a waste of time.
6. Balance in daily life
Find a balance in your study break, don’t focus on only studying or else you’ll go crazy before the exam even starts. Some people like to use the “Pomodoro Technique” that breaks down work into intervals of 25 mins, with 5 min breaks. The technique is known to help facilitate flow of information into the brain.
Also, make sure you get enough sleep and continue with your exercise routine. Especially when you have more time than school days, try exercise 3 times a week at least, not only to stay healthy but aerobic exercise helps your brain focus on a regular basis!
7. Reward yourself
This is one of the most important study tips. I know this is called a study break but don’t focus on the “study” only. Acknowledge your progress throughout the break and give yourself rewards along the way.
If you know you have enough time to cover your remaining content, reward yourself by giving yourself a day off. Go do something you like, go watch a movie, go relief stress and meet up with friends. Many people like going to study at coffee shops because they see the coffee as a reward for the work put into studies.
8. Don’t Procrastinate
I know this sounds so much easier than it actually is, but don’t procrastinate. The human brain isn’t as powerful as most of us want it to be. We all love to leave things to tomorrow and slack during our study because we are not very motivated all the time.
But it’s important to step in and take the first step and cut off all procrastination to keep yourself going.
9. Eliminate all distractions
Multitasking it’s definitely not one of it’s abilities because our brain can’t focus on multiple things at once. It’s sad, I know but it’s something we all have to put up with.
Despite this, it’s been scientifically proven that every time you get distracted by your phone, an email or a text etc. it takes up to 20 minutes for a person to go back on track. Remember studying is your priority and everything else can wait, so it’s best to turn off your phone or put it on silent during your study period.
10. Not-at-all nighters
It’s been 11 years since I took my first end of year exam and not a single day did I try to do an All-nighter because I know it’s very unhealthy and ineffective. During school days most of us are already lacking sleep, so give yourself some rest during the study break! Set a time for your bedtime every single night and make sure it’s not too late, your brain is so much more efficient during morning than night. Also all nighters in the long run will damage your health and surely you don’t want that, do you?
11. A field trip to the right schools
Not all students have to attend exams in their own schools. The Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination assigns schools to students based on district.
Take one day off from your study break to visit the schools and time the journey. There's nothing worse that being lost and late for an exam on the real day.
