The 4-Part Daily Exam Routine That Got Me Straight A's in Engineering (Science-Based)

all right kids welcome back to the classroom so in this video I'm going to explain my four-part daily routine that I used during engineering school to help me get straight A in my exams because this routine that I'm going to explain behind me it seems complicated but trust me it's very simple very intuitive it takes advantage of some basic human biology and psychology to optimize your day for the highest grades with the least amount of stress and I can say this because I literally looked forward to exam season because of this routine partly because of this routine partly because I learned to love studying which go watch my videos about it if you're interested but I'm going to go through this routine right now and trust me I think you're going to love it it's super effective it's very very easy to follow and hopefully it's going to be fun here as well classes in session I know it looks complicated but trust me it's very simple this is one day this is one day here's where you wake up on the left and time goes on throughout the day and here's where you go to bed at night time on the right okay so why is it this weird ass shape why is it like up and down well it's very simple this is you you start off in the morning in the day and basically your body has something called a Cadian Rhythm where basically throughout the day your energy fluctuates up and down you might notice this at sometimes parts of the day you're more tired than other parts of the day so this up and down is actually your energy so let me explain you wake up in the morning this is you and in the morning your energy is at a peak I've put arbitrary times here by the way this is just me my Cadian Rhythm might not be exactly yours but at 9:00 a. m. my energy is at a peak my circadian rhythm is at a peak and as the afternoon goes along my energy drops till about 3 p.

m. I literally want to go to sleep my Cadian rhythm is down at the floor but then what happens is my energy goes back up and at about 700 p. m.

