How to study journal (and probably increase productivity)
As requested by some of you who read my post on Types of study methods to suit your current position, here’s how to study journal!
First of all, study journaling is an idea that I came up with somewhere in the beginning of December, and then used it for a week and checked its mechanics - which is why I think I can say that it is a nice way to boost your productivity and academic skills.
And I’m saying academic “skills” because I don’t really think that anyone has any less capability to do well in studies, it’s just a matter of time when you actually realise the right method to study. And once you do that, it’s like bam - you got it!
This idea hit me first when I heard about bullet journaling, and many studyblrs also kept mentioning to keep track of your study sessions and stuff, so I just mixed it all up and conjured this “studyjo” (lol that’s the worse name).
Here’s how you can studyjo :
The whole concept of studyjo is to boost your productivity, not your fancy ish, so picking a cheap ass journal isn’t gonna kill you.
My dad has a thing for collecting diaries and journals, so I usually pick one from the storeroom - which is why the one I used was of the year 2015. I mean, we’re gonna make our own custom calendar inside anyway so it didn’t matter to me.
You want a fancy ass journal? Go for it. A cheap ass composition notebook? Go for it. As long as it has pages and you can access it from your class/college /home/car/train/any spot on earth its eligible!
Use a brush pen, sharpie, markers or a pencil - doesn’t make a difference as long as it writes well.
So there’s a lot of you guys who think embellishing our notes/bujo is a waste of time, then by all means keep it simple.
I like colours because my eyes automatically want to look at them which complies me to go over my tasks again and again.
Of you think aesthetic is your thing then by all means use it to your advantage.
That doesn’t mean that you’ll stress over maintaining the pretty pages, we’ve already got enough stress to work with.
You must have a page for yearly overview, where you can mark down all exam/assignment/project /event dates.
Sometimes the teachers tell us about our assignments 6 months prior too, at that point the monthly spread isn’t helping - use the yearly spread.
I write our finals dates, important exams, any birthdays, college events, orientation dates, class meeting dates, open House dates and holidays, etc in this calendar.
Keep a little notes section below your calendar to write down extremely important stuff that happens through the year.
Motivational quotes (if they help you) are the best to write down here, because you’ll be looking at them throughout the year.
You are a student, which means that sticky notes are your BFF.
I note down all my deadlines on a sticky note (when in college) and put it on my dashboard.
You can also keep any board passes/bits of paper you receive from the school.
Use one of those envelopes as a pocket and store all miscellaneous papers inside it. I also keep some question papers there.
Store flashcards (the thin ones ofc) in that pocket if you’re going to be carrying the journal everywhere with you.
I also keep a list of doubts that I have in some concepts so that when I meet the respective teacher I can just whip out my doubts list and get it cleared.
This is where you start the planning.
Make a checklist /whatever sort of list you want of all tasks study related that you need to do. This includes assignments, homework, project, studying a topic, study dates, etc.
It’s best if you sort that list subject wise, but mine is just a general list tbh.
Learn how to break down your tasks. If you have a test on Chapter 1 in Friday, do section A of that chapter tomorrow, section B two days later and section C the day after. And make three separate checkboxes for each section.
The smaller the task, the easier it is to accomplish it.
Have 5 checkboxes for a huge task, so that even when you’ve done a portion of the task you’ll feel that sense of achievement when checking it off.
Keep them short and to the point. Nobody is gonna read a huge ass paragraph on completing that math homework.
The main purpose of studyjo is this tracker.
Everytime you sit down to study, note the time at which you started, the topic you think you’ll study now.
When you finish studying, note the time again and write down what you actually studied.
Rate your study session as per the satisfaction it gives you.
After some sessions you’ll actually want to study because you wanna add another session details to the tracker.
This works - I had three 2 hour sessions in a week because I wanted to add to my list of accomplishments and feel proud of myself.
Leave little comments on what you think you could’ve done to improve the quality of session, or what concepts you want to do next.
3. The not so basic but recommended spreads
Good to have a month wise calendar for better planning.
I note all weekly quiz dates and birthdays and upcoming holidays here, along with some plans for posting on this studyblr too!
You can totally try inspiring quotes here, along with some plans for the month.
Add little goals to achieve this month. My goal for December was to master derivatives, and I’m pretty sure I’m doing derivatives better than before.
This is divided into two parts : major goals - which you add near the yearly spread and baby goals - which you can add near the monthly spread.
Major goals are generalised and just for motivation.
Minor goals are broken down major goals with details of how to achieve it and they’re the ones you actually will achieve too.
My major goal for 2018 is being consistent. I broke it into a minor goal as ‘study session of at least 30 minutes every day’ without missing!
Using graphs, charts, tables and other such diagrams to mark every day you think you spent doing something productive is very amazing.
I make a graph of each day that I got some work done, marking the wasted days with read and productive ones with blue/green.
This helps me point out the days where I’m usually not productive (which happens to be Wednesday and Thursday for me) and the days where my work is super flexible and productive (Monday is awesome).
You can fill in boxes for every day you studied for 1 hour minimum or something, if you like.
This can be essential too sometimes. This is a spread you dedicate to planning out a long ass essay or a presentation or a speech or maybe a project.
Make tree diagrams/pie charts and write down notes on how you can structure your project - the conclusion, beginning and middle being the skeleton of each project. (want another long ass post on project planning? *everyone groans*).
Make detailed plans for the project and include dates that you can dedicate for the project making and all.
Mark those dates in the monthly calendar if it helps.
A weekly date strip is very useful for me. I write down the dates of the coming week on a strip of paper and stick it to the margin of my checklist page.
Mention your name and contact on the cover if the journal in case it gets lost.
Use sticky notes to leave little messages for your future self - I write stuff like ‘keep going girl you got this’ and ‘I’m hella proud of you babe’. It makes you smile lol.
Add a pen pocket to the journal if possible, that’ll make it easy to note things down on the go.
You can keep a mindfulness sort of page where you can dump all your feelings down?
Or a water tracker cuz damn this potato is always dehydrated.
Try writing down why you want to study - to impress the teacher? Get a good grade? Show off to others? Get closer to your career goals?
We all want to do stuff for selfish reasons sometimes, it’s okay if you note them down because what I noticed is that whenever I wrote down stuff like ‘prove to them that I’m awesome’ or ‘make the bio teacher adore me’ I actually wanted to work towards it. Maybe it’s just me. Worth trying tho.
Keep the last two pages for emergency note taking and instructions given by the teacher just in case you have nothing else atm.
Voila, here - your studyjo is ready!
Do let me know if you found this method useful and feel free to drop by any questions - my inbox is forever open!
