I’m back. Did you manage okay in your exam?

(I’m assuming you’re an adult student. If that’s not the case, you might have to tweak this advice.)

Some of this comes down to discipline, some to time management, some to motivation. If we have all three, things like this are supposed to be easier. Personally, I can struggle with them.

The trick for me is to set up an environment where neither is needed. Some things just need to be done. Some of those things are easier or more difficult than others. Setting things up so that you make a start and do something is key.

Two rules. One, you need to study for three hours a day. Maybe four. That’s all. It’s a lot more manageable to try to find two blocks of 90–120 minutes than to face the intimidating and fight-or-flight thought of ‘all day’. And it’s plenty, so long as you’re consistent. Which you will be because you can do it. And once you do it, you’ll find that most days you’ll do even more.

Two, you’ll finish almost everything you start. But starting is really redacted hard. The blank page or screen. The brand new textbook. So you need a few techniques to overcome this. So that all you have to do is something easy. A few tips:

• You no longer read books cover to cover or start to finish. The same goes for chapters and articles.
• From now on you take a brief look at the abstract/intro, then you read the headings, then skim the conclusion. Then, maybe , you skim a bit more of the text. If you’re up to it, you can read a few paragraphs or a section or two that caught your eye. Only then do you read the rest. Then you can re-read whichever parts you need to clarify or need to know in more depth.
• From now on you don’t start writing from a blank page. You need a blank page at some point. But it’s not to start writing. It’s to scribble or type a few notes. Not in full sentences. A word or two. That should do it. You can come back later to manipulate those few words into sentences, a paragraph, a section.
• For every chapter/article/book that you read, write one short paragraph to summarise it. This is to help you remember the content. And when you have to write something in more depth, you can copy or type up this paragraph into the blank document from the previous bullet point. Aim to write one or two of these short paragraphs a day.
• Procrastination. It’s going to get you. Good. Let it. You aren’t going to do that most important thing on your list. Avoid it like the plague. If you don’t control it, though, this will mean tidying your desk/bag/sink or browsing social media. Unfortunately those are as important as task Number One. So you’ll have to procrastinate not to do those things, too. Luckily, the paragraph summaries I mentioned above are much lower down your list. Great way to avoid what you ‘should’ be doing. You’re just doing this for you. Because you’re curious.

Can I ask, without doxing yourself, what your studies look like? Do you e.g. have a lecture and a seminar on a different topic each week, followed by an exam every term or something like that? One thing to help you enter ‘emergency’ zone more readily is to understand that you’re supposed to do the seminar reading before the lecture. That’s your new goal. They probably don’t tell you that. But that’s how you get a 4.0 GPA. It’s an unstated rule. Now you know, you convince yourself that your deadlines are weekly or however frequently you’re lectures are, not termly.

You’ll find that if you can find a way to start, to take the pain out of starting and making that as easy as possible, you’ll start to get on top of everything and your discipline and time management will resolve themselves. Your motivation will pick up, too, as the more you learn about a topic, the more you’ll want to know. For the sake of knowing, rather than because you have to.

Hopefully this helps. Or at least gives you some food for thought.