now let's talk about how the best students structure their days turns out there are great studies on this there is a really nice paper in fact that surveyed close to 700 students these were medical students approximately equal number of male and female students and analyze the most useful learning habits that is the learning habits associated with the most successful students now anytime you do a study like this where people take surveys there's always the issue of causality in fact we can pretty much set aside any possible causality for instance I'm about to tell you that the very best performing students tend to study for about three or four hours per day but you could easily say Well they're the best students because they study three or four hours per day they don't study three or four hours per day because they're the best students and you'd be exactly right okay we can get into all sorts of discussions about correlation versus causation about reverse causality and on and on however none of that is the point here the point here is to establish what are the habits that the most successful students seem to incorporate over and over again regardless of what classes they're taking regardless of where they are in their Arc of their learning trajectory and so what we know based on this study and I'll provide a link to it in the show note captions is that there are at least 10 study habits that the highly effective students use I'm going to focus on the top five or six just for sake of time because it turns out that most of the effect it appears of being a better student can be attributed to these top five or six habits first of all they set aside time to study they literally schedule time to study now this probably serves several roles the first one is that they are able to clear out other distractions and in fact that's the second thing that they do they are very effective where they make it a point of putting their phone away and off of isolating themselves that's right they're not studying with other people they study alone which is not to say that people who study with others cannot be effective in their studying but the best performing students seem to study alone they put their phone away they tell their friends and families that they are not going to be able to be reached during that time and yes they study for three or four hours per day but they break that up into a couple of different sessions typically two or three sessions so they're not doing a three or four hour studying about all in one shot so they're managing their time they're eliminating distractions and they're studying for a consistent amount of time at least 5 days per week okay presumably they're taking some weekends off although that wasn't made clear from this paper the other thing that they do and this is very important is that they make an effort to then teach their peers to teach other students in the class now some of you may be thinking and I'm thinking back to college here mostly that if you spend all this time learning the information and you are in a competitive scenario with the other students that teach teaching them the information is kind of a freebie for them and it's harder for you meaning you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage or you're giving them an unfair Advantage for not having done the work now while this paper didn't do an analysis of whether or not these students that served as the Learners from the other students got an unfair Advantage it's very clear that students who make it a point to learn material in isolation then bring that material to other students in the same course and teach them perform exceedingly well in comparison to the other students so don't be afraid to be a teacher of your peers in order to test this is key to test and develop Mastery of the material now in my laboratory for years we used to have a saying which I simply picked up from the Laboratories I was trained in I didn't come up with the saying which was watch one do one teach one and that was referring to doing surgeries or suturing or doing an antibody reaction or a western blot or things that you do in Laboratories watch one do one teach one watch one do one teach one of course should be reserved to anything where no one's going to be put in danger by the watch one do one teach one procedure right some procedures especially in Laboratories can be dangerous given the materials you use Etc and of course today we're talking about learning and studying generally so provid it it's safe watch one do one teach one is an excellent means to learn that is to study new material to develop proficiency and even Mastery and over time perhaps even virtuosity we'll return to that that later those distinctions so going back to this idea that the best students set aside time they designate time to study alone without distractions that is sure to help them anchor their focus and attention they know that they're going to need to use their focus and attention during that time and we know with absolute certainty that focus and attention are a limited but renewable resource in the human brain the longer you're awake the more is the buildup of a molecule called adenosine in your brain and body it makes you sleepy makes it harder to focus when you sleep adenosine levels are pushed down again you're able to focus again you feel more alert you can think of adenosine as limiting your attentional budget which is not to say that some people don't study best in the afternoon or in the evening or even late at night right I recall times during University when I'd study between the hours of 10: p. m. and 2: am.
I don't do that any longer but scheduling time where you know you're going to need to be focused and attending is perhaps one one of the most important things toward being able to focus and attend to the material now if you're taking courses you probably are going to be a slave to the timing of the courses you aren't going to be able to tell the instructor okay listen I want you to do this course at you know 3 p. m. because that's when you learn best or 8: a.
m.
