How to Study WITHOUT Motivation (from a Med Student)

Summary

In his video "How to Study WITHOUT Motivation," Salim Ahmed, a final-year med student, debunks the common belief that motivation is necessary to get work done. Through his unique "flow method," Salim shares five actionable steps to help you study effectively even when motivation or discipline is low. He suggests cultivating a pre-focus routine, practicing exclusivity in tasks, starting with minimal effort, adhering to a 2-day rule for consistency, and understanding the deep motivations behind your tasks. These methods helped him succeed in med school and maintain his workout and YouTube routines, emphasizing practical strategies over mere motivation.

Highlights

• Discover the 'flow method' to work without motivation. 🎯
• Utilize a pre-focus routine like warming up before exercise. 🚴‍♂️
• Avoid multitasking by applying tunnel vision to your tasks. 🔍
• Initiate tasks with minimal effort to break the inertia. ⚙️
• Stay consistent with the 2-day rule for building habits. 🏋️‍♀️

Key Takeaways

• Motivation isn't necessary for productivity; embrace practical strategies instead. 🚀
• Create a pre-focus routine to smoothly transition into work. 🧘‍♂️
• Break tasks into smaller actions to overcome initial resistance. ✂️
• The 2-day rule ensures consistency; don't skip more than two days. 📅
• Understanding deeper personal reasons aids in overcoming mental barriers. 💡

Overview

Ever found yourself scrolling through YouTube when you know there's work to be done? You're not alone! Salim Ahmed, a med student, proposes a revolutionary idea: drop the need for motivation. Drawing from his own experiences, Salim introduces the 'flow method' to help anyone work efficiently even at their laziest. The secret? A powerful combination of pre-focus routines and practical actions to muscle past procrastination hurdles.

Starting is the hardest part, right? Salim dives into crafting a pre-focus ritual much like gym warm-ups—easy and essential. He emphasizes creating a singular focus by minimizing distractions, a technique akin to having 'tunnel vision.' With the mantra that smaller tasks can pave the way to bigger milestones, Salim's insights remind us that a giant leap begins with a single step.

In the race for productivity, Salim's rulebook has one golden rule: don't skip more than two consecutive days. This flexibility allows for realistic goal-setting, tailored to when you're most productive. Importantly, Salim encourages introspection—understanding the 'why' behind our tasks which not only powers productivity but silences pesky self-comparison. His holistic take isn't just about academic success, but a lifelong template for effective living.

