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I chose this specific video because I relate with studying when I have zero motivation. I sometimes find myself studying with no motivation often. If I am not interested in the topic, I will not put forth the effort to study with motivation. Even if I try, I do not have the motivation. When this happens, I end up not studying. As stated in the video, there are long terms and short term solutions to the problem. One could either create a better study play, or self discipline.

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How to Make Yourself Study When You Have ZERO Motivation

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How to Study When You’ve Lost Motivation: 8 Sharp Tips to Get Back on Track

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How to Study When You’ve Lost Motivation: 8 Sharp Tips to Get Back on Track

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This article relates the this video because it also talks about how to study with no motivation. The article also gives tips such as concentrating and remembering. In order for you to be able to study you HAVE to concentrate and remember.

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Oxford Summer School from Oxford Royale Academy

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How to Study When You've Lost Motivation: 8 Sharp Tips to Get Back on Track

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In my opinion, two evils conspire to make revision-time miserable: the first is the stress of approaching exams, and the sense that there is an overwhelming amount of information to learn in an ever-dwindling period of time. Even spending time with friends, intended for relaxation, can just be a reminder of the exams you'll be sitting together and the work you ought to be doing. The second is the boredom; the feeling of oppression that comes with the knowledge that the next week, or month, or six weeks, will be consumed entirely with the business of studying.

Of course, there will be days when revision is actually quite enjoyable - when you feel like you're achieving a lot every day, piecing the different parts of your subjects together, and finally understanding things that have eluded you for months. But equally, the majority of us have just as many bad days, when we're studying a particularly difficult topic, progress is slow or we just can't focus. And on those days, the classic study tips seem totally redundant: personally, being 'helpfully' advised to make flash-cards or take regular breaks while struggling to understand the very first thing about differentiation has in the past made me feel positively murderous.

So, here are some quirky study tips, new ideas to boost your concentration and motivation as a last resort, when everything seems impossible and you're dangerously close to just giving up and watching old episodes of Breaking Bad all afternoon. Of course, they won't all work for you, but trying new things never hurts, especially when everything seems lost.

An old teacher of mine swore by a very particular (and in my opinion, totally mad) study habit. She said that if you read something through three times, then at the end of the third time, you would know all of the information it contains perfectly. For her, it worked - she could sit quietly reading a chapter of a textbook, and then after the third time through, answer pretty much any question about it. For me, this is the worst possible way to revise. My concentration span is that of a particularly dim goldfish. I can sit for hours, re-reading the same piece of text up to five, six, or seven times, without ever once taking in what it says.

Sure, my eyes will be drifting over the words, but my mind will be elsewhere entirely - thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch, what happened on last night's Made in Chelsea, what I'm going to revise next, or even how terrified I am about the exam. And even if I do manage to remember the general gist of the passage, by the next day any specific details have totally disappeared. If I'm going to have any chance of taking something in and remembering it for longer than ten minutes, I have to make learning an active process. Here are some ideas to do this:

Set yourself questions

In subjects like History, English, Religious Studies, Psychology, or Biology, where you've got to read and learn long swathes of text, make learning active by turning information into questions. Break a text down into chunks of one page, or roughly 500 words each, and for each part, write out five questions that you would ask if you were an examiner testing students on that part. Next, write out the answers. Take your time over this process - your questions should be careful and well thought-out, isolating the most important elements of a topic. You could even put your questions on flash cards, and use them to revise from in the future.

Teach each other

In groups of two, three, or four, break a subject (or some of a subject) down into parts, each go off and learn a part thoroughly, and then come back together and teach each other what you've learned. The 'teacher' could prepare a slide-show and a handout, explain how to answer past paper questions, and ask the other members of the group to work through some questions together. This method of revision works brilliantly for a few reasons: first, it's active, forcing you to confront problems rather than skipping over them, and transform information into a form someone else will understand; second, it's fun, and social, giving you a break from the solitary confines of your spot in the library. It can be adjusted to suit pretty much any subject: in Economics or History, you could each take an essay question, prepare a model answer and discuss it with the group; in a literature exam, you could provide readings and summaries of books or poems; in Maths or a science, teach a whole topic.