around evening my energy takes another Peak and then of course towards bedtime my energy goes down so my system here will leverage when your energy is highest and that's when we're going to study so section one and section three are your study periods I'll tell you why there two study periods I'll tell you what exactly to do at every single hour I'm going to go through section four here right before bed this is something I never hear talked about this is essential though during exam periods I think I call this a release period so it's a tropical island here because this is your release period so basically you you might have something that you would rather be doing than studying or something that you do end up doing rather than studying so for me during my exam period it was scrolling on YouTube for you it might be like Tik Tok Netflix I know a bunch of you guys are on the Hub every single day you know schmeing your your shmeet um maybe you do drugs or some whatever you do whatever you do here's the problem you tell yourself that you're going to do it after exams you're like okay I'm going to focus for 3 weeks and then I'll allow myself to watch Netflix then I'll allow myself to play video games but that doesn't work as you know I saw a meme the other day it was like oh man I can't wait till exams are done so I can do that that I was doing anyway without stress so it doesn't work basically what ends up happening is we can't resist for 3 weeks so what happens we wake up and we're like okay I'm just going to go on YouTube for an hour then I'll study oh you know dinner's over bro I'm just going to play video games for an hour then I'll study we end up sprinkling that throughout our day so when we tell ourselves we're not going to do it in for 3 weeks that doesn't work so my method here basically it's very very simple you're allowed to do that you're allowed to do your vices you're allowed to do whatever it is your addiction is whatever you can't resist all you have to do is just do it during this release period so for about 1 to two hours before bed I literally give you permission to go ham scroll as much as you want play video games do whatever you want just give yourself one rule you're only going to do it at this period now the reason this is so effective is because instead of resisting for 3 weeks all you have to do is resist till nighttime so you're going to be tempted here to go on Netflix you're going to be tempted here to go on YouTube all you have to tell yourself is hey just do that at night and the reason it's called a release period is because it's like during the day you're building up that pressure you're fighting all these cravings and then here you literally release that pressure you allow yourself to do all those vices now of course ideally here's the thing I'm not saying you have to have this ideally you would be so addicted to studying if you watch my videos you you might be addicted to studying so much that you won't need the you'll want to study till bedtime but you got to be honest with yourself if you do have something that you kind of revert to just try to do it here it's that simple now again I'm not telling you you have to have this you know don't go home tonight and like go in the hub go shmeet your your Hub on the Hub tonight and be like Oh bro penro said I should go shmeet my fleet on the Hub that's not what I'm saying I'm not saying to develop an addiction to drugs or whatever but if you do have something you got to be honest with yourself simply do it during this release period that's it bro I got to calm down I'm I've never done a standing video like this I'm I'm out of breath but um okay now I'm going to go through extreme detail what to do every hour of the day okay so this is you the hero you wake up okay and you're going to battle throughout the day like I said we've got two study periods one here one here I'm going to go through them so you wake up and you do some morning routine whatever it is I'm not going to tell you what to do during your morning routine it's up to you me I used to wake up take a get some breakfast and go for a walk but here's what you want to do you want to start your first study session as early as possible cuz right after we wake up that's when our energy is at a Max maximum so we're going to take full advantage of that and literally it can be right as you roll out of bed I know many people they roll out of bed and they get straight to studying you can do that but W preferably within an hour of waking up you want to get to your first study session of the day I'll tell you how to approach it but there are a couple things that you want to do before your study session this one here is essential before your first study session of the day you must take about 5 minutes to write your targets for the day to write your goals for the day if you don't do this you're going to waste a lot of time doing low leverage tasks and wasting time so literally just sit down for 5 minutes with a notebook open with your computer open and just write what you're going to do for the day literally like what past papers are you going to do what topics are you going to hit literally just spend five minutes and this will save you so much time throughout the day there's a quote something like 5 minutes in planning saves 20 minutes in execution it's more like 2 hours but this is the first thing this is the only only essential thing you need to do in the morning set your goals for 5 minutes then you can begin your study session but here are three weapons I'm going to give you that will make your study session way more focused and way more energetic so the first weapon you can use is caffeine coffee you know yam mate whatever the hell you want if you're a crackhead then energy drinks but caffeine will basically increase your dopamine and your adrenaline which will help you focus better help you retain me your memory better and it increase your energy so caffeine is one weapon you can use similar one is cold showers if you take a cold shower again your adrenaline will rise your dopamine will rise it'll help you focus better it'll give you more energy and now the final weapon I've got here this is an interesting one Focus warmup so if you take about 1 to 2 minutes before you sit down to study to warm up your focus system you're going to focus way better so this is literally I'll tell you exactly what to do pick a point somewhere in the room I'm going to pick my camera here and for about 1 to 2 minutes you want to focus on it as intensely as possible you want to literally just stay 100% concentrated on it thoughts are going to come distractions are going to come stay focused on it for about 1 to two minutes and then begin your work and when you do that you're going to notice that your focus is way better because you've just spent like a couple minutes warming up that Focus system so these are just three weapons you can use so use these three weapons if you want set goals now we're going to begin our first Battle of the day our morning study session so here's the mindset you want to have going into this basically you want to study Like a Warrior you want to study like a cheater you want to work intensely for short bursts of time so here's what you do lock yourself in a room or be away from the distraction of people get all distractions out of your way put your phone in another room at least put it on airplane mode under your bed get that out of there and you're going to have your eyes locked onto the screen for about 2 to 4 hours now you can take breaks in between but for a period of about 2 to 4 hours most of that time is going to be locked in onto your screen studying I'll give you some more specific details here because 2 to 4 hours is a long time for many people but you want to work like a warrior you want to Sprint hard and you want to take rests in between so if you can only focus for like 20 minutes do 20 minute Sprints 20 minutes then 5 minute rest 20 minutes then 5 minute rest 20 minute then 5 minute rest people who are much better they can do maybe 2 hours so 2 hours then a 10-minute rest then another 2 hours but work to your limits but you want to work hard and then rest work hard and then rest repeat for about 2 to 4 hours now I'll tell you why exactly 2 to four hours here basically if you work like this if you read the book deep work by C newort if you studied the science of focus you know that if you work if you know focus is like a muscle if you focus very very intensely then you need to rest you can't focus for 12 hours if you can study for 12 hours that means you're not focused very intensely so actually the more intense your focus the less amount of time you want to study so if your focus is really really really intense 2 hours is pretty much the maximum you're going to be able to do if your focus is more trash then you're going to go more towards the 4our mark but this is the total by the way but after about 4 hours your focus system is going to be so depleted that you you literally need to rest it's like an athlete sprinting if you've sprinted so much you need to rest if you keep trying to Sprint it's going to be so inefficient that you're just going to waste all this time it's better to rest and then come back hard during our evening session use a timer this one's very very important so what I do is on my computer I'll literally put a timer in the corner you can get a physical timer you can do whatever you want when you work to a timer basically what happens is it's kind of like you're on a on an assembly line it keeps you you know pushing it gives you like a deadline to work to the problem is we don't give ourselves deadlines we tell ourselves okay we're going to stop studying at bedtime and because of that we have no sense of urgency so we study with trash focus and we feel hopeless CU there's no end point if you have a timer and you can see like oh I've got 90 minutes left then it gives you that sense of urgency so you push harder but it also gives you hope because you can see an end point coming so work to a timer this is essential this will keep you way more focused and make it much more enjoyable okay like I said earlier if you've read deep work or you've studied the science of rest or you've read the book rest but I can't remember his name then if you actually insert a massive rest period here between your study sessions you will actually get more done overall if you try to study for this whole period here you will get a lot less done so here is an essential part your rest period you're going to reach base camp here and in the middle of the day when your energy is lowest you're going to give yourself permission this is essential give yourself permission to rest I'll tell you exactly what to do here but the problem is we don't give ourselves permission to rest we're in study mode all day long and so because of that we're constantly stressed and our Focus sucks because you know we're trying to focus at every minute of the day if we insert this period here again it's like a release valve but also it makes us come back stronger for the evening SE session so during this rest period you don't want to do any of the that you're doing during the release period so no scrolling no Netflix none of that stuff if you do that stuff it will destroy your focus for the evening session and it will lower your motivation for the evening session so during the rest period what you want to do is you want to do activities that are the opposite of focusing so I'll give you a couple examples exercise playing sports and socializing going for a walk going out in the sun those are big ones my favorite taking a nap I take a 20-minute nap and that replenishes my focus so pick your favorite literally give yourself a couple hours for this give yourself a permission for a couple hours in the day to just chill and I promise you you will come back to this session here way stronger this is also how Riders approach their work by the way many riders will literally have this massive block in the Middle where they rest I know many great leaders do this as well because we're going to come back at evening time for your final battle of the day it's pretty pretty much going to be identical to the morning session with a couple differences that I'm going to I'm going to go into one thing that you can do here that I like to do is change up my environment so here normally I'll do my desk or something like that over here I like to go to the library or at least go to like a different room in your house here's the reason why in the morning it's much easier to resist distractions cuz it's the morning you've just woken up maybe your family are busy too but here your family might be walking around your house doing random you know your brother's playing a video game your friend is like inviting you to go into counter- strike or something so it's much harder to resist distractions here and it can kind of get boring if you're doing the same environments throughout the day so if you give yourself a different environment here it'll give you more of an adventure feel throughout your day and more novelty and it's much easier to resist distractions so what I used to do is I literally used to leave my phone at home and I would go to the library and then of course you've got your release period so that's pretty much it but one thing I do want to mention this is not a prescription I'm not saying you have to study at 9:00 a. m. and then 7:00 p.

m. and then rest at 3:00 p. m.

everyone's different some people wake up at midday some people wake up at 3:00 a. m.