Agony Aunt-ing

I'm going to try to give answers to two of these questions. I didn't really have good answers to many of the others, and these two sort of go together a bit, so hopefully there's something here that might be helpful.


How do you stop procrastinating?


I really only have one piece of advice for this one, and it will only help if you have the same type of procrastination problem as I do, but this is actually the only thing I've found that really works for me. Sometimes I procrastinate by reading or watching TV or deciding that I desperately need to reorganize my closet, but most of the time my problem is the internet. I use site-blocking software to prevent me from accessing the sites that I waste the most time on. The program I use is a piece of free software called Cold Turkey. It's Windows-only, but I know there are similar programs out there for Mac. You just type in the sites you want to block, and set how long you want them to stay blocked. Once you hit go, you can't get on those sites until the time is up. I find that the benefits from this are two-fold: obviously, it prevents me from actually wasting time on those sites, but knowing that I can't get on them also shuts off that nagging voice that says things like "I wonder if anyone's tweeted anything interesting" or "I wonder if any of my subscriptions have uploaded new videos," so that I can focus better on whatever I'm actually supposed to be doing.

Do you have any tips for good studying habits?


Create a designated study area. Do all of your studying there, and when you're doing things other than studying, go somewhere else. This helps make sure that you stay focused while you're studying.

Where applicable, review past tests/exams/assignments to identify your problem areas so that you know where you need to focus the most attention.

Condense your class notes into study notes. Only go through your full set of notes once, in order to create a shortened version of the absolute most important points. After that, read through the shorter notes as many times as you can. Try to use the important points to remind you of the smaller details, and only refer back to your longer notes if you need to refresh your memory on something. For one thing, going through 15 pages instead of 50 feels like a lot less work, and you can cover the same amount of material more times. Plus, if you can teach yourself to remember things in those sorts of chunks, you only need to memorize the bigger things to bring the details to mind, rather than trying to memorize every little thing in your notes separately. If you're super-keen and have enough time, try to make condensed notes as you go along, once you've finished a topic, rather than waiting until you have something to study for, because it will save time later and make studying seem less daunting so that it's easier to get started. It also lets you make sure you understand a topic while it's still fresh in your mind, and help get your brain into that connection-making mindset.

Take breaks every few hours. If you study too much at once your brain will just get tired and start jumbling things up. Try to use your breaks to do something that will help refresh you, like going for a walk, having a snack, or taking a nap. This will help you hit the ground running when you do start studying again, and it will also feel more like a break if you get up and move around and change gears completely, rather than just sitting down and logging into Facebook.

I sort of feel like I just regurgitated one of those 'study tips' emails that my university sends out every exam period, but these really are all things that I actually do, and they have helped.