Ditch the books altogether

Some students do exceedingly well in exams without ever making revision notes or even reading through their books - instead, revision for them is a process of going through every past paper in existence, and answering all the questions there. Next, get hold of a mark scheme, read through the exemplary answers contained there, and work out how you've scored and where you've gone wrong. I used to use this method in subjects like Maths and Chemistry. My first efforts were always a total disaster, with scores in the forties and fifties - but I found it astonishing how many questions were repeated in slightly altered form from paper to paper, and how much I improved each time.

What's more, each time I would read through the answers on the mark scheme, I was learning information in the same way as I would from a text book, building confidence and becoming familiar with the particular demands of the paper - but it was easier to concentrate than if I'd used notes, because I was always comparing the answers there to my own efforts. What's more, in my experience, if you puzzle over something and get it wrong, you're likely to remember how to do it properly. Of course, with this system of revision it's crucial to be alert to changes in the syllabus, and there is always a risk of missing out something important - but it's a great way of livening up revision and can always be combined with other methods to make it more thorough.

N.B. When practising, remember to keep to the amount of time you'll have in an exam.

Try something new

There are radio shows and podcasts on basically everything these days. I revised for my Shakespeare exam at university by listening to a really useful podcast on iTunes - and a quick search confirms there are hundreds more geared towards IB, A-level, and GCSE exams. Don't feel confined to those specifically for your course, though - you can learn new and interesting information that might boost your grade and give your exam an edge simply by searching for a topic you're interested in. Downloading and listening to these will give you a fresh perspective, or a new way of understanding a topic - and in addition, is a more low-key method of revising - something you can do while you're walking to school, sitting on the tube or relaxing in the evening.

Make something

I know a student who put everything she needed to know about Photosynthesis for IB Biology into a brilliant (but incredibly geeky) rap. And another student who made extravagant and actually quite beautiful posters, writing all the information she wanted to remember about World War Two on different parts of a map of Europe. If you're especially creative, or learn well from seeing, speaking or doing, you can adapt this to suit how you learn - making acronyms, rhymes or posters - or even acting things out to remember them better.

Try working at a totally new time

This is one for really desperate times, not to be used all year round: as you will see when you read on, if overused its natural conclusion is a descent into madness.

When I'm having an essay crisis, or an exam is looming and I don't feel prepared, I totally change my routine, and wake up at 3.30am to work or revise. I have real problems focusing in the evening - I find working after 6pm miserable and oppressive, and know that I work very slowly and inefficiently at that time. However, if I go to bed really early (say, 9pm), when I wake up in the small hours of the morning (and once I've had a very strong coffee) my brain is refreshed, and I can get loads done before the day has even properly started. What's more, there are no possible distractions at that time of day - nothing to do, no one to meet for coffees, and Facebook slows to the merest of trickles. Plus, the feeling of intense smugness that being up and working while the rest of the world sleeps will only make you more productive.

If you're not a morning person, this one might not work for you - instead, try giving yourself a lie in, and then staying up a few hours later at night. And of course, make up the time you've missed in bed elsewhere.

Break it down

Now, many of you will undoubtedly be sick to death of being told to plan your revision. I personally don't hold much love for study timetables: in my experience, they inevitably end up sitting over your desk, evilly mocking your ineptitude with each day that you get further and further behind the targets you set three weeks ago. On the other hand, though, without a sense of when everything will get learned, it's easy to feel totally at sea with revision, with a creeping sense that you might not be learning things quickly or well enough, or that you may have missed something out. Unfortunately, then, they can be something of a necessary evil. However, one tip will make sure you keep pace with your timetable, and realise if you've set unrealistic goals, while also increasing your motivation and helping you stay in the library for that crucial extra few hours.

Each day, break your revision down into chunks- say, at least ten. Once you've completed one chunk, give yourself a little reward: I have a friend who will buy a bag of Maltesers, and eat two after each chunk; another who watches one video on YouTube; a third who checks his Facebook for five minutes and a fourth who spends a few minutes punching a punch-bag! Make it a rule that before you leave the library at the end of the day, you've got to have completed the ten small tasks you have set yourself.

