3. Working Hard and Smart. One Step at a Time (9).

Study smart simply means studying in the most efficient and effective way for you. For me, these are my way of studying smart:

1. Take personal notes.
2. The superiority of understanding over memorizing.
3. Finishing your assignments early.
4. Love your exams.
5. Manage your time.
6. Keep a Healthy Body

6. Keep a Healthy Body.

Any fools know the fact that for anybody wanting to perform in a maximum capacity, one needs a healthy body. It is no difference in studying. To be able to study at the most productive rate, our body must be at its peak of health. Our performance will be greatly compromised by any weakness or sickness or poisons.

Avoid drinking coffee just to keep awake. You may be awake, but your concentration goes down and your ability to retain information will be diminished. Your ability to extract it later will be also reduced. In other words, your memory will be adversely affected by caffeine. If your studies involve reasoning, logic calculation and creativity, the caffeine will also slow you down. Sure you will be awake, but you will not be as attentive as you should be.

If you are sleepy, by all means go to sleep. Just make sure you sleep at least 8 hours per day. More than 10 hours per day is plain lazy (may be early warning of a sickness). Less than 6 hours of sleep is not conducive for your health.

At the height of my study, I usually cease everything except studying, eating, sleeping and the toilet business. No more social, no more TV, no shopping etc. I still sleep average of 8 hours per day. And study almost the rest of the day. My sleeping time was not necessarily from 11.00 pm to 7.00 am. I slept whenever I feel sleepy. Sometimes I was wide awake at 3.00 am and I continued to study, and may be sleepy at 8.00 am and I go to sleep.

My 8 hours sleep is not necessarily continuous; I could probably sleep for 3 hours each time for 2 to 3 sessions. Of course continuous sleep is more satisfying. However, in the height of studying, I did not force myself to sleep continuously for 8 hours if I could wake up 4 hours later and be refreshed.

The harder I study, the more I need my sleep. Sleeping is very rejuvenating. It keeps your brain creative.

I do not smoke and I do not drink alcohol. Smoking and drinking are well known ways of poisoning your brain (the most important information storage and processor unit in your body). If you are smoking and drinking, you are already at the losing side compare to your counterparts who do not (if everything else being equal). Even if it does not feel like you are losing, you are definitely could have done much better without them. In other words, smoking and drinking alcohol mask the true potential in you!

When you are not so busy with exams and assignments, do not forget to exercise and have fun. As much as you can, eat freshly prepared food. Avoid having canned food or canned drinks. Avoid processed and junk food (yes that include instant noodles)

All these are the major keys in keeping your body at peak level. When you are on top of your health, your performance will be on top of your potential scale too.

In summary, study hard and study smart is the only way to succeed. No short cut. What else is there to do, if you want to achieve your goal?

3. Working Hard and Smart. One Step at a Time (8).

Study smart simply means studying in the most efficient and effective way for you. For me, these are my way of studying smart:

1. Take personal notes.
2. The superiority of understanding over memorizing.
3. Finishing your assignments early.
4. Love your exams.
5. Manage your time.
6. Keep a Healthy Body

5. Manage your time.

This cannot be overemphasized. Every student who wants to succeed definitely has to manage their time wisely. Nobody will win by playing haphazardly. Time is your best friend, only if you control it. Time will give you a great leverage, only if you master over it. Anyone who does not manage their time will be a slave to it. Unfortunately time is a fierce master, because it knows nothing about ‘slow down’ or ‘wait’.

KEEP A SCHEDULE / TIME TABLE OF WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.

Do this for a yearly and monthly basis. I myself did not see the importance of keeping a schedule until I was in matriculations. Initially I drew a weekly time table during my matriculation for an entirely different reason. I could not wait to go home to my hometown in Sabah! Therefore, by looking at my time table I could tell exactly how long still to go before I could go home. Then, as I was marking the empty column as each week passed, I was starting to note where the major tests were in the calendar. And then for the first time, I could see how long exactly before the exams. My time table started to give me a sense of time.

Then I divided each week-column into seven days, thus making my time table into daily affair. I put this under the transparent plastic covering of my table. At first, my friend sitting next to me frequently referred to my drawing to get his own sense of time. Later on, all my nearby friends started referring to it. By the end of second term almost everybody have their own version of time table.

As I advanced to university life, my schedule become more elaborate with the entire important events (academic and social) marked on it with all set of colours and captions. I don’t keep an organizer; it is difficult for me to see in-between pages. I have big calendar a size of typical manila card covering my wall. I just have to look at it once – and I know where I am in my university time scale.

PLANNING AND NEGOTIATING WITH TIME.

The schedule not only tells me the sense of time, but it also tells me to negotiate with time. I like to use the word ‘negotiate’ as compared to ‘plan’. To me, plan means you put things what you want to do at certain time and avoid putting things at other time. Unfortunately, things do not easily go that way. Sometimes you do not have the complete freedom of putting things in where they are supposed to be.

For example, my test may be at the morning after my friend big birthday party. None of those items could be changed. So instead of crying and making sad excuses for not attending the party, I could negotiate with my time. That is, if I want to attend the party, I have to prepare two nights before and leave the night before the exam free for the party. If the 3 nights preceding the exams are unavailable due to other reason, then I have to prepare even earlier.

While planning is done at the commencement of months or semester, negotiating time can always be done at the relatively late stage.

Planning somehow denotes rigidity and some sense of strictness. Negotiating time, on the other hand offers some flexibility. Still, whether it is planning or negotiating, the key is keep your schedule in one page in an accessible place.

6. Keep a Healthy Body (to be continued ...)