Everyone wants that
small edge, which can put her/ him ahead of others. One such area is to squeeze
in more effective hours into your study schedule.
What if you can
stretch your effective daily study hours from eight to ten? It’s hard, no
doubt, but achievable. In this post, I’ll cover seven steps which will help you
fight lethargy (plus additional steps you can take to fight sleepiness in the
evening) when studying and hence increase your daily output.
But before I come to
the first step, I want to make three quick points
When it comes to
mastering academics or any field for that matter, number of hours in itself
doesn’t mean much. What matters is the quality of study you put in?
To give an analogy,
have you got up in the morning feeling groggy even after an eight-hour sleep? I
have. If your sleep is interrupted for some reasons during the night, you too
will wake up tired and groggy despite eight hours of sleep. And without the
interruption, you’re much more likely to have a sound sleep despite sleeping
for six hours.
You get the point:
quality trumps quantity. Same holds for studying.
If despite being
well rested you feel lethargic and challenging to start, then the problem may
lie elsewhere. You may be procrastinating or, worse, you may be lacking in
motivation. We all procrastinate and it can be overcome with effort, but lack
of motivation may require intervention at a deeper, bigger level.
Don’t stretch
yourself at the cost of sleep and exercise. Such routine will compromise your
health and hence won’t be sustainable.
Having said that
here are seven steps you can take to study long hours without getting overly
tired or drowsy:
1. Prioritize your schedule:
Take up difficult
topics early in the day
Take up the
difficult material in the forenoon when you’re at your best, energy wise. (For
most people this is the time when they’re most productive. If somehow you’re an
exception to this, feel free to take up the difficult material at a time that
works for you.)
Such scheduling
matches your energy with the difficulty of the task at hand. As a result, you
face less challenging topics in the evening, by when you’ve dissipated loads of
your physical and mental energy and when tendency to slack is highest.
On the contrary, if
you pick easy stuff early in the day to get a false sense of progress – which
many procrastinators do – you’re more likely to succumb to procrastination and
give up later in the day when your energy and resolve would hate being tested.
For the same reason,
to the extent possible, schedule your low-effort, non-academic activities such
as socializing, making calls, and daily chores later in the day.
2. Exercise
As far as academics
are concerned, physical exercise boosts learning ability and long-term memory,
and controls anxiety and depression. But the benefits of exercise go beyond: it
also improves concentration, alertness, and motivation.
To quote John J.
Ratey, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and
co-author of book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the
Brain (the book delves into how exercise affects brain):
… It [exercise]
optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation.
And the effects of
exercise are visible almost immediately. In a review of several published
scientific articles, this research brief by University of Texas, Austin says:
Physical activity
can have both immediate and long-term benefits on academic performance. Almost
immediately after engaging in physical activity, children are better able to
concentrate on classroom tasks, which can enhance learning.
With these benefits,
you can not only get more out of your study, but also last longer.
However, not all
exercises are made equal as far as their effectiveness in improving your
concentration and alertness in concerned. Most studies find 30-odd minutes of
vigorous, sweat-inducing cardiovascular exercises to be the most effective.
(Please note that
not all exercises are suitable for everyone. Before attempting a new exercise
take into account factors such as flexibility, strength, and overall health to
determine whether or not a particular exercise is appropriate for you. You may consult
your professional healthcare provider in this regard.)
3. Steal a nap
Take nap for pulling
off an all-nighter?, Yes, steal… if you can’t get it the legit way. It’s so
important
To quote John
Medina, a leading authority on brain study and founding director of two brain
research institutes, from his book Brain Rules:
People vary in how
much sleep they need and when they prefer to get it, but the biological drive
for an afternoon nap is universal…. If you embrace the need to nap rather than
pushing through, as LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president of the United
States and a prolific napper] found, your brain will work better afterward.
In a study by NASA,
the pilots who took a 26-minute nap reduced their lapses in awareness by 34
percent compared to those who didn’t nap. Moreover, those who napped showed an
improvement of 16 percent in their reaction times. Importantly, their
performance stayed consistent through the day and didn’t slack at the end of a
flight or at night.
The most important
aspect of nap, as observed in the case of NASA pilots, is that performance
slacks much less than when you don’t nap, which means you can study at a high
intensity even late in the evening if you have had a nap in the afternoon.
So, steal a nap in
the afternoon, and you’ll be in a better position to handle your next session.
The little nap can add hours to your schedule in the evening, quality as well
as quantity wise. Here, are few quick tips for effective naps:
Limit it to 30-40
minutes to avoid going into deep sleep and feeling groggy after awakening.
Besides, a longer nap can also keep you awake late in the night.