Plan daily exercise in groups

Annoyingly, for those of us who prefer an afternoon on the sofa with a movie to a walk or a game of tennis, it's been proven a hundred times over: regular exercise boosts concentration. What's more, whole days, weeks or even months spent in the library, working towards a single goal, with no distractions or social interaction are very bad for morale, efficiency and concentration. A great way to break revision up, see some human faces and get moving is to plan to do something active and fun once a day with friends. When I was revising for my IB, a group of us used to go swimming for an hour every day before dinner. This was a great social event (and a good chance to moan about all the work we were doing!), which gave us all something to plan our days around, and a chance to get outside and generally stay sane.

Have you got any unusual study tips that have helped you through desperate times? Let us know in the 'Comments' section below!

Images: Man Climbing Mountain

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How to Study When You've Lost Motivation: 8 Sharp Tips to Get Back on Track

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How to Study When You've Lost Motivation: 8 Sharp Tips to Get Back on Track | In my opinion, two evils conspire to make revision-time miserable: the first is the stress of approaching exams, and the sense that there is an overwhelming amount of information to learn in an ever-dwindling period of time.

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Being able yo manage your time between college, work, and outside activities can sometimes be difficult for me. Majority of the time I find myself pushing my work back for naps, spending time with friends, or simply just watching TV.  When I do this, I become behind on work I want to have completed on a specific day, or time. In the video I learned how to break projects, and homework down. Also how to complete a big assignment if it is due the next day. You focus on the core deliverable, the grading criteria, how much each assignments counts for, and the knowledge you need for a test.

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How to Study and Do Homework in a Time Crunch - College Info Geek

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Crunch time: How to study if you have one week, one day, or one hour

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Crunch time: How to study if you have one week, one day, or one hour

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I chose this article because when I usually have an assignment that is due the next day, I tend to rush on it.The article breaks down how to specifically crunch time in a matter of hours, days, or weeks.

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We've all experienced that nauseating anxiety after realizing an exam has crept up on us. Perhaps our doodle-filled planners failed to remind us or we were distracted by a Cops marathon on FOX. Whatever the case there's no time to panic. Scratch the crusty Easy Mac off your textbook, locate your highlighter collection and get to work.

If you have one week:

Create a study guide. This is your checklist for what you need to know and it will help you gauge your progress over the next week. Write down the important points, terms, formulas and major concepts you know will appear on the test and cross-reference these with where they're mentioned in your textbook or notes.

Make a study group. Get together with other students in your class and talk through the information you don't understand. Explaining concepts to each other will help the info sink in and it isn't as intimidating as asking a professor or TA. Be smart when choosing a study group and avoid all-friend study cells. They can easily turn into all-night social sessions.

Make flashcards. Write terms or questions on one side and an explanation on the other. Then quiz yourself, being sure to occasionally shuffle the cards to make sure you aren't just memorizing the order. Keep these cards with you all week so you can flick through them during workouts or downtime.

Visit your professor. As scary as it seems, professors and TAs are often more approachable than you think. They can answer questions and fill you in on lectures you may have missed (or dozed through). Have your questions prepared before you go so you don't waste their time.

Summarize your notes. Read through your class notes and summarize them on a separate sheet of paper. Many of us take notes using choppy phrases, which can be easily overlooked while skimming a notebook during a study session.

Draw it out. Create spider diagrams of major concepts with lines connecting to related terms or information. You can also make a storyboard or timeline for historical data and scientific processes. Putting the facts in a drawing will help you visualize and retain the information.

Read the assigned text and highlight important points. Then summarize the highlighted material in each section on a Post-it note and stick it to the page. Summarizing the information in your own language will help you to understand and remember wordy text.

If you have one day:

Make a few flashcards. You won't have time to create a card for every term but it will be helpful to make some for the most important concepts. They're great to have on hand during a limited test prep time because you can whip 'em out while you're waiting in line, in between classes or at a stoplight.

Review your notes. Highlight major points your professor emphasized in lecture and write down a quick summary of each class period. Recalling the lectures will remind you of the information and putting the info in your own words will clarify cryptic notes.

Study what you don't know first. You'll be much more motivated at the beginning of your study marathon, so use it to your advantage. Work out tricky concepts and review complicated chapters in your textbook before your attention span goes south.

Find a study buddy. A duo can be helpful when last minute questions arise. You can work problems out together and keep each other accountable when you're itching to be distracted.

If you have one hour:

Focus. You're going to need some hard-core concentration for this cram sesh so shun distraction with a quiet study spot and a Red Bull.

