How To Develop Your Personal Study Strategy

4 Real life steps to discover your unique pattern of becoming an exceptional student!

Let’s start here. What is a Personal Study Strategy?

Your personal study strategy is an ever evolving framework that encompasses your daily study habits and behaviour.

Let's take this a bit further.

Think about that smart colleague of yours.

She always comes out with brilliant results in exams. Infact, she's always the topic of the gist among you and your friends when it comes to the top brains in your class.

More than once, you have heard that she’s such a voracious reader that she could conveniently study for up to 12 hours, after which she feels like she's just getting started.

And every time you hear this kind of gist, you feel like… “Well, this is just not for me.” Maybe you're just like, “Oh, I just want to pass and move on”

Well, whether you want to be a top scorer or you just want to attain your best possible performance, I'm here to tell you that you don't have to read 12 hours to be at your best.

But you definitely have to develop your study strategy intentionally to attain optimal academic performance in College.

Why Your Personal Study Strategy Is Important

The basic difference between perpetual top scorers and perpetually average performers is simple… The level of development of their personal study strategy.

How developed is your personal study strategy?

When you have a well developed personal study strategy, it would help you to assimilate better under pressure. This is especially important because in medical school, you’ll have to get accustomed to working under so much pressure.

A well developed personal study strategy also makes sure that you're never caught off guard when it comes to exams preparation and exam readiness.

One other reason why you need to develop your personal study strategy is because, when it yields positive results for you, you develop confidence and a strong, positive mindset towards achieving your academic goals.

Discover Your Personal Study Strategy, Start Here!

Disclaimer! Discovering and honing your personal study strategy doesn't happen overnight. It takes time.

Regardless of whatever stage of the journey you are anyway, here are 4 practical steps I took to discover and develop my personal study strategy.

Remember, it's not a static routine. It should be fluid and dynamic, depending on the extent of productivity you desire.

1. Find out what time of the day you assimilate stuff the most. For me, my creative juice flows the most in the early mornings. However, I have mastered my strategy enough to know how to trick my brain to release some more creative juice later on in the day when I desperately need it. This leads me to the next point.

2. Guard that time with discipline and focus. Personally, I turn on “Focus Mode” on my device, “Do not disturb”, and Airplane mode. This means I don't receive calls or get any distracting notifications during my study times. Take note that your study time is a critical part of your study strategy.

3. Always have a target. Make sure you never enter your study time without having a plan. You should have always have a goal to meet at the end of each study session. Each goal you smash, will strengthen the potency of your study strategy.

4. Be consistent. The power of your study strategy lies in it's consistency, and if you're going to perform at your best always, you must learn consistency in practicing your study strategy. It is only in this way that you can gain mastery.

I'll finish off with a quote that I saw on a friend's PC from an anonymous person: “Everyone calls it genius, Masters call it practice”

There are other elements that make up an effective study strategy, but I have deliberately selected these four, because I think they’re much more critical to development of an effective study strategy.

In upcoming articles, I'll share with you on group studying, study partners and so on, as part of developing an effective study strategy.

I hope you enjoyed this article? Please like, share and subscribe to get notified when I share a new article and to help other people find this article as well.

Yours sincerely,

The Jesus Therapist.