all right children welcome back in today's lecture I'm going to use this cursed image of Sonic to explain how you can get more study done in less time and I can say this pretty confidently because in engineering school I got pretty much Straight A's studying about 2 to 3 hours max per day and this is not a lie this is 100% the truth and I can explain to you how exactly to do it because I'm not a genius I'm not a genius I just learned how to study smart because here's what I realized school doesn't
teach us how to study they teach us a bunch of things they teach us maths physics English they teach us gender studies but they don't teach us how to actually go about studying because trust me when I say most students are studying completely wrong I know because I see this when I go to the library I go to the library and I study around study around my friends they are all studying completely wrong if you just learn the science of studying if you learn how studying can be done effectively trust me it's really really straightforward
and that's what I want to go into this in this video I want to go into three ways that make Sonic really really fast and how we can take those same principles and study fast ourselves so I'm going to get into it so how do we study faster so I want to explain this this um equation here sorry if you're not a math person I'll explain this in detail basically this is from the book deep work by the way by count Newport basically the grade you get in your subject is equal to how intensely you
focus multiplied by how long you focus for so what this means is your grade is going to be determined by how well you focus and how long you study for and here's the thing most students focus on this most students study for longer longer 12-hour days 16-hour days they're just studying all day they camp out in the library with their Red Bulls and their sleeping bags they they bust out a tent in the library they're camping in there for 24 hours the correct way to go about this is to increase this to focus better so
that's what I'm going to go into in this video how can you focus better I'm going to go through everything so how can we maximize Focus Well here here's here's how you do it so essentially the lowest level of focus that you can have is you know you imagine you're sitting there and you're constantly being distracted by everything happening around you and then up here you focus a little bit better and up here maximum Peak Focus what is this this is what's called a flow State when you are at maximum Focus you are in a
flow State maybe you're familiar with this maybe you're playing a video game and there's no thoughts in your mind you are just 100% present in the activity I like to think of it as like a tennis player for example when they're on the court they're not thinking they're just 100% in the game fully focused their focus is at maximum so I want to teach you three ingredients you can use to enter this insane Focus this Flow State now I know the nerds in the audience are going to think I know the nerds in the audience
they're going to think like oh bro it's not it's not Flow State technically it's deliberate practice but the same principles apply so don't worry okay so the first ingredient of this Flow State and what makes sonic really really fast is Sonic knows his enemies so if you've ever played Sonic he's got enemies like Dr Eggman um Bowser just kidding sorry for the Sonic fans by the way I know nothing about Sonic I don't even know his enemies but Sonic knows his enemies Sonic is a video game character by the way if you didn't know he
knows his enemies and when we're trying to get into Flow State when we're trying to get into Flow State what are our enemies our enemies are distractions so we're all familiar with the common distractions for example our phone video games kids running around everywhere we're all familiar with the common distractions but here's something you need to realize the most deadly distractions the ones that are going to take you the most out of your flow state are the ones you're not even aware of so I'll explain this through an example so a couple years ago I
was doing a robotic subject and I was finishing off the final report so so what I was doing was I was going to the library to camp out there and get this report done but I noticed that no matter what I could not focus for multiple days in a row I would go to the library and I would get almost nothing done but then one day I realized something I realized I kept getting distracted by the people who were walking by I was sitting in this busy area of the library where there were people walking
by so I did a very simple fix I simply turned around and I faced the wall to do my report and suddenly I was entering flow States and I got this report busted out very very fast so the the reason I'm telling you this is because the things that distract us the most are often the things we're not even aware of so here's the tactic I want to give you that I learned from the learning coach Justin s he talks about something called a focus cheat sheet so what you do is you take a piece
of paper and you religiously use this you put it down next to your desk and every time something distracts you you write it down so for example let's say your dog boing keeps taking you out of focus okay dog boing um you know maybe there's this bouncing thing that's in your corner okay bouncing thing maybe you're always in a cafe and the chatter around you is taking you out of Flow State okay you're WR that another big thing that you're not aware of is your thoughts often there'll be like some kind of thoughts that Loop
in your mind write that down for example for me whenever I would watch a movie or a YouTube video or something before I studied when I would sit down to actually study my mind would still be looping on the concepts that I had just learned in that movie in in that YouTube video so write that down and make this a master list of thoughts external things everything that's distracting you and since it's a cheat sheet you can get to work at destroying these so for example your dog is constantly barking get headphones eliminate your dog