Locate your notes. Skim them for the major points your teacher stressed in class. Highlight or underline important info to remember so you'll be able to find it quickly right before class.

Scan the assigned reading. Look for highlighted portions and take note of section headings. Refresh yourself on the information but don't spend too much time poring over minute facts.

Get to class early. Listen to what the people around you are talking about and try to absorb the information they're throwing around. Don't focus too much on the details; just try to grasp the big picture.

Pray to your deity of choice. If worse comes to worst you may need to enlist supernatural help.

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Crunch time: How to study if you have one week, one day, or one hour

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We've all experienced that nauseating anxiety after realizing an exam has crept up on us. Perhaps our doodle-filled planners failed to remind us or we were distracted by a Cops marathon on FOX. Whatever the case there's no time to panic. Scratch the crusty Easy Mac off your textbook, locate your highlighter collection and get to work.

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Since I have started taking college classes, it has been difficult for me to find an great way to take notes. This makes me feel like I am not learning anything in a specific class. Watching this video taught me multiple different way to take notes. The outline, Cornell, mind map, flow, and write on the slides method are all different ways to take notes. I have recently used the Cornell method, and find it very helping when taking and studying notes.

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How to Take Notes in Class: The 5 Best Methods - College Info Geek

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How to Take Notes Effectively: Powerful Note-Taking Techniques

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How to Take Notes Effectively: Powerful Note-Taking Techniques

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This article list the do's and don'ts of taking notes. I chose this article because it explains how and why your notes do not have to contain everything.

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Note-taking is one of those skills that rarely gets taught. Almost everyone assumes either that taking good notes comes naturally or that someone else must have already taught about how to take notes. Then we sit around and complain that our colleagues don't know how to take notes.

I figure it's about time to do something about that. Whether you're a student or a mid-level professional, the ability to take effective, meaningful notes is a crucial skill. Not only do good notes help us recall facts and ideas we may have forgotten, the act of writing things down helps many of us to remember them better in the first place.

One of the reasons people have trouble taking effective notes is that they're not really sure what notes are for. I think a lot of people, students and professionals alike, attempt to capture a complete record of a lecture, book, or meeting in their notes - to create, in effect, minutes. This is a recipe for failure.

Trying to get every last fact and figure down like that leaves no room for thinking about what you're writing and how it fits together. If you have a personal assistant, by all means, ask him or her to write minutes; if you're on your own, though, your notes have a different purpose to fulfill.

The purpose of note-taking is simple: to help you work better and more quickly. This means your notes don't have to contain everything, they have to contain the most important things.

And if you're focused on capturing everything, you won't have the spare mental "cycles" to recognize what's truly important. Which means that later, when you're studying for a big test or preparing a term paper, you'll have to wade through all that extra garbage to uncover the few nuggets of important information?

What to Write Down

Your focus while taking notes should be two-fold. First, what's new to you? There's no point in writing down facts you already know. If you already know the Declaration of Independence was written and signed in 1776, there's no reason to write that down. Anything you know you know you can leave out of your notes.

Second, what's relevant? What information is most likely to be of use later, whether on a test, in an essay, or in completing a project? Focus on points that directly relate to or illustrate your reading (which means you'll have to have actually done the reading...). The kinds of information to pay special attention to are:

1. Dates of Events

Dates allow you to create a chronology, putting things in order according to when they happened, and understand the context of an event.

For instance, knowing Isaac Newton was born in 1643 allows you to situate his work in relation to that of other physicists who came before and after him, as well as in relation to other trends of the 17th century.

2. Names of People

Being able to associate names with key ideas also helps remember ideas better and, when names come up again, to recognize ties between different ideas whether proposed by the same individuals or by people related in some way.

3. Theories or Frameworks

Any statement of a theory or frameworks should be recorded - they are the main points most of the time.

4. Definitions

Like theories, these are the main points and, unless you are positive you already know the definition of a term, should be written down.

Keep in mind that many fields use everyday words in ways that are unfamiliar to us.

5. Arguments and Debates

Any list of pros and cons, any critique of a key idea, both sides of any debate or your reading should be recorded.

This is the stuff that advancement in every discipline emerges from, and will help you understand both how ideas have changed (and why) but also the process of thought and development of the matter of subject.

