How to Get Revision Done When You Don't Feel Like It

hey friends and welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name's ray and i'm a second year cambridge student studying physics and in this video i will be sharing a system i came up with during my a levels which helped me get my revision done whilst also making time for the things i enjoy as always timestamps will be in the description down below so let's get straight to the video

so i'll begin by explaining the problem because only after understanding the problem can we fully appreciate the solution so the problem i faced growing up like most teenagers do was that i spent weeks binging on shows and movies and games for weeks on end only to realize that i was behind on work then to bend on work for another few weeks only to then burn out and go back to binging on shows and movies i found myself having two problems with this way of doing things firstly after binging on things we enjoy for a few weeks the temptation to go back to binging after a few days of work can be pretty overwhelming it was far too easy to think something like oh this math problem is too hard life was so much easier last week when all i did was play games and watch tv and then to give up on studying for another few weeks secondly i found that binging began to feel like a chore and i find myself enjoying things that i thought i would enjoy less because i was actually doing it too much think of the times you had to save three terms of failed episodes to get a good part of a series or when you had to spend dozens of hours playing a game to level up enough to finally start having fun now

the inspiration i had for solving this problem actually came from doing some yard work on a hot summer's day i'm not sure if you've ever had to build a shed with your parents or do some back breaking labor but i found i enjoy simple things much more after doing some work whether it was drinking some ice cold lemonade or eating a watermelon in my experience our watermelons taste as much nicer after spending a few hours doing work on the sun than if i spend that time scrolling through instagram in an air-conditioned room the reason why it seems nicer is because i built up an appetite for it after doing some work so the

system i came up with to help me tackle those two issues it was a rewards-based system in short i would accumulate points based on how much work i was getting done for example going through flash cards for an hour that's 15 points doing a pass paper that's 25 points doing a topic test probably 10 points then when it came to having rewards i'd say the price of a 20-minute tv show to be 50 points or an hour of gaming to be 125 points of course you can make the rewards for activities and the price of the rewards do whatever you like but make sure it's reasonable and that doing one maths question doesn't give you a chance to play games for three hours or something now before i explain how i

kept track of accumulating and spending points i'll talk about the advantages of the system now whenever i explain the system to my friends at school they thought it was silly and there's no way i could enjoy shows and games by using it but funnily enough i find myself enjoying shows and games much more and appreciating it more than i had ever done before i think the reason comes down to what i said about yard work by accumulating points through hours of studying i find myself building up an appetite to find out what happens next on the next episode of attack on sites and after the last cliffhanger and when i had enough points i would cash him out and i find myself enjoying the next episode so much more because i had worked hard for it this system also helped me stretch out six tips in series that would have taken me about three days to binge watch into two months which i would watch alongside working because the only way i could watch the next episode was if i gained enough points by doing the work plus spacing out episodes actually helps you remember what happened and gives you something to look forward to as well now a friend of mine after hearing these advantages ended up doing something quite similar if he wanted to watch the next episode of some series then he would have to spend an hour at the gym and he said he enjoyed the show more as a result now the main disadvantage of the system is that it requires some self-discipline to not give yourself too many points for simple activities and not watching the next episode despite not having enough points i will be honest in saying there have been a few times in which i failed to stop the self-discipline to not watch the next episode um because i didn't have enough points but overall i found the system to be effective making sure i was getting work done whilst also enjoying the things i wanted to enjoy without feeling guilty about it

now if you're still watching i'm guessing you're convinced by the system and wants to know how to implement into your own life so the way in which i kept track of this was by using a spreadsheet and i liked it because it gave me more flexibility and allowed me to customize my own system here so on the spreadsheet you can see i have total points i have a task list over here and a rewards list and the purpose of these two are to help me remember uh how many points i've assigned to different tasks so let's say i do flash cards for one hour and that's gonna give me 15 points i do a 60 minute topic test that will give me 10 points and let's say i do a free hour passed paper and using that ratio that would give me 60 points and now uh let's say these are the tasks i've done today and at the end of the day i want to reward myself in some ways so i have 125 points and i see that an hour of games costs 125 points so i could say let's uh an hour games uh then i'd write minus 125 points and now i've gone back to zero points so i can keep track of my transactions over here and check how many points i have and stuff like that now of course uh how many points you assign um for each of your tasks and rewards uh depends on how hard the task is or how long it takes and stuff like that but ultimately it's about finding the combination that works for you you don't want your rewards to be so cheap like uh let's say this is five points and then just doing flashcards for an hour gives me an uh an hour worth of tv shows but if you're first getting started and you find it quite difficult then you can set the bar pretty low and as you just find yourself managing more and more work then you can increase the price of these rewards or reduce amounts of points and tasks give you and if this transaction list it's getting too long then you can just go over here and then press duplicate and then just delete all the transactions over here and carry on the transactions from the previous month so let's say uh i actually didn't spend an hour on games and i still had a 125 points then i could just write here 125 carried over from january and then i can split all these transactions by the month and if i rename this spreadsheet to february and then you can look back at the end of the year and i don't know do your own analysis and see how many points again and stuff like that and the nice thing about this was because this is synced on google drive i can download the google sheets app on my phone and then update this on the go now another way to do this is also using an app called hibiscu so this is available on both android and ios but the only disadvantage of the app is that it doesn't let you set how many coins you gain from each of your tasks instead you have to choose difficulty whether it's easy medium or hard and then it gives you the number of coins automatically but then you have to you can obviously decide uh how much each reward is going to cost um how many coins that will cost so you can sort of adjust it there i personally prefer the spreadsheet but i'd recommend trying both and seeing whichever one you prefer and now if you find yourself struggling to stick to the system then you can get one of your family members to change your netflix password or something and only log you in when you have enough points to spend and make sure you're logged out after the episode is over but i'm sure there are tons over cheats with which you can do and like i said the system requires some level of self-discipline to not cheat yourself but like with anything you can gradually improve the amount of self-discipline you have over time the more times you exercise it so do keep that in mind but of course if you find the system is systematically failing you despite your best efforts and it's a good sign that you need to make some changes or try something else it's not going to work for everyone and just because i use it doesn't mean you have to force yourself to use it if it doesn't work for you then you should just do some research and find something else that works for you

now a common objection is that well you could get even more work done if you didn't watch shows or play games but i think this objection has two problems firstly it increases risk of burnout because you don't have anything to reward yourself with and use as part of your breaks and secondly if you can do say six hours of effective studying a day and accumulate enough points to reward yourself for an hour or so and then that's so much better than without the system where you would say do two hours of effective studying a day and having nothing to reward yourself with afterwards basically the best system is the one that you actually use and if you can use this system to help you get more work done then that's pretty great anyways that's it for me if

you found the video useful then leave a like if not leave a dislike and do let me know why if you think i end your subscription then do subscribe and in that case i'll see you next time