In a world full of distractions and heavy competition, putting in healthy qualitative hours to one’s study schedule isn’t a simple task. When getting to making a study schedule, always keep in mind that quality counts for quantity. You can study for eight hours straight and not learn anything, or on the other hand, you can study for merely two hours and learn more than you could in a few days.
Personal health plays a crucial role in your study schedule. If you are not healthy and fit mentally, no matter how organized your study schedule looks, you will not learn anything. You might feel bored, sleepy, or get distracted easily when studying, which does nothing for quality but only wastes time. Hence, below listed are some tips on how to get qualitative study hours without getting tired.
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How to Study for Long Hours Without Getting Tired or Sleepy
Points Covered
- Make A Schedule
- Prioritize Your Sleep
- Deal With Difficult Lessons In The Beginning
- Intermediate Goals
- Stretch
- Write And Read
- Keep Changing Topics
- Maintain Good Posture
- Have a Healthy Diet
- Avoid Coffee After 2
- Reduce Screen Time
- Workout
- Listen To Music
- Don’t Overwork
- Self-Affirmation
- Keep Yourself Hydrated
- Don’t Waste Your Mental Energy
Make A Schedule
The first step is to have a schedule planned out before thinking of ways not to fall asleep. Take out your planner or a paper and jot down your study topics. After you have jotted down the topics, color code and highlight essential or challenging topics (basically the ones you should focus on first). Your lessons should be listed down subject vise so that you don’t mix up topics.
Take the physical copy and hang it up someplace you look all the time (besides your bed, your mirror, or desktop). You can decorate the schedule as you please because it at times motivates people to work harder. Keeping the physical copy hanging keeps you on track and gives you a push to finish your work on time. Once you have your list hanging, you can also keep on scratching off topics you have finished, which lets you keep a physical reminder that you have been working hard.
Prioritize Your Sleep
It is said that the average human needs eight hours of sleep to be well-rested—too much or too few results in fatigue. If eight hours of sleep every day is not possible, try to get at least six hours of sleep (it is okay if you slip a couple of days because we’re humans, after all).
Getting a proper amount of sleep helps your brain function properly and also has several health benefits. If your brain is awake and functioning correctly, you will not get tired quickly and can intake more information without wasting time.
Deal With Difficult Lessons In The Beginning
When studying, there always are lessons that are as easy as breathing and lessons that are extremely hard that you might want to tear hair off of your head. While studying, the youth tend to finish off the easy lessons first to feel accomplished, but the opposite should be done. One should tackle challenging topics first.
Every person has a time when they are the most productive; for some, it might be the afternoon, while it can be the dawn for some. When the most productive hour of your day is, tackle the challenging topics during that exact time. Your brain will be able to retain more information without getting jumbled and without getting tired.
Intermediate Goals
Don’t reach high at once. Intermediate goals are the perfect push for any human brain. Divide your lesson up into small parts. If you do so, you will be finishing those small divisions faster, and this will signal your brain that you have been working harder. On the other hand, if you aim at finishing a whole lesson at once, your brain will get bored.
When finishing each intermediate step, you can give yourself a small treat for working hard. Take a breath of fresh air or scroll through your phone for a couple of minutes.
Between the intermediate goals, you can also slip in ten-minute naps, which will keep your brain alive (this doesn’t work for everyone as it can also make you sleepier than before, hence, do what is best for you).
Stretch
Sitting in a particular place for too long causes stress and boredom eventually. To prevent this boredom, when finishing your intermediate goals, get up, and stretch yourself. Walk around the house or got the balcony to take in the fresh air. Stretching relaxes your muscles that were stressed for quite some time and prevent boredom.
Write And Read
Instead of just reading to yourself while studying, you can read aloud. Your brain will start thinking that someone else is present with you and will not let you feel tired. Reading to yourself gets monotonous. Hence after finishing with a specific topic, write down what you can remember. Jotting down points you remember will challenge your brain and make study sessions much more exciting and competitive because everyone likes a little competition now and then.
Keep Changing Topics
Studying one topic for too long will make any person tired, bored, and sleepy. But, since you already have the intermediate goals, you can go on a different topic once you complete one goal.
Changing topics will make things exciting and continuously jolt your brain awake hence preventing fatigue and boredom.
Maintain Good Posture
A good posture makes the blood flow easier. When studying, try to stay out of places you get too comfortable. Stay away from your bed or your couch because these places do no encourage a good posture, and you might get tired quickly
The ideal study situation should be you sitting with your back straight without slouching. Good posture helps your backbone stay in shape and blood to flow smoothly. You will not feel like lying down and taking a nap every five minutes if you keep your study and work area away from your comfortable sleeping area.
Have A Healthy Diet
A healthy and balanced diet is compulsory for maintaining energy and not getting tired.
Glycemic Index is a system of assigning numbers to foods according to their content of carbohydrates. Avoid High Glycemic Index (GI) like sugary substances, sweet sodas, pizzas (basically food items that are considered unhealthy). Have foods that have a low GI, such as salads, fruits, yogurt, granola, oats, etc.
Having a healthy diet will help you maintain better energy levels without you feeling exhausted and keep your physique healthy (body and skin).
Avoid Coffee After 2
Avoiding coffee may sound like a significant change in some people’s lifestyles, but coffee has effects on your body for a long time. You might think that drinking a coffee cup at 4 pm won’t harm, but in reality, its effects will last till late in the night.
