How To Create A Self Study Schedule

this is my calendar my calendar says that I should be self-studying some python right now however I'm currently lying here scrolling eating random things and watching anime if you're anything like me you really did have

every intention to self-study you actually love learning new things but somehow you always end up degenerating on the couch and feeling guilty and disappointed in yourself so why does

this keep happening short answer is your schedule in this video I'm going to talk about how to create your personalized self-study plan custom to your lifestyle and your so you can self-study consistently oh my God I really wish

somebody told me this like years and years ago because I would always try to copy other people's self-studying schedules and then it always wouldn't work for me so then at some point I thought my brain was just broken plus I also want to Deep dive and explain to

you how to use dopamine to trick yourself out of what I call a procrastination spiral but first I want to explain why your self-study schedule probably doesn't work right

[Music] now you get up in the morning at 7 a.m.

get ready have breakfast and head over to work you make some progress on your projects and take a couple of meetings before taking your lunch break at 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. then you go back do some more work maybe take a couple more meetings and get off work at around 5:00

p.m. you head to the gym and then head

p.m. you head to the gym and then head home for dinner some of your days may look like that but other days may look like this it's 9:00 a.m. it feels so good to

sleep in today is wide open so much time to catch up on things I can get some self-studying done catch up on some work I've been neglecting run some errands maybe get some groceries so I don't subsist on takeout even getting a

workout the possibilities are endless but there are also some days like this oh God who's calling me at 4:00 a.m. right now the entire website is

a.m. right now the entire website is down God damn it okay okay I'll be right there okay so I got to deal with that and then I also have two back toback meetings all of us have many types of

days with different schedules yes it may not be exactly what what I described earlier but I just hope you can see that you don't have a single type of schedule it's actually a combination of different schedules so how do you expect for you

to create a single self- studying schedule and expect yourself to stick to that schedule all the time maybe studying 2 hours before work works great if you have a predictable schedule day but not so much if you're having a day

in which your time and energy is being pulled all over the place and is hitting the fan let's now talk about the three most common types of days that all of us have and how to schedule a self-study time for each of

them work after worker School you may fall into the most common trap of thinking that you're actually going to self-study but then find yourself to be too exhausted but I have good news for you days like this is actually the

easiest to schedule a self-study session and stick through with it the most important concept for you to understand is the idea of energy management versus time management technically do you have time to self-study after work or after

school yes you do but what you don't have is energy Dr K Anders Ericson who is one of the lead researchers into expert performance studied a sample of 30 violinist tracking what they do throughout the day he found that the top

violinist would practice in intense relatively short intervals first thing in the morning and no longer than 90 minutes per session followed by a break they almost never practice more than 4 and 1/2 hours and usually after

lunchtime they wind down energy motivation self-control all the things that make it so that you can get yourself to do things that you're supposed to do starts up highest the morning and then drains throughout the

day since you spent most of your day at work or at school you use most of your energy there so you barely have anything left when you come home and you're trying to self-study okay so let's talk about Solutions the easiest solution is

to get up early and self-study before you go to school or go to work hoping you wouldn't stay there but I know that doesn't work for everybody because research shows that some people are genuinely night ows plus some people's

schedules might just not align like if you're working night shifts so instead what I want you to focus on it's about about scheduling your self-study session when you have a high level of energy self-discipline and motivation plus if

you can I recommend choosing the same time slot that matches your energy levels all the days in which you have a consistent schedule because that just reduces decision fatigue and it's easier to form a habit out of it your energy and self-control motivation can also be

deliberately replenished I will talk about how to do that later when I talk about dopamine Theory whenever I have free time I just practice my new antistress technique

transcendental procr destination next up is the Open schedule when you just happen to have a quiet weekend holiday whatever you probably want to take the opportunity to catch up on some self-study but suddenly that entire day

just flew past and you look up and it's like 12 a.m. and you haven't done anything at all and it's time for bed this is because of something called Parkinson's law it states work expands

as to fill the time available for its completion say that if you have something that you have to do and you have 2 hours to complete it you'll finish it in 2 hours but the same task ask if you had 10 hours to do it then

it'll take you 10 hours to do so this work will just keep expanding indefinitely until it's suddenly time to go to bed what to do about it then you got to make your brain think that it has

a specific time specific deadline in which your self-studying has to be done you can do this by two different ways the first one is by scheduling an explicit commitment at a certain time

for example I might schedule a time like 5:00 p.m. in which I'm going to go hang

5:00 p.m. in which I'm going to go hang out with my friends have dinner watch a movie and not get home until really late so that gives me a line that I need to hit so I'm like oh I know I'm going to study a 2 hours befor hand that means I

have to start at 3:00 the second method is even more powerful method and that is to schedule commitment that's specifically associated with whatever you're s studying like for example I do these weekly lunch and learn live

streams where I talk about like Tech data and AI stuff which Linked In description if you want to check out I need to make sure that I learn the things that I have to learn and I prepare before doing the lunch and learn or else I would embarrass myself in

front of thousands of people that gives me a very strong motivating factor for me to do my self- studying do the things that I need in order to make sure that it gets done before that time for most

of y'all maybe it doesn't make sense for you to go use something like a live stream but other things that you can do is to do like little accountability groups or check-ins with other people who are also self-studying which gives

you the urgency to do your self-studying before the check-in it seems like you're unmotivated to do things because you're stuck in a loop of short-term dopamine rushes all right now let's talk about dopamine Theory because this is espe

important for the next schedule type by the way this is a fantastic episode um from Andrew huberman uh but it's also like 2 hours long and goes into a lot of detail about dopamine Theory so if

you're interested do check it out but what I'm talking about is two concepts that will help you use dopamine Theory um to trick yourself into getting out of procrastination spirals when you just

need that little boost so number one is the nature of dopamine dopamine is often mistaken for the feel-good neurotransmitter but actually it's more about anticipation and motivation so

