yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

HOW TO BUILD GOOD STUDY HABITS


3m read
·Nov 4, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

Hey guys, today's video is about building good study habits. I think this is a really important topic because lots of smart people do themselves a disservice by not building up good habits. I always hear people say that another person is lucky because they were born smart, but I don't believe that's true. In university, the differences in grades simply come down to who has the best study habits.

The steps I'm going to outline in this video will actually help with changing any sort of habit, but I'm going to talk about everything in the context of school. Let's start by talking a bit about habits in general. Our habits essentially make us who we are, so we have to choose them wisely. What we do every day will ultimately define whom we become. That's why it shouldn't come as a surprise that someone who studies and invests themselves in science every day will become a good scientist. Likewise, a good writer will write every day.

The thing is, habits take time and effort to change. Studies show that we actually have a limited amount of willpower when we make too many choices in a day. We actually exhaust our willpower, and this is known as ego depletion. For example, consider someone who has been resisting the temptation to eat junk food all day. As a result, they are diminishing their willpower. According to the theory of ego depletion, if this person was to tackle a difficult problem, they'll likely give up faster than someone who was not resisting that same temptation all day. This idea really highlights the importance of habits.

Habits are automatic behaviors that we don't really need to think about, and because of that, we exhaust less willpower in the day. Now I'll outline some simple steps for building good habits. The first step is planning. We need to carve out time in our schedules and really pinpoint a concrete place for the habit. According to a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, habits are best implemented alongside cues. For example, after dinner, I'll read for 30 minutes, or after breakfast, I'll go for a 30-minute walk. The basic structure is: If X happens, I will do Y.

A common example that most of us already follow is: when I wake up, I'll brush my teeth. The study found that the level of automaticity, which is how automatic an action feels, rose asymptotically as participants continually performed the action. There are two main implications of this. This means that the first few days to months of building a habit are the most important. During that time, you really don't want to break the chain because even one day makes a huge impact on how automatic a certain action or behavior feels.

Secondly, it also means that the more you perform an action, the less willpower will be required to perform it again. This means that the more you do an action, the easier it is to keep doing it and the harder it is to break it. This can be a good thing if the habits you create are good for us and a bad thing if the habits we create are bad for us.

It was also shown that the amount of time to form a habit varied for each individual, although the median time to form a habit was 66 days. Individual times fell between 18 days and 254 days. This is because complex habits take longer to form than simple habits. For most participants, missing a day of performing the habit after the first few months did not negatively contribute to forming the habit. However, other studies suggested that taking breaks as long as a week, maybe something like winter break or spring break, do negatively contribute to the formation of a habit.

I've included the study in the description for those who are interested in reading it. The next step is monitoring. In order to determine if a habit is changing for the better or for the worse, you need to have objective measurements that help us gauge our progress. We have to quantify the habit. For example, if we want to lose weight, we should be tracking the amount of calories we eat and the amount of exercise we perform. Studies have shown that there's a significant correlation between self-monitoring weight loss and...

More Articles

View All
Calculating Gravitational Attraction
Most people recognize that the gravitational force attracts them towards the Earth and keeps them stuck on the planet. But the gravitational force does so much more than that; it attracts any object with mass towards any other object with mass. So, for e…
The New Stock Market World Order Has Begun | Recession Warning
What’s up, guys? You here? And, uh, well, this escalated quickly. In the span of one month, mortgage rates have climbed to their highest level in a decade. Morgan Stanley warns that a bear market rally is setting the stage for a correction, with even more…
When You Miss Someone (An ex, a friend, a family member)
Most of us have been in a position in which we had to say goodbye to someone dear to us. This could be because of the cycle of life and death. But this could also be because of a breakup or being separated from friends by moving to another country. When w…
Water potential
So right here I have a container of water that is open to the atmosphere. It’s standard atmospheric pressure up here. Let’s just assume that everything in our system—the air and the water, the container—everything is 21 degrees Celsius. Now, our chamber …
The 2023 Recession Keeps Getting Worse
What’s up Grandma? It’s guys here. So while everyone is busy watching Tesla drop the price of their cars by up to 20%, we’ve got another issue quietly brewing behind the scenes. That’s the fact that the United States is quickly running out of money, with …
How I handle crises.
Overnight cost two nights. I mean, we’re selling the plane. Here’s the day in my life handling crisis and unexpected challenges. I arrive at the office early to get a head start. My first task is ensuring everything is in order. During our morning briefi…