Coffee before bed is always a no, but not many people know how long the coffee effect lasts. Coffee does not only disturbs your sleep but causes severe anxiety as well. Lack of sleep prevents a healthy and sound mind from functioning. At the same time, anxiety causes you to not pay attention to your studies (or anything important for that matter).
Switch your coffee consumption with tea (not milk), preferably green tea. Tea not only helps with your health, flawless skin but also keeps your mind fresh.
Reduce Screen Time
Turn down the time you spend on your phone, scrolling through Instagram, or sharing a new meme. Try reducing this, especially before bedtime.
If you are having trouble reducing screen time, you can download apps that time your screen time and automatically turn your device off when the allotted time is over.
Lessening the time you spend on your phone will help you sleep better and keep your mind fresh to retain information without much struggle.
Work Out
People exercise to lose fat and keep being healthy and have all the organs function properly in their bodies. Every person likes to exercise in their ways and has different levels of exercise that suit their body.
When you start, do no aim too high; start slow and increase your routine with each passing day.
If regular workout bores you, try Zumba or some form of dancing. You can also give yoga a shot, but make sure you do yoga under supervision because wrong postures in yoga can cause severe problems.
If you can give a minimum of fifteen minutes per day to exercise, you will feel well physically and mentally. Working out at one particular point in the day makes you energetic, and you feel alive, hence, avoiding tiredness when studying.
Listen To Music
Research has proven that most students feel alive when studying with some music on. The music can be played on speakers, or you can plug in your headphones and block out the rest of the world while you get emerged into the world of books and music.
Music usually helps in keeping concentration and keeping you away from tiredness because it provides a rhythm. Humans tend to do things quickly and with better efficiency when in a rhythm. The music will help keep your tiredness away and help you retain things better than before.
Different types of music work for different people; some prefer ASMR sounds, while some prefer pop and rock, some prefer slow music, and some prefer lo-fi hip hop sounds. You should experiment and try out different things till you get the one that suits you best.
Don’t Overwork
One key point that most people miss out on when trying to get quality hours of lessons done is not overwork yourself. If humans or any creature for that matter sit in one place for too long, they get tired.
If you want to study too many hours, you will most definitely fall asleep within an hour or two. Spend hours you think you can. Don’t overwork or overstress yourself because that will only prove that you are studying quantitatively and not qualitatively. Quality work comes out of not overworking. Hence, you need to calm your nerves and lessen the number of hours you are sitting on your chair.
Self-Affirmation
Self-affirmation is extremely popular with Instagram and TikTok kids. Self-affirmation not only boosts your confidence in regards to your existence, personality, and appearance but in your academics too.
If you tell yourself little affirmative sentences like, “You will give your best at the test” or “You will retain all of this and come out like a queen,” it always helps boost confidence. Your brain will get positive signals and give you the confidence and boost you need to study and complete your work efficiently.
Keep Yourself Hydrated
Water is the best liquid intake you get. Nothing surpasses the good qualities and pureness of water. When you sit down to study, make sure you have a full bottle of water ready by your side to survive.
Drink when needed (no excess, no less), and don’t let yourself be thirsty. Water removes all toxins from the human body and keeps you mentally healthy. When your bottle of water finishes, do not wait; get up and get a refill as soon as possible. Always remember that water is your best friend.
Don’t Waste Your Mental Energy
When sitting down to study, forget that you have other life problems. Your only point of concern should be your health and lessons. Forget about why your best friend was rude to you or why the teacher scolded you without reason but only focus on what you need to study.
If you keep spending your mental energy on things that do not concern your academics, you might not be able to study at all. Hence, pull up your socks and focus on what matters the most.
How To Study Long Hours Without Feeling Sleepy At Night?
One can argue that studying at night is almost like a trend amongst the youth. While studying at night works for some people, some people cannot stand it and study during the day.
However, what if you do not choose and have to study at night to cover the syllabus since you have an exam tomorrow? This is when the following steps will come to you as a savior and save you from your misery.
Points Covered
- Keep Your Study Place Sleep Free
- Light Dinner
- Exercise
- Avoid Sugar
- Easier Topics
Keep Your Study Place Sleep Free
Keeping your study area sleep free means to avoid warm little light that might make you cozy and sleepy as soon as you sit down. Light up your room with bright lights at night and sit down to study. Bright lights will give an illusion that it is the day and automatically ask your brain not to fall asleep.
Light Dinner
When you have planned to study at night, you have a light dinner full of low Glycemic Index (GI) foods such as salads, granola, or anything green. If you have high Glycemic Index foods, your mental energy will reduce, and you will get tired and sleepy very quickly. Hence, it will prevent you from studying for long hours at night.
Exercise
Exercise is essential no matter what time of the day you sit down to study. However, if you plan to study at night, you should keep your little workout routine in the evening.
Exercising in the evening will shake you off of all kinds of unnecessary stress from the day and wake your body up from its natural tendency of falling asleep as night approached.
Avoid Sugar
Sugar makes one extremely lazy and stops the brain from functioning. Avoiding sugar after 3 pm prevents you from being tired and not being able to study.
Easier Topics
As mentioned earlier, one should always complete the hard lessons during the day when your energy levels are the highest. Your brain will refuse to take in exhausting information at night, and hence you should store the more comfortable and lighter lesson for the night, which does not take up much mental space and time.
All of the above points mentioned might not work for everyone. One might work for some, while one might not work for others. However, you need to mix and match and keep trying out new things until you find the correct mixture. Experimenting will give an exciting take to your study sessions and continuously keep your brain wide awake.