Andrew hberman makes a great analogy about getting a sandwich when you're hungry and you're thinking about food and maybe in particular you would love to have a roast beef sandwich on sourdough bread conveniently you see

that there is a roast beef sandwich on sourdough bread store right across from you so when you see that you actually have a spike of dopamine and you have this corresponding craving for that

sandwich with that Spike there's then a dip in dopamine which gives you that craving like the motivation to want to go into the store and buy a sandwich so you go and do that you take a bite you satisfy your craving and then there's

another Spike of dopamine and you feel happy and satisfied that's probably most situations but maybe when you take a bite of that roast beef sandwich and it was like literally the best food you ever had in your life there would

actually be a really big spike in dopamine which then teaches your brain wow this particular sandwich store and like roast beef sandwiches are amazing however say you walk across the store and you realize that the sandwich hop is

actually closed or you actually buy a sandwich and it just tastes awful this would then cause your dopamine to actually dip downwards and that's how your brain learns that it doesn't want to go to that particular store and just

generally maybe we don't like roast beef sandwiches so yeah dopamine is a way for your brain to learn what it likes and it doesn't like so keep this in mind this is very important to understand so the second concept to understand is how

dopamine works in your brain like generally speaking how dopamine Works Andrew hman makes this really good analogy about a tidle pool usually you know there'll be like little waves that go down and every wave would have like a

little trough that goes underneath that you know etc etc so sometimes there's little waves and little dips and then sometimes there's really big waves and really big dips and sometimes when you're having those really big waves and

really big dips one of those really large waves might actually cause some of that water to Splash out of that tidal pool so that you're left with less water in total so in this analogy the water is the dopamine in your brain so what's

really important is that you maintain a good Baseline level of dopamine or else there's no dopamine for you to make any of these waves anymore which would make you feel really tired really drained and just like not have any energy or

motivation to do anything so what you naturally want to do when you're in that state is to increase your dopamine levels as quickly as possible so that's when you do things like squirreling on a phone watching TV something like that

just hoping that you get like a dopamine hit and just like a little bit of a spike so unfortunately this doesn't actually work because you're kind of generating that little burst of dopamine but then it just goes back down again so

how do we get our base sign dopamine up when we're in that state so we can be motivated to do things like self-study so the funny thing is if you actually do nothing at all the dopamine amount will

slowly climb up again and you will gather more motivation but there is actually a trick that can make your dopamine regenerate much much faster It Is by doing something that you really

really really hate hey I don't like that I don't like that one bit remember how we talked about dopamine is about anticipation so if you think about doing something that you have learned that you really really really hate you would have

that big decrease in dopamine but this is where the trick comes in you see what goes down must come back up if there's a dip in dopamine there has to be a increase in dopamine because you're glad

that the thing is done afterwards and with that spike in your dopam Meine it correlates to having a burst of motivation isn't that really cool like I hate cold showers just the idea of going

to a cold shower just makes me like want to just I I just I just hate it so much I can feel my dopamine dipping right now I have this huge burst of dopamine afterwards and motivation and then I can get myself to get out of my

procrastination and then start working however it is not socially appropriate or possible to go take a cold shower anywhere like if in you're public can't just like go dunk your head into the sink in cold water like you could but

that's really weird so my emergency backup activity is by doing push-ups I also hate push-ups so I always get a little burst of motivation afterwards by the way in that Andrew hberman episode he also talks about the fact that people

have varying levels of Baseline dopamine like some people who are really really lucky just have like like really high dopamine but other people just naturally have really really low amount of Baseline dopamine unfortunately I found out that I am someone that has really

really low levels of Baseline dopamine which is why I get in that procrastination spiral so often so if you're someone that also now knows that they have really low Baseline dopamine levels um I promise you it's going to change your life all right so now let's

go back to that third type of schedule which is one of those days in which you just have like things popping up everywhere unexpectedly and you feel super overwhelmed and that's where the

dopamine hack really comes into play so maybe you only have like 30 minutes in your schedule where you can do some self-study so what you can do is do the dopamine motivation hack get yourself that burst of motivation to be able to sit down and just study even for a short

period of time not going to lie these are not going to be days in which you're going to get a lot of work done but generally speaking it's good to try to maintain a habit of self-studying even if it's for much shorter period of time

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20% off in annual membership all right back to the video so I hope that was a helpful video I know there was a lot that happened so let me in the comments what you think about this video and also

report back if you're going to go TR D dopamine motivation hack okay so I'll see you guys in the next video we live stream