um move him away that's what I mean I don't want to I don't condone Violence by the way or do I so just get to work eliminating these distractions know your enemies The Art of War um you know to defeat your enemies you have to know them I don't know any of the quotes um but Sonic knows his enemies that's why he can end Flow State so know your enemies which is your distractions that's it use a distraction cheat sheet religiously use it okay the second thing that Sonic does so well to make him fast
as to make him Speedy got to go fast is um let me check my notes real quick actually okay if you've played Sonic you know that sorry if I'm butchering the game by the way but if you play Sonic you know he chases these Rings he basically the reason he's so fast is he locks on to this path of rings so to get into Flow State one of the ingredients for Flow State is youi need this path of rings what I'm going to call it here is you need goals you need specific well defined goals
and I'm going to tell you exactly how to do that here so one of the requirements of flow state is you need goals when you're playing tennis your goal is to defeat your enemy to get a point if you don't have goals for your Flow State there's nothing for you to actually stay locked in and work as fast as possible so what you need to do is you need to have specific well- defined goals so I'm going to tell you how exactly to do that basically you need two things one is you need time you
need to know how long you are going to study for say for example 90 minutes and the second thing is they need to be well defined so I'll give you some examples here for example and here's what you do I highly recommend getting a journal by the way something like this where um oh my notes get a journal something like this where you simply you have your distraction cheat sheet and you write down your study goals before you sit down to actually study make it super clear in your mind what exactly you're going to do
during that session really make it clear what your goals are make it clear what Rings you are going to chase during this study session because you need well- defined goals for Flow State if you don't have any goals your brain won't feel that sense of pressure to be locked in and to get into Flow State if you don't give yourself an amount of time you're going to study for your brain won't have that sense of urgency it'll think you've got all day so it won't get into that Rush you're not consciously aware of it but
you won't be able to lock into Flow State so some examples of well-defined goals are things like I'm going to write 400 words of my essay in 90 minutes or for example I'm going to do this 2016 past paper in 2 hours so literally open your study Journal have a study journal and write exactly the goals you're going to hit for this session and how long you're going to study for and a bonus tip on this by the way use a timer on Windows there's a feature where you can put a timer in the corner
sometimes I just use my phone I literally just put a timer put my phone on airplane mode when you have a timer it it gives you that sense of pressure when you're working like I said you need this pressure you need these goals to get into Flow State I like to think of flow state by the way as as pressure so if you don't have any sense of pressure in your study session you don't have goals you don't have time you like you don't get into Flow State there's no sense of urgency you're just floating
you're not like locked in if there's too much pressure though you get anxiety there's too little time there's too many difficult things you have to do so flow state is like that perfect pressure where you're essentially locked in at your maximum Focus your maximum efficiency and if you can get into maximum Flow State this will give you the minimum amount of time you need to get whatever your grades you desire so that's the second thing that makes sonic so good he locks into rings he locks into goals and now the final one I think this
is the most important by the way this is something where when you realize this when you deeply realize this your mind will be blown trust me so it's going to seem weird at first but I I'll get into it so Sonic if you've ever played any video game to be honest you know you have lives right so Sonic would have one life one life Sonic would have three lives let's say Hots these are Hots by the way my drawing is absolutely trash by the way if you didn't know and um so Sonic will have three
lives and when he gets attacked he'll lose a life you know o that's Minecraft by the way Sonic will lose his life and he'll have you know two hearts left so how does lives relate to studying you know do we physically die when we study is this some kind of abstract concept where you know dying will will be reborn with new knowledge and wiser no no no so what goals mean here sorry sorry what what lives mean here I got to slow down a bit um let me know if this video is helpful At All
by the way I have no clue if this is even helping if any of this makes sense at all please let me know um if you want to see more videos like this but okay what you can think of in terms of lives is effort and I'm going to explain this exactly what I what I mean here but a general rule when it comes to studying when it comes to getting into flow state is it's supposed to be effortful it's supposed to take effort because because when you're studying when you're learning when you're in Peak
