201. Let It Go: Study Smarter Through Subtraction

Sometimes less just really is more! We're exploring the value knowing when to let things go. We're stopping, dropping, trimming and de-prioritising to make space for the things that matter most. 

So today, we’ve got three solutions for when three key areas of life get overwhelming and out of balance: 

1. Self-care
2. Study strategies 
3. Study tasks

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Hosted by William Wadsworth, memory psychologist, independent researcher and study skills coach. I help ambitious students to study smarter, not harder, so they can ace their exams with less work and less stress.

BOOK 1:1 COACHING to supercharge your exam success: https://examstudyexpert.com/workwithme/

Get a copy of Outsmart Your Exams, my award-winning exam technique book, at https://geni.us/exams *

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* As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases on suggested books.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Expert Podcast, where we're all about helping you study smarter with the science of learning so you can ace your exams without overwork and overwhelm. I'm your host, William Wadsworth, psychologist and study strategy coach. The idea I've got for you today is a short one, but it's a powerful one. We talk a lot here on the show about things to do, ways to help you study smarter. But here's the thing: if we just keep adding tasks to your overall system, it doesn't work. Our time is limited. We can only take on so much. So we need to make choices we need to prioritize. Let's take a look at three case in points to illustrate what I mean and start to help you think through how this principle could apply to you and what things, some useful things you can take from today's episode. So the first one I wanted to talk about relates to well-being and self-care advice. We talk about that as an occasional theme here on the show, not least, we had Dr. Kimberly Horn last week if you caught that episode. It's a really lovely conversation talking about the power of human connection and how we can all find time to make a little bit of meaningful connection each week, even when we are, as I know many of you are listening, super, super busy and have a huge amount on our plate. So I'll often talk to people who are trying to do all the right things when it comes to their self-care, their well-being. You know, they've taken on the meditation, they've taken on the exercise, uh, you know, they're doing the journaling. Perhaps in light of last week's episode on human connections, they're making time to see friends or make connections. You know, they're doing all the things, and it's completely overwhelming. The schedule is bursting at the seams. There is just so much they're trying to do each day, what with between everything else. Adding in extra things into that already full schedule is just making the problem kind of almost even worse. You know, I might I might look at their Google Calendar, I might talk through their schedule with them. You know, it's it then it makes me feel exhausted. You know, it's a complete hustle to make it all happen each day, each week. So it's absolutely true that for some people, the path to better well-being is through addition. You know, there is space and and and and kind of bandwidth in in each day, in each week, to add in more things, uh, add in exercise, and that will make a big difference compared to if we before we made that switch. Uh so you know, for someone that that that isn't exercising at all, for example, adding in that as a daily habit a little bit, or kind of most days, you know, that's going to make a big difference to your to your overall well-being, uh, physical and mental health. Um but if we are already bursting at the seams and we're trying to do everything, we may struggle to perhaps we might not be able to do everything at the same at the level we want to. So my message here is absolutely not like don't stop exercising when you get busy. Like I think that's the wrong choice to make. But it might be the right choice for someone to make to maybe rein in what they're used to doing. So, for example, if you're used to an hour, a 90-minute workout each morning, you know, you take your physical fitness very seriously, you know, maybe just for a season we need to scale that back to 15, 20 minutes, half an hour. It's not the choice we'll make forever, but at that level, we're still maintaining good, good physical mental health, um, but we're creating a little bit more space, a little bit more space to breathe each day. Um I'd also note uh the the the world uh the the kind of consideration when it comes to the sort of extracurricular things, particularly for my some of my younger listeners. You know, I'm a huge fan of kind of the extracurricular stuff, the co-curricular stuff. You know, I did a ton of music, drama, uh, sport growing up, and and it was a big thing for me. And and I'm really, really grateful for those opportunities. And I'd really recommend anybody uh you know seize those. But equally, when things get busy academically, when we're in a big exam season, it may be that we just need to pause on that, bring that in a little bit. It's not a choice forever, we're not necessarily walking away from it forever, but just for that season, we may need to pause a few things, scale a few things back, maybe push some projects out to a later point in the year. You know, all that is absolutely fine. And there's no shame in that. That could be the right choice to help you through a busy season. Um, you know, finally, for those of you who are a little bit older, a little bit further down the path listening, uh, and you've got some family commitments, you know, thinking about how you can, as my wife and I say with our family, how we can sometimes push that easy button when things get very busy, you know, when we're in a kind of an intense season of life, you know, and you perhaps you're preparing for a big exam, you know, how can you just push that easy button? Um, you know, it may be that we kind of are are uh are a little bit simpler in terms of our ambitions for sort of meal prep each day. We don't kind of cook quite as elaborately. Uh maybe you make some smarter choices, you make some choices in terms of getting a little bit of help around the home or with family. You know, there might not be choices you make forever. It may be slightly more expensive in the short term, for example. But that's a good choice perhaps to make just for a few weeks, a few months while we get through this b uh uh busy season and then we can resume normal service on the other side. So the second thing I wanted to talk about, now zooming in specifically to your your actual study mechanics, so what you're doing uh in terms of the actual studying. Um and it's and it's it's when when we learn about something new, a new and more effective way of learning. You know, we've shared lots of examples of that on the podcast over the years. Uh and and and you know, perhaps some of you've listened to some of those ideas and and you know, you're experienced scholars, you've been studying for exams in the past, you you learn about a new way of learn of working, you know, through us or or otherwise, and you get excited about its potential. The the trap that that a surprising number of people fall into is that we try and then add in that extra thing on top of the things we're already doing. And that again can be a recipe for feeling very overwhelmed and not being able to fit everything in. So so what we want to be thinking about doing is having that confidence to let go of those things, those