Try napping at the
same time every day as it helps stabilize circadian rhythm. Most people nap
immediately after lunch. Schedule yours.
4. Eat to maintain energy levels
Although your brain
constitutes just 2 percent of your body weight, it guzzles 20 percent of your
daily energy intake. Studies have shown that non-pleasurable mentally
exhausting tasks – academic learning will fall into this category for most –
drain our energy fast.
Therefore, it’s
important to eat in a way that sustains your energy level when performing
mentally exhausting tasks.
Eat higher
proportion of low Glycemic Index (GI) foods (examples: oats, porridge,
low-sugar museli, granola bars, yogurt with seeds/ nuts, low-fat dairy, soups,
salads, anything wholegrain, and most fruits), which release glucose slowly
into bloodstream, thereby maintaining energy level for a longer period. High-GI
foods (examples: pizza, white bread, burger, cake, chocolate, cookie, potato
chips, sugary beverages, and ice cream) have an opposite effect: your energy
levels rise fast and crash equally fast, resulting in fatigue and drowsiness.
Here is an
illustrative representation of how your energy level changes with low-GI and
high-GI foods
Variation of blood
glucose level with food type Second, if you notice in the above graph, your
energy levels go down in 2-3 hours irrespective of what GI food you eat, which
implies that you need to replenish your glucose level every three hours, if not
two, in order to maintain your energy. So, eat small portions every 2-3 hours.
5. Conserve your mental energy
Because your brain
is energy guzzler (2 percent vs. 20 percent), its important not to dissipate
your energy by letting your mind wander into debilitating, irrelevant thoughts.
Thoughts that linger on:
“Why did he behave
with me so rudely?”
“What if I fail in
the exam?”
And so on…
An effective way to
squash such thoughts is to recognize them the moment they cross your mind,
count up to three, and divert your mind elsewhere. (Yes, such thoughts creep in
so automatically that we don’t realize that they’re gnawing you mentally,
unless of course you practice breaking the train of thoughts. And counting, or
anything else you may try, does precisely that.)
I know it’s not easy
to control such wandering thoughts, but if you can…then you conserve some
precious energy.
6. Take regular breaks
You should take
breaks for two reasons. It not only relaxes you, but it also restores your
waning concentration.
Your concentration
starts dropping after 50 minutes or so, and if you keep powering your way
through, you’ll be studying with lesser concentration, which is akin to wasting
time. Therefore, take a 5-10 minute break every 50-odd minutes to restore your
focus. (Note that this period may vary for individuals. So, test what works for
you.) During the break, do anything but study: walk around, eat something, get
some quick exercise, gaze outside, and so on. Idea is to take a break from what
you have been doing.
7. If possible, study/ work in daylight
Work/ study in
daylight to be more productiveWell, this may be a luxury which most likely you
can’t afford, but if you can, then read on.
Research has shown
that studying/ working in daylight makes you less drowsy, more alert in the
afternoon, thereby increasing your productivity or adding more hours to your
schedule.
In a study, Mirjam
Muench and his team exposed two groups of people to six hours of either
artificial light or daylight for two days and found that:
Compared to the
afternoon, people who had DL (Daylight) were significantly more alert at the
beginning of the evening, and subjects who were exposed to AL (Artificial
light) were significantly sleepier at the end of the evening.
DL group was also
found to perform better on cognitive functions – functions such as reasoning,
memory, and attention you need when doing an intense mental work – on the
second day.
So pull your table
and chair to the corner of the room which receives sunlight. This, however,
doesn’t mean studying directly under sunlight. If the room where you study
receives sunlight, it’s good enough.
If possible, study/
work in daylight to feel less drowsy in the evening.
How to study long
hours without feeling sleepy in the night?
Study late in the
night without feeling sleepyNow if you’re one of those who get time to study
only in the evening because either you’re too busy attending other things in
the day or because you work part-time, it may be even more challenging to not
feel tired and drowsy in the evening. The only time you’ve is in the evening,
and you’re certainly not at the peak of your energy after the day’s work.
If that’s you, you
may take few additional steps (the ones covered till now will all be helpful in
this case too) to squeeze in more productive hours:
I haven’t mentioned
caffeine as a way to fight drowsiness in the evening for the reason that it may
interfere with your sleep. It may be fine when you’re pulling off those
occasional all-nighters, but not when you’ve to take it regularly.
Section summary
Exercise for 10 minutes (aerobic kind that can be
comfortably done indoors) in the evening.
Keep easier, interesting stuff for the night.
Study in bright light, and avoid bed or couch.
If possible, sleep early to trade some night time with
morning time.
Experiment, and see what else works for you
Credit = LemonGrad.com
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