How to Study WITHOUT Motivation (from a Med Student) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 most people believe that they need to be motivated or disciplined to get work done but what if I told you that there's a reliable way to make yourself work without motivation or discipline I'm Salim I'm a final year med student and I've also done an undergrad and postgraduate degree and like you right now I've had times where I'd be on YouTube when I should be doing work but over my 8 years at Uni I figured out a reliable method to immediately make myself work even when I feel lazy so that I work efficiently and still have time for more of what I care about so I'll go through the five steps of the flow method which covers actionable
• 00:30 - 01:00 steps and the mindset you need to help you do this too and the last Point had a massive role in helping me get into med school and start this YouTube channel so stick around until the end for this important point so first I have a question when do you feel the most resistance to doing work usually it's when you try to start a task rather than carrying on and because of this it makes sense for me to explain the first step you need to take so that you can start doing work even when you don't want to and this is by making sure to have a pre-focus routine and I like comparing this to exercising when I'm at the gym I
• 01:00 - 01:30 warm up before I go on to using the heavier weights so that my muscles can get ready to handle the higher weights and in a similar way for working this is doing something easy or simple that's only ever done before you start working or studying it's there to act similar to the warm-up exercise at the gym because it doesn't need much effort to do but it helps you directly prepare your energy into what you'll be doing next so as an example for a pre-work routine one thing I do spend exactly 10 minutes to do nothing besides think I just think about what I want to work on planning the the
• 01:30 - 02:00 exact thing I'll be starting on so that when the 10 minutes is up I'm aware of what I immediately need to do or another example is that I do a lesson on dualingo or brilliant to ease myself into a focused mindset leave a comment below for a routine that you do for yourself just make sure that the routine is something you only do before working so that you condition your mind to associate this routine with your work and now I want you to think back to something I know you've experienced think back to a time where you were on your phone and somebody came up to you they started talking to you but you couldn't really listen listen to them
• 02:00 - 02:30 properly because your mind was on your phone but after you put your phone away you don't remember what they said so they repeat what they said and now you can properly speak to them those experiences make it very clear that you can't do multiple things at once and this applies to getting work done so what you should do is have tunnel vision but this isn't only to avoid multitasking there's a second part to this but first the best way to avoid multitasking is to apply Parkinson's law for a brain dump and what does this mean give yourself only 3 minutes to list down everything on your mind that you
• 02:30 - 03:00 need to get done and pick up to three of the most urgent things to do today whichever one you pick up first is your most urgent meaning your most time sensitive so start with that people think too much and that clouds their judgment but by making it quick your brain just knows what needs to be done and what can wait until later without you having to actually think too much and I said there's a second part to this so similar to having tunnel vision for directing yourself mentally you should have tunnel vision physically too in an exam setting you only have what you need so make your Works Space similar where if there's something you don't need need
• 03:00 - 03:30 get rid of it so your mind and eyes stay focused because literally anything can become a distraction and you might think oh but your desk isn't clear and you're not wrong but I've only ever used my desk to work and I don't have a problem with focusing anymore so this point isn't for me but now for the next point there is something I do have a problem with that most people have too quite a lot of the time when I have to go to the gym or start editing my next video I don't have any motivation to do them or I feel a very strong resistance to doing them because it takes a lot of effort they take up a lot of energy to get through but what's helped me maintain
• 03:30 - 04:00 going to the gym five times a week for the past few months or have a video out every single week is having a low threshold for effort this is when I told myself that I don't need to do anything big I don't have to script record and edit a video in one day all I have to do right now is think of one thing I can start doing and feel free to stop after that's done if I don't want to go to the gym I just take a walk to my gym and back or for editing this might only be adding music and sound effects to the videos and when I do this I notice that I always end up doing more than this low
• 04:00 - 04:30 threshold 99% of the time I'd end up going to the gym while almost finish editing a video so for you this could be doing the smallest thing to make progress on your work or studying whether that's organizing your schedule for tomorrow doing a few practice questions or writing a small paragraph for an essay this works because starting with nothing is what's difficult but once you get going your mindset naturally shifts as you build momentum with your task and this idea of minimal effort links well with the next point which is a rule that you need to follow so over the past few months I said that I've been going to the gym five times times a week and this is the same for
• 04:30 - 05:00 practicing the piano five times a week or working on my YouTube channel and what made it possible to be this consistent and still be flexible is following the 2-day rule and there's one thing I'll get to that will help you follow this rule but first this is a rule where you aren't allowed to skip more than 2 days in a row the flexibility comes from the fact that if I really don't want to go to the gym today that's fine I just have to make sure I go tomorrow and the thing that helps me do this is identifying my best hours for what I need to do so for gym I have the most energy in the morning so I make sure that I save early mornings for
• 05:00 - 05:30 the gym or for piano I like practicing at night so I'll leave that for later this works with the rule because I can anticipate when I'll be bothered to do the thing so that I don't feel bad if I miss gym today after med school because I know I'll be happy to go early tomorrow morning this is something you can apply to almost anything like making sure to study at a time you focus better and having a friend do this with you can help you both be accountable for each other because you probably won't want to lose to your friend or you wouldn't want to disappoint them and before the next point you might have noticed that I haven't had a sponsored video in some time and it's not because I haven't been
• 05:30 - 06:00 getting sponsor opportunities it's because I was thinking of how can I promote something to you that's as helpful as possible besides my Instagram or YouTube content I do believe in the sponsors I've mentioned in the past but I felt as though there was more I could do to help you learn better not just for your academic life but also your personal life so I've been working on something I can give you by directly helping you with your specific problems for productivity or studying and that's through a one toone online coaching service where you can directly speak to me about any problems you're facing with studying or productivity the purpose of
• 06:00 - 06:30 these video calls is to help me understand your personal problems your goals and things you want to improve on so that I can create a personalized action plan and give you detailed advice that's going to level up your productivity or grades and these consultations are just one part of the package because even after them we'll keep in regular contact and I'll make sure you're progressing well and address any problems or questions you might have and you might be thinking how much does it cost so I'll have two offers for students I know that money is hard to come by so I'll have a form you can fill out with a reasonable price for you to suggest and we can work from there but
• 06:30 - 07:00 because of this I'll only have four spaces for this student offer for everyone else including students that missed out on the spaces I'll have a fixed price that changes depending on supply and demand but there'll be around 10 to 15 spaces so if you want real personalized advice that I'm confident is going to take your productivity or academic life to the next level visit my website Linked In the description and I'll see you in our next call and now for the next point I have another question how often do you find yourself comparing your progress with another person's I've had people commenting on my videos wondering how I manage everything I do because they say they'd find it impossible to do and that
• 07:00 - 07:30 mindset makes it even harder for them to get themselves to work and it also shows me that they feel they should have accomplished more with their time and this has been a problem for me and I'm sure it's affected you too because even for piano or exercising I feel that there's more I could do to make progress more effort I can put in or different things I can try especially when I see how far other people have gone which can be demotivating but what I find useful to make myself work is overcoming the mental barriers and I have a personal example at the end so before that the first thing you need to do is really understand why something is important to
• 07:30 - 08:00 you and why you aren't doing it because when was the last time you sat down to deeply think about why you need to study for the exam besides thinking oh I need to pass or why you're working the job you have that you don't really enjoy write down the immediate and long-term reasons for why you need to do something because that can make you more likely to get on with it when you realize what can happen if you don't do it or can even help you realize that it's not actually that important and you should be focusing on something else instead for example I remember a point where I didn't want to study for the admissions test back when I was applying for med
• 08:00 - 08:30 school and it especially didn't help seeing how competitive it was to get into graduate entry medicine but I spent quite a bit of time thinking about why it was important that I did study what I was worried about happening if I didn't study and what could help me want to study when I spent time thinking about why it was important I thought beyond the oh I need to get a high score to get an interview I thought about how it would set me up to become a doctor how it would help me learn about things I'm actually interested in and even back then I was thinking about how I'd make a YouTube channel as a med student because I thought about why I was important I could then focus on the process of doing because I realized the importance of
• 08:30 - 09:00 taking action instead of only focusing on the end result and this focus on end result is something we typically do because the end result is all we see online from other people so spend a good amount of time writing these things for what you need to be doing spend even up to an hour if you have to because it'll remind you why you need to make progress but another problem is that even if you can think of good reasons to make yourself work when you don't want to it doesn't mean you'll be using your time efficiently I've had this problem a lot in my undergrad degree where I spent a lot of time studying but because I wasn't using time productively I studied a a lot more than I really had to which
• 09:00 - 09:30 took time away from my personal life but after thousands of hours of studying I figured out the most important things to reliably get high grades while studying as little as possible and in this video here I talk about the key things I've learned from 8 years at University that can help you make use of your study time as best as possible so click the video to learn more