older habits uh that aren't as effective. You know, having that confidence to let go and that frees up the space and the bandwidth to adopt the new things. If we try and do both, we end up spreading ourselves really thin, stretching ourselves too thin, and and nothing is as effective as it could be. This is often a key part of my work when I'm coaching a new client. You know, in many cases, I'll I'll have have longtime listeners come to me and they've learned a little bit from the listening to the show over the years about the right things to do. But a key kind of conversation we'll have is helping them build that confidence to let go of the less helpful things. So look out for this playing out for you. And if it is playing out for you, please come and see me. Let's have a chat. We'll do some coaching on it. I can help you through. The sense of peace that you're on the best path is often a key thing that comes out from those early coaching sessions together. People often come to me for the strategies, the practical, tactical stuff to optimize your approach to learning, your routine, et cetera. And I'll certainly give you the best tools in your situation. Um but beyond the tools, beyond the practical stuff, that that reassurance, uh that peace that you're doing the right thing, that confidence to focus on what's going to matter most for you, and the confidence to let go and put down the other things, then the peace that comes from all of that is often one of my favorite things to see emerging in one of my new students, uh, typically in those first few sessions. So if I can help you with that as well, do head to examstudy experts.com forward slash coaching for more in. My third and final point uh for us today is related to the last one, but thinking less about how you study and the methods you're choosing, so much as what you're studying and the resources you're working from. So again, often students will come to me feeling overwhelmed because they've got so many different resources to study from. There are so many different options for the resources they could use. You know, there's the revision guide, there's the textbook, or several textbooks, uh, there's notes they got from peers, there's the sets of brainscape or anke cards they've inherited from someone, or maybe they've made their own materials in the past. There's the past papers to work from. For some older students, uh, you know, there's there's academic material to review too. You know, there's journals, recent papers, review articles, official guidelines from your fields governing body, and so on. There's uh, you know, so much material. You can do anything, but you can't do everything. And so we need to look at all the different things you're doing, all the different things you could be doing, I should say, and make some choices about where your time is best spent. You've got a limited budget of time to invest. Let's invest it in the areas that are going to give you the highest yield. If we try and do everything, we won't end up doing anything particularly well, and we'll feel frazzled and overwhelmed. So we need to make the best choices. We've got a limited amount of time. Where do we spend it? Which horses do we back? Uh that could give you the biggest bang for your buck and help you make the most progress in the time available. It's a very rough rule of thumb. Uh, I like to think in terms of aiming for about three core study tasks each week. Um less than that is good. Like if it's just one or two, that's that's cool. Like we may be able to stretch that slightly, but once we stretch that too much, you know, we're trying to progress five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten different things each week. That's when you know both the brain starts to spin uh and we get that feeling of uh of overwhelm. Uh and also uh you know, we don't feel like we can make meaningful progress so much because we're trying to spread ourselves too thin. So it's like a magnifying glass focusing the rays of the sun onto a piece of paper. You know, when we focus that energy uh strongly on just one or two, three things, uh, then we can get to that point where the the paper ignites uh and we can sort of ignite some learning. But if we try and you know don't have that magnifying glass, we don't have the sun's rays focused, we could leave that paper out in the sun uh and nothing would ever happen. Uh even if the sun shone it on it all day, it would never kind of catch light and ignite until we focus those rays down. So so we don't want to spread ourselves too thin. We want to focus on those key areas. Um I gave you that rule of thumb of three. I mean, we there may be kind of uh there's there's lots of sort of exceptions to this. Uh and you know, if you are studying multiple subjects, it may be that that rule of three applies kind of within each subject. Um, but that's a that's a helpful little guidance to be going on with that that works for kind of many situations. Ultimately, the simpler our plan feels, the simpler it is to kind of know what your plan is and being able to just at a moment's notice just think about the plan. You know, if you bumped into someone in a lift, in 30 seconds you can kind of communicate your plan to them, how you're studying, what you're focusing on each week. Um, the more we can get to that point, the less the brain will spin, the calmer you'll feel, uh, and the more you'll be able to make progress each week. And again, sometimes this kind of thing, how which bits that we focus on, that's often a key part of early coaching sessions with clients. So if you are a regular listener and you're facing a big exam or set of exams, whether it's at school, university, or for slightly older students as part of your career, uh, and if you're not already one of my coaching clients, as many listeners are, um, what are you waiting for? Uh it's never too late to make a difference, but the best time to start work together is always now. The sooner the better, because the sooner we can optimize your approach and help you make 20%, 10%, 20%, 50% more progress in each hour, in each week that you're studying, the longer you have to benefit from those gains and ultimately the more successful you've been. The exam you're working on matters to you. You've chosen to invest time in listening to the show and learning about how to work smarter. Um so I would warmly encourage you to take the next step, um, follow in the footsteps of so many listeners before you who've done just often quite a little bit of one-on-one. You know, it's my my work is relatively light touch. We're not sort of uh uh signing up to vast, vast numbers of sessions together. Uh, you know, I can I can I can have an impact in a very short space of time. Um, and and and let's work together to review, refine your study system uh for peace and progress now and success and pride on results day. The first step to working together is an exploratory chat to get to know each other, talk through how you're getting on, and explore how I might be able to help you. So if you'd like to take the first step today, book your chat with me over at examstudyxpert.com forward slash coaching. Again, that's examstudyxpert.com forward slash coaching. I look forward to supporting your success. Thanks once again for tuning in today, and I will look forward to seeing you next time, wishing you every success, as always, in your studies.

SPEAKER_00: 12:11

Well, that was good, wasn't it? I found myself taking notes. If you need a reminder of anything from today, head to the website for a write up of this episode as well as lots more top knock advice and resources. That's examstudyexpert.com. See you next time.