Healthy Study Habits – How to stay healthy and achieve your goals

Healthy Study Habits

Today’s topic of discussion is something I wish I had when I was still going to school. If you couldn’t tell by the title, those would be healthy study habits. And, while something like healthy study habits might sound unimportant, let me remind you that you can’t take your exams from a bed in the hospital you are staying in (or at least I think you can’t).

Why did I say I wished I had healthy study habits while I was still going to school?

There was a time when I was preparing for a test. I had to cram everything one day before the test to even have a chance of getting a good grade (back then playing League of Legends was my number one priority, so not having enough time to study was to be expected).

I put my everything into it and managed to “learn” the material (if you could even consider that learning). The next day I went to school feeling like my head was going to explode (thanks to the 3 hours of sleep I got).

But, since I was such a dedicated student, I decided to go to school no matter what. And, before you ask it was definitely not because I didn’t want to study the material a second time.

While nothing bad happened that time (I hope you didn’t expect anything dramatic), it doesn’t mean it couldn’t have. Besides my lack of sleep, I didn’t eat much the day before the test, didn’t take any breaks while studying and at the end of the day I started panicking because I didn’t know if I studied enough.

Combine all of these and you get a recipe for disaster.

What are healthy study habits

Let’s start by identifying what healthy study habits even are. By my standards, anything that helps you improve or maintain your health level is a healthy study habit. Things such as:

• Eating well
• Drinking water
• Good sleep
• Taking breaks while studying
• Having a good study environment
• Exercising regularly
• Managing your stress levels

Let’s stop here for a second.

When I was younger and would see a list like this I would always think “Oh I already know this stuff”. But, think about it, if I really knew how bad my study habits were, do you think I would have gotten into the situation mentioned above?

That’s why I encourage you to continue reading and try to implement some of the stuff into your life. You don’t have to do everything at once. One thing at a time is good enough. And, most importantly, it’s better than nothing.

Eating well

I suppose the first thing I have to mention is to just eat. If you are not eating because “you don’t have enough time” and have to study, then you are just using a stupid excuse (there, I said it).

Before anything else, think about what that does for your health.

And, how well can you concentrate on an empty stomach while constantly thinking about how you haven’t eaten? Think about it logically. The longer you study without eating, the worse your concentration gets. It’s worth it to invest time in eating because you will find it easier to concentrate (I can’t believe I am explaining how important eating is, but oh well).

Have some kind of fruit near you to snack on if you want to continue studying a little bit longer and don’t want to take a break. Fruits have fiber and sugar in them. Sugar can give you extra energy, while fiber will make sure that you don’t get the sugar crash you get from eating candies or chocolate bars.

A quick reminder: snacking isn’t supposed to be a replacement for a real meal, it’s just used to increase your energy levels when you feel sluggish.

I addressed the main points I wanted to talk about, but having a healthier diet wouldn’t hurt either. Now, I know that changing your whole diet just to study better isn’t all that motivating, so how about you start with one meal?

Make it the meal before you start your most intense study session (the one where you study the material you hate the most). You will feel more energetic and will be able to concentrate for a longer period of time.

Drinking water

Here is a fun fact of the day for you: Dehydrated driving can be just as dangerous as drunk driving. And, last time I checked drunk driving was illegal. Now that we read this fun (I don’t know if I should call it fun) fact, I will take a break and drink a cup of water.

Alright, now I am back. The statement above is kind of self-explanatory. Being dehydrated makes you lose focus. From my own experience, studying while not being able to focus is one of the most frustrating things you can experience (nothing compared to losing a League of Legends game though).

Imagine that you are preparing for an exam. You can’t stay focused for more than 5 minutes.

And the reason might be because you didn’t drink enough water.

This one should be pretty easy to implement. Have a cup of water near you every time you start your study session. When you feel thirsty, you just need to stretch your hand and take the cup (it doesn’t get much simpler than that).

Good sleep

Here is a list of some (just some and not all, because the list would be too long) benefits of good sleep:

• Improved immune system
• Healthy heart
• Improved mood
• Regulated blood sugar
• Reduced stress
• Sharpened your attention
• Prevents diabetes
• Makes you more productive

If you are serious about building healthy study habits, then you need to pay special attention to sleep. When students are studying for an important exam they would often shorten the time they sleep (just as I did). But, getting a good night of sleep is more important than a few extra hours of studying.

A good night’s sleep is far more helpful to you when you are trying to learn new material. When you sleep your brain processes the information you learned that day and stores it in your long-term memory.

As a bonus, it helps your brain to clear out toxins that are produced while you are awake. If those toxins are not cleared, they will get in the way of your learning.

It’s not just your health that benefits from a good night of sleep, your learning ability also improves along with it.

If you don’t know where to start when building healthy study habits, improving your sleep is a good place to start. To learn more about sleep, click here.

Take breaks while studying

Back when I first started to learn how to study more efficiently, I was amazed when someone said they studied for 17 hours, now I feel sorry for them.