6. Images

Whenever an image is used to illustrate a point, a few words are in order to record the experience.

Obviously it's overkill to describe every tiny detail, but a short description of a painting or a short statement about what the class, session or meeting did should be enough to remind you and help reconstruct the experience.

7. Other Stuff

Just about anything a professor writes on a board should probably be written down, unless it's either self-evident or something you already know. Titles of books, movies, TV series, and other media are usually useful, though they may be irrelevant to the topic at hand.

I usually put this sort of stuff in the margin to look up later (it's often useful for research papers, for example). Pay attention to other's comments, too - try to capture at least the gist of comments that add to your understanding.

8. Your Own Questions

Make sure to record your own questions about the material as they occur to you. This will help you remember to ask the professor or look something up later, as well as prompt you to think through the gaps in your understanding.

3 Powerful Note-Taking Techniques

You don't have to be super-fancy in your note-taking to be effective, but there are a few techniques that seem to work best for most people.

Outlining

Whether you use Roman numerals or bullet points, outlining is an effective way to capture the hierarchical relationships between ideas and data. For example, in a history class, you might write the name of an important leader, and under it the key events that he or she was involved in. Under each of them, a short description. And so on.

Outlining is a great way to take notes from books, because the author has usually organized the material in a fairly effective way, and you can go from start to end of a chapter and simply reproduce that structure in your notes.

For lectures, however, outlining has limitations. The relationship between ideas isn't always hierarchical, and the instructor might jump around a lot. A point later in the lecture might relate better to information earlier in the lecture, leaving you to either flip back and forth to find where the information goes best (and hope there's still room to write it in), or risk losing the relationship between what the professor just said and what she said before.

Mind-Mapping

For lectures, a mind-map might be a more appropriate way of keeping track of the relationships between ideas. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of mind-mapping, but it might just fit the bill.

Here's the idea:

In the center of a blank sheet of paper, you write the lecture's main topic. As new sub-topics are introduced (the kind of thing you'd create a new heading for in an outline), you draw a branch outward from the center and write the sub-topic along the branch. Then each point under that heading gets its own, smaller branch off the main one. When another new sub-topic is mentioned, you draw a new main branch from the center. And so on.

The thing is, if a point should go under the first heading but you're on the fourth heading, you can easily just draw it in on the first branch. Likewise, if a point connects to two different ideas, you can connect it to two different branches.

If you want to neaten things up later, you can re-draw the map or type it up using a program like FreeMind, a free mind-mapping program (some wikis even have plug-ins for FreeMind mind-maps, in case you're using a wiki to keep track of your notes).

You can learn more about mind-mapping here: How to Mind Map: Visualize Your Cluttered Thoughts in 3 Simple Steps

The Cornell System

The Cornell System is a simple but powerful system for increasing your recall and the usefulness of your notes.

About a quarter of the way from the bottom of a sheet of paper, draw a line across the width of the page. Draw another line from that line to the top, about 2 inches (5 cm) from the right-hand edge of the sheet.

You've divided your page into three sections. In the largest section, you take notes normally - you can outline or mind-map or whatever. After the lecture, write a series of "cues" into the skinny column on the right, questions about the material you've just taken notes on. This will help you process the information from the lecture or reading, as well as providing a handy study tool when exams come along: simply cover the main section and try to answer the questions.

In the bottom section, you write a short, 2-3 line summary in your own words of the material you've covered. Again, this helps you process the information by forcing you to use it in a new way; it also provides a useful reference when you're trying to find something in your notes later.

You can download instructions and templates from American Digest, though the beauty of the system is you can dash off a template "on the fly".

The Bottom Line

I'm sure I'm only scratching the surface of the variety of techniques and strategies people have come up with to take good notes. Some people use highlighters or colored pens; others a baroque system of post-it notes.

I've tried to keep it simple and general, but the bottom line is that your system has to reflect the way you think. The problem is, most haven't given much thought to the way they think, leaving them scattered and at loose ends - and their notes reflect this.

Featured photo credit: Kaleidico via unsplash.com

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How to Take Notes Effectively: Powerful Note-Taking Techniques

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Note-taking is one of those skills that rarely gets taught. Almost everyone assumes either that taking good notes comes naturally or that someone else must have already taught about how to take notes. Then we sit around and complain that our colleagues don't know how to take notes.