Performance your brain chemistry is changing it's called neuroplasticity and for your neural networks to literally rewire themselves it takes effort if learning if studying was easy everyone would be walking around with A's as doctors we'd all be Engineers we'd all be doctors the reason why A's are rare is because it takes effort it's supposed to be painful and I'll go into a bit of detail with this where I learned this from by the way is this book called The Art of impossible and there is a 10 out of 10 quote from that book that really
encapsulates this well I recommend taking that quote tattooing it onto your chest literally writing it in the cover of your study Journal put it on your wall it's such an important quote basically what the book says is if you can't read my trash handwriting by the way it's supposed to be hard this is something you can just constantly remind yourself it's supposed to be hard anything worth doing is supposed to be hard just let that sink in for a minute for a minute this quote is insane because okay let me tell you how this relates
to lives basically when we sit down to study when we sit down to focus we often feel a bit tired it's like oh bro my my brain hurty bro I just want to go lie down man I really don't feel like studying I'm so tired I'm falling asleep I know for me you know I might be wide awake but as soon as I start reading a difficult textbook tiredness will hit me and this is the concept you need to understand it's this concept from the book The Art of impossible called Second Wind so I think
this relates to boxes sometimes a fighter will get knocked down but he'll wake up again for a second fight for a second wind so this is where the concepts of the concept of lives comes in when you sit down to focus and you're tired as if you understand it's supposed to be painful it's supposed to be effortful and you push through that wall of tiredness often what will happen is you will break through that wall and you will enter second wind you will enter your second life so you sit down to focus you sit down
to study it's painful it takes effort you're tired you want to sleep it's killing you o it's taking away your lives but then you wake up on the other side and you enter this Flow State and you get second wind it it's essentially your your brain is testing you it's like bro are you serious are you actually going to study right now bro how about we go watch some Netflix your brain is trying to seduce you if you punch your brain you use your second life and you push through with effort you will essentially wake
up and you will enter the Flow State this is like the fee that's required to enter the Flow State you have to pay with effort and then you enter that beautiful Flow State where you know it's effort list because you're just in the zone now by the way I am seriously over complicating this it doesn't always happen exactly like this you might enter in and out of Flow State but the principle remains it takes effort to study so for example they've done a bunch of experiments on the most effective study methods and the least effective
study methods and the most it's not surprising that the most effective study methods were the ones that took effort so the least effective study methods were things like highlighting copy pasting notes these things that are so easy and they take no effort so it's not surprising I always see students highlighting the textbook and they do it because it's easy it's it's it's I'm not saying it's a bad study method by the way it's just not effective so a way to judge if a study method is effective one one way it's not like it's not the
only way it's not um yeah it's not the only way is is it effortful so what are the best study methods that they found testing which takes effort because you're asking yourself questions you're trying to solve the problems teaching teaching is difficult because you're trying to teach the methods you're you're racking your brain to try to explain the concepts in a way that the person you're teaching to can understand active recall so it's things that actually involve you taking information out of your brain because that's what takes effort but that's where the learning is going
to happen like I said if if studying wasn't effortful we'd all be walking around with A's we'd all be you know doctors walking around in society so studying takes effort in general it's supposed to be painful but again it's not a bad thing it's actually a good thing because you understand that it's normal to feel tired often we think we're burnt out but it's often because we're just not pushing through we don't understand that it's supposed to be hard if we want to grow if we want to learn it's going to be a bit painful
at times but we can actually learn to enjoy this pain because when you understand that it's supposed to be hard you can start to associate the pain the effort with growth and it becomes exciting it's like you know those bodybuilders they're like I love the pain man I love pushing my muscle Muses to failure because you start to associate that pain with growth I think I think it's growth mindset where the people who have the weakest mindsets are the ones where they associate pain with negativity but you can actually begin to realize that it's supposed
to be hard to study and you can begin to you know coach yourself and tell yourself that it's supposed to be hard now I'm not saying you know you can be 48 hours sleep deprived and you can still push through in study 100% you need to know when it's time to rest but a lot of the times we think we need to rest but we just need to push through and get that second wind so if you've got the energy to play video games you probably have the energy to study you just don't understand that
it's going to be effortful especially at first so understand that yeah it's completely normal that you're lazy that you don't feel like studying that you're tired that's completely normal just sit down and do it anyway so hopefully this helped hopefully this makes sense um yeah goodbye get out of my classroom get out of my classroom now