Assuming someone actually studies for 17 hours, what do you do with the other 7 hours?

In those seven hours, you have to fit in 8 hours of sleep (by bending the rules of the space continuum, of course). Not to mention eating, talking to other people, exercising a bit and taking a break from all that studying.

By now you probably get the message. Studying for 17 hours is stupid. Take a break.

The way you learn something for the long term is when your hippocampus helps your neocortex (the place where your long-term memory is) to store all the new stuff you learned. But, if you are constantly studying, your hippocampus won’t have time to relay the information to the neocortex.

To learn more efficiently you need to take breaks.

You need to schedule your breaks before you even begin to study. The Pomodoro technique is ideal for this. Explained in 5 steps, the Pomodoro technique looks something like this.

1. Pick a material you want to study
2. Set a timer to 25 minutes
3. Study until the timer hits zero
4. Take a 5-minute break
5. Repeat

After going through four cycles you can take a 15-minute break, and then start from the beginning again. You know exactly when you are going to take a break, and how long that break is going to last. To learn more about the Pomodoro technique, click here.

Have a good study environment

Anyone who is reading this on a PC, while thinking about how his back is hurting, knows exactly what I am talking about here. Before you begin to study, find a comfortable way to sit. The last thing you need is to get distracted because you are annoyed that your back is hurting.

Besides, you don’t want back pain to follow you for the rest of your life just because of a poor sitting position (I don’t know if this can actually happen, just saying this for the sake of the argument). If you can’t find a comfortable sitting posting, changing your chair might be the only option you have left.

A bonus tip: Ensure the monitor is on your eye level, so you don’t strain your eyes even more than they need to be (especially if you have bad lighting).

Exercise regularly

I get the same thoughts as all of you when I see this (the “how about no?” thoughts). However bad it may sound exercise actually helps us to learn more efficiently. Exercising helps with the growth and development of neurons in your brain.

As you can imagine, this is pretty useful when it comes to studying and learning new things. Now that we know that exercise helps us to study more efficiently, as any reasonable human being the next question to ask is:

How do I get the benefits of exercising, while doing as little as possible?

You don’t actually have to do all that much. Even something such as a little 10-20 minute walk can be of great help to you. But, if you want to go for a longer walk, or even go on a run, be my guest.

Although I still recommend walking as a go-to exercise (it definitely doesn’t have anything to do with my bias towards walking), anything that gets you moving and out of your chair works.

Another friendly reminder: You are exercising to stay healthy and improve your learning ability and not to break a marathon record (official time is 2:00:35, btw), so don’t go on a 2-hour run and start to complain about how you are too exhausted to study.

Managing your stress levels

When a student is feeling stressed it is usually because of their upcoming exams. That kind of stress is normal and can even push you to do better than you would if you weren’t stressed at all. However, too much stress, over a long period of time can be detrimental to your health.

There are two things you can do to manage your stress levels. The first thing you can do is follow the advice mentioned above. Eating well, drinking water, getting enough sleep, taking breaks when studying and exercising regularly are great ways to manage your stress levels.

If you follow these tips your stress levels won’t get out of control. Although these things are great at preventing the situation from getting worse, they still won’t be able to get rid of your stress.

For that, you need to learn how to properly manage your time.

As I said before the main reason students feel stressed is because of the grade they think they will get. That is why their life goes out of balance and why they spend 17 hours a day studying. But, if you start preparing on time and make a proper schedule (that, I am assuming you will follow), you will be prepared enough to take your exams with minimal levels of stress.

While reading this, you might have your doubts, but the first time you succeed and get better results, you will naturally gain confidence. And, that will make following the schedule you set for yourself all the more easier.

How to schedule your day

This is a hard question to answer since everyone has a different view of what a good day looks like (because of course they do). Let’s start with what we already know, how to schedule our brakes. I already mentioned the Pomodoro technique which does an excellent job and takes care of that problem.

To make sure you are eating, you can schedule the time when you eat (which is something I still do to this day). And remember not to skip meals because “you are too busy” (I can’t stress this enough).

Rather than setting an alarm for waking up, set an alarm for going to bed. This makes it more likely you get enough sleep. Finally, pick the time when you are going to exercise. And when the time comes, drop everything you are studying and exercise for a bit. You can even exercise in the 5-minute breaks from the Pomodoro technique if that is what you want.

To complement your healthy study habits, you will need to learn how to study and prepare for a test, which you can learn here. If you want to learn even more about how to plan your day for studying, click here.

Conclusion

Just as I said at the beginning of this article, you can’t take an exam from your hospital bed. And while that might be an extreme (maybe too extreme) example, the long-term effects of unhealthy study habits are certainly not something to scoff at.

You don’t have to implement the tips I gave you all at once. Pick one thing that seems easy to you and implement that in your daily life. When you get comfortable add another one. Remember that a good student isn’t just someone who has good grades, but someone who is also healthy (as some really clever man who definitely isn’t me once said).