enthroned-1 - Tumblr blog

enthroned-1 · 9 years

Photo

8K notes · View notes

enthroned-1 · 9 years

Text

He makes all things beautiful in His time - Ecclesiastes 3:11

0 notes

enthroned-1 · 9 years

Photo

Amen

A small prayer before studying ✨

My first paper for finals is in less than 9 hours!!! I need prayers and lots of lucks ✨

Hope I’ll do well ☺️

95 notes · View notes

enthroned-1 · 9 years

Text

Studyspiration’s note taking routine

For my note taking “proces” as I would call it, I spent a lot of time. But then again it assures me that I truly get to understand the subject. It should however be noted that I don’t do all of these steps in a day. Because if you are in University you know that reading a chapter isn’t easy and usually a chapter can be really long and take up a lot of time. So you shouldn’t be stressed if you don’t have the time to write down all your notes during the same day that you pick up the topic. Don’t worry. Actually doing these different steps over the course of different days is an excellent way to retain the information and make sure you understand it, because lets be honest, when you read and write the same information over and over again within the course of an hour or two everything just becomes a routine and you do it someone half hearted.

But lets get into it.

Step 1 - Reading the information

Here all you need is your text book and a highlighter (don’t do this if you have borrowed the book tho, just simply read it at first then)

In this step all you do is read, and just try to figure out what is important and what is not. Because, although a lot of the information in your text book is important and probably good information, some of the information might just not be that relevant for your exam and for you at that time in your education system. Try to high light the important parts so that you know exactly what you should not down in step 2 and what you should avoid spending that much “precious notebook space” on.

Step 2 - Taking notes

In this step I read the chapter once again, but the focus is to write down the most important parts in my note book. This is not a fancy proces. It really isn’t I use my Tiger ball point pens. I do however try to make the notes be a bit presentable, but that isn’t my main focus. The main focus is to sum up the chapter and the main points.

Step 3 - Re writing the notes onto the PC

Now this is when people start to tell me that I am “overdoing it” because we are used to note taking being either one or the other. But I do both. Because I learn from both. I think that the combination of both has made retaining information and learning much easier for me.

I usually type my information from my notebook into a word document (Bonus tip; Using the font Times New Roman is actually shown to help you read the information faster). In this process I sometimes also fill in the “blanks” so lets say there was something that I didn’t feel like my text book presented to me clearly enough, I do a little further research and insert that into my notes as well.

Step 4 - Making flashcards

Now this is the fancy process. This is where I break out my expensive ass muji pens (those things are not cheap and not a must, but I bought them off sale so I am completely guilt free).

I take the notes that I have written, and after a while when you have typed the information and studied the information several times you will slowly get an idea off what is truly the most important points and what is the point in the chapter. So I just make flash cards where everything is pretty much summed up even more.

And then my note taking routine is DONE! Yes only four steps, it isn’t that much is it? Well some tend to think that it is a lot when a chapter is 30+ pages long.

Which is these steps do you do? And which do you think are too much? Tell me I want to know

Also I am working on making a post about my revision “routine” because that is also excessive according to other students.

Love,

Dunia

608 notes · View notes

enthroned-1 · 9 years

Photo

needed

A post about procrastination from a person who actually knows what she’s talking about

I’m sure all of you have seen at least one of those posts where people who cleary aren’t procrastinators tell you to ‘just stop procrastinating’ or ‘to focus on your goals’ or ‘get a grip’. Saying stuff like that to actual procrastinators is like telling someone if they want to fly, all they have to do is to just look at the sky and waggle their arms.

This post, on the other hand, is about helping you to understand what the problem is and what you can do to change it. I was in therapy for procrastination and I’ll share with you what worked for me. Everything I tell and recommend you here is based on my own experience and research.

First of all, let me tell you one thing. Procrastination is not laziness. It’s as simple as that. Being lazy is a bad habit, procrastinating is a serious mental problem.

WHAT IS PROCRASTINATION

In my own words: procrastination is the inability to do stuff. Stuff you don’t want to do as well as stuff you do want to do. And not because you’re lazy, not because you don’t have enough time, but because you simply cannot bring yourself to do it. It’s not fun, it’s not relaxing - it’s terrible.

Besides the huge pile of unrealistic shit, there are some good articles out there that actually explain what procrastination is. Tim Urban wrote a series of blog posts about this [x x x] on wait but why in which he does a really good job of describing and explaining what procrastination is all about.

In another really good article by David Cain I found a quote that struck me to the core because it was so true.

You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.

I urge you to read that article. It’s a very sensible approach to what procrastination is and how it develops as a behavioral pattern.

HOW TO BEAT PROCRASTINATION

The first thing you need to understand is to face this issue, is that it’s not going to go away. It is something that you’ll have to face every day. But it will also get easier every time you face it.

start small - The task my therapist gave my was to do 45 minutes of studying a day. Not even one hour. And believe me, I struggled a lot with this. Doing something (i.e. stuying) every day is hard, so don’t sabotage yourself with taking on too much to soon. Some sense of achievement is essential for your motivation to keep fighting.

plan ahead (but not too far) - like you probably all know, planing and breaking down tasks is, like, the most important thing if you want to achieve something. But the thing is, if you plan for two weeks in advance, the amount of tasks waiting for you will overwhelm you. For me personally, planing two or three days in advence works best. You can always experiment a bit to find out what works best for you.

starting ritual - this one of the most important things my therapist taught me. Develop a ritual to get you started. Starting is the hardest part and to help yourself with it, do a few tasks to get you in the right mindset for studying. Shut off your phone, make some tea, tell your bestie you’re studying now, wipe your desk clean, light a candle, prepare some snacks. Do whatever works for you. Be consistent with it and do it every time before you start studying. But! These rituals are not aloud take more than 10-15 minutes because if they’re longer, they will turn into a procrastination habit.

talk to yourself - I’m serious. You need to understand that only you decide what you’re doing. And sometimes, you need to tell yourself that. Out loud. It sounds strange, but it works wonders. (My personal mantra is ‘Only I decide what I do with my time. I am the one who decides what I do.’)

forgive yourself - you’re not always going to win. there will be days where you fight and fight yourself but you still loose. Those days feel terrible, but please try to remember that it’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just tell yourself that you will:

start again - maybe you lost a day, maybe a week, maybe a month. The point is: it doesn’t matter. All that matters is starting again. It might be harder than you remember, but getting up again is the most importat part.

I didn’t include tipps on how to actually study in this post because there are so many people out there who can tell you about this a lot better than I ever could. I’ll link you to some of my favorites here, here and here.

I really hope this post was helpful for some of you. If you are battling procrastination, please know that you’re not alone. It will get easier, but I still struggle, too. If you want someone to talk to, my inbox is always open.

8K notes · View notes

enthroned-1 · 9 years

Photo