My study skills after 5 years

It's only taken 5 years for me to feel more comfortable with how I study and learn what works best for me. I wanted to spend some time to expand further on this topic and share the programs I have used the past couple of years to help anyone still reading this.

This year, I have found that I'm not note taking anywhere near as much as usual. I used to write a page or so for every single chapter, but in this module, I only did it for one chapter and that was the end of that. This is largely due to the work load. When you have a big work load, doing notes seems kind of pointless and a waste of time. It would often make me not want to continue studying because I knew I had loads of notes to write up. So I recognised that this was a block for me and that I didn't really use my notes once I'd written them. As long as I could actually understand and follow along with the chapters, that's all I needed to do. When it comes to writing assignments, I found I would download the relevant chapters anyway because you can use the find function to find what's relevant which saves so much time!

I have been making use of the programs Todoist (to-do list galore) and Focus To-Do (a pomodoro time tracking app). They're both really helpful free tools that keep me on track and I recently did some organising that I can show you.

I've attached an example of how I've laid mine out in Todoist. You can get the app and use it on your laptop so it's easy to go between both. I've also connected the app to my calendar so everything I add in Todoist is added automatically to my calendar. I then have a screen on my phone dedicated to my calendar and todoist so I can see what I'm doing each day.

Fancy student planners don't do anything for me I've discovered. I love them but they're not so easily updated like a computer calendar is. I can see everything how I want to see it with my online calendar (I change between month, week, 3 day and schedule view) and to-do app. Adding things to a physical planner takes a lot longer too and I end up not looking at it, as I already have a work diary and the calendar is so easily accessible on my laptop and phone. Plus they're free to use unlike fancy student planners. So that's a no to both note taking and student planners. 

Although I don't have one this year, the massive academic calendar I had one year was an amazing way to visualise the entire year and where all the deadlines were and I highly recommend getting one of those for each academic year.

So yeah, those are the tips I can think of right now. I might add more but my body is betraying me atm and it's getting painful to write today. See you around!