Study tips for pro-procrastinators

Written by: MARYAM RILWAN ( REE), CLASS OF 2025

Then, this post is for you. I am sure we have all been at a point in our lives where absolutely nothing seems to make you want to study. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to feeling motivated.

Feynman’s technique, pomodoro method, active recall, space reptation, are probably some words you may be familiar with as medical students. We are always trying to find a solution to making studying easier but it just ends in procrastination and lastminute cramming.

After doing a bit of research and testing them out during the exam seasons, here are some of the main methods I believe will help you when you are the average, demotivated student. Before we dive into discussing study methods, we must first acknowledge the necessary changes we must make in our lives.

Discipline & Consistency. Even something as simple as waking up the same time everyday can help us discipline ourselves to work harder. Consistency is another important factor. Even if it is only an hour of studying a day, pushing ourselves to do it will work wonders.

Now let’s get into the study tips :

1. Planning

This is definitely the first thing you need to do. Even if 24 hours is all you have, you must plan your work. Make a plan and try your best to stick to it. I think we cannot let the phrase ‘but I can’t follow timetables’ make the decisions for us as medical students. That’s how important planning your work is. It’s the key to efficiency.

Take your time to make a good plan. Planning in itself is one of the best ways to motivate yourself to work. I do this trick during my exam season where, let’s say I have 100 questions to go through in 11 days, I leave the last day for complete revision and split the questions equally accordingly; 10 questions a day. This way the content you have for a day is controlled and you will not feel overwhelmed. So, in short, even if it is only a day, make a plan.

2. Group Study

I cannot emphasize the absolute significance of group study. It will help you so much.

But the thing with group study is, it is NOT a last-minute resort for exams.It’s something students should do on a regular basis even if its casual. Revising topics, teaching each other, discussions. anything. There is absolutely no other method that works better than group study.

Find the right people, make a plan and work! And perhaps to top it off have a small session afterwards when you all can just chill and relax before finishing. This will make the whole ordeal of studying so much more fun.

For the students who are not comfortable with working with other people, try working, it will change your life but if it still seems to be a bother my personal favorite is working with ‘study with me’ YouTube video/lives. There are many students who make these videos and you can find one that suits you and work with them.

3. Doing easy work first

This might come off as controversial but it’s true. It’s an age-old tradition of medical students to tell us to do the hard thing first, but it does not work. What actually happens is we get frustrated trying to understand the difficult content hence leading us to go back into the cycle of procrastinate and demotivation.

Instead, it’s better to start off with easy. For example, you can keep a note book while studying and go through your content as usual. every time you come to a topic or even a sentence that you find you need time to grasp it completely, jot it down. As you go through your content you will have a few topics or points you don't understand but now, you have a structure. You went through the whole chapter for example, and now maybe the ones you did not understand previously make sense to you or it will feel much easier to actually study the difficult ones now. It’s basically like going back to basics.

4. Working in Blocks of time with Breaks

The importance of having breaks cannot be emphasized, your brain needs a rest every 45 minutes. Working in blocks of 4 or 8 hours works best with a break every 45 or 50 minutes. (remember breaks must be short, the procrastinator’s brain is easily distracted so, tops 10 minutes) After that do something that is not relevant to studies like going to the gym , hang out with friends, etc.

5. Active Recall

This is something that took me a good while to figure out. What does it actually mean? Do I rewrite? Or do I reread? Teach?

Its basically recalling what you learnt from memory. The best way to do this is to study your content first, close your book and then write whatever you remember. Then open your book and correct your work (a little trick to make it stick more to your brain is to actually use a red pen to add points you have missed).

6. No white noise or music when studying

This is another controversial point but you need to understand that your brain automatically focuses on the music or white noise. The science behind it is, its repetitive, there’s a rhythm that the brain will quickly fall into and due to this when you go to the exam, your brain will not remember the content as much as it remembers the white noise you used while studying. It’s actually better to either study in a quiet setting because, noise in that case does not always fall into a rhythm or work in places like a library or cafe. Sometimes moving around when demotivated helps you feel motivated.

A method I use is playing a random podcast on Spotify on low volume and working. This actually helped me focus more (but it might not work for everyone).

7. Making short notes and Flash cards

Rereading/rewriting a hundred times does not work when you are close to the exam. If you want to make short notes and flash cards they have to be made during your semester and not during your study week. It’s not effective. the best way to do this is to make them as you learn a topic. This will save you time during the exams that you can utilize for actual revision.

8. Remove all Distractions

I think I don’t really need to explain this. Lock your phone in a cupboard and give the key to a friend if you have to.

These are just some of the tips I think will really help with studying when you are a Pro-procrastinator. If I should tell you what the most important tip is, it’shaving discipline and consistency in your work.

I hope these help some of you learn better and come out of the vicious cycle of being demotivated.