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Study With Me - A Super Productive Day

2019-12-17 · Study with me · Ali · recording, 9:25 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying (also: Productivity and time) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: His medical past, Sponsor segment present

On a day off, Ali studies cardiovascular physiology lectures in Notion, asking whether he could explain each point to a five-year-old, hiding his few notes under active recall questions and turning prose into numbered lists, and admits that by noon he had done about two hours of actual work.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A day off: getting up and procrastinating for two hours

  • ★★ With the day off work, Ali procrastinates for about two hours after getting up, lying in bed, reading articles and phoning British Telecom, before starting work at 8.40. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Lectures 5 and 6 of cardiovascular physiology in Notion: the five-year-old test, notes hidden under questions

  • ★★★ Going through lecture notes and slides, Ali asks himself at every point whether it makes sense and whether he could explain it to a five-year-old. — 00:00:58
  • ★ Following the references on mean systemic filling pressure, Ali finds a 1986 paper on experiments in anaesthetised cats by his old physiology supervisor at Cambridge University, Dr Barnes, and his colleagues. — 00:01:27 · University of Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali grapples with a difficult topic and researches it online until he would be comfortable explaining it to a five-year-old; for conceptually difficult things this can take ages. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ Ali writes only a few notes in Notion and hides them beneath a question, so that when he reviews the lecture he is forced to actively recall them rather than passively read them. — 00:01:56 · Notion, active recall
  • ★★★ Ali is not a huge fan of the Pomodoro method, partly because grappling with a concept long enough to really understand it sometimes takes him a lot longer than 25 minutes. — 00:02:26 · Pomodoro technique
  • ★ Ali's first study session lasts around 45 minutes, until he senses himself losing concentration and takes a break. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Before reading a lecture's notes, Ali writes down the lecture's structure with its subheadings, to get a big-picture understanding before diving into the details. — 00:02:52 · scoping the subject
  • ★★ Ali turns the lecture notes' paragraphs on sympathetic efference into four questions and puts the answers underneath Notion toggles, so that they are not visible by default. — 00:03:21 · Notion, active recall
  • ★★ Ali says writing is a big part of making good YouTube videos and that it would be cool to write a book at some point; he is watching a Skillshare class on building a successful writing habit. — 00:03:21 · Skillshare classes

00:03:35 — Productive procrastination on Skillshare (sponsor read)

  • ★★ Ali, who already has a Skillshare class on editing videos, is working on more Skillshare classes, including one on studying effectively. — 00:03:50 · Skillshare classes · also in: My Favourite Note-Taking App for Students - Notion
  • ★★ With 20 minutes per lecture, Ali makes no extensive notes: he focuses on understanding the content and writes or screenshots only what is really important or new to him. — 00:04:20

00:04:25 — Three lectures in an hour: understanding over notes, paragraphs into numbered lists

  • ★★★ Ali finds it useful to convert paragraphs into numbered lists: he condenses lecture prose into numbered points in an order that makes sense to him, so he can test himself on questions like "what are the five mechanisms". — 00:04:49 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali says he is going to make a whole video about Notion's toggle feature at some point. — 00:04:49 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali says dredging information up from your brain when testing yourself strengthens its encoding, so over time it becomes ingrained in your knowledge and understanding of the subject. — 00:05:18 · active recall
  • ★★ By noon Ali has been up for around five hours and done around two hours of actual work, though he had told himself he had been studying all morning. — 00:05:18

00:05:40 — Two hours of actual work by noon, and a long lunch break

  • ★★ Ali says everyone he knows overestimates their working time: people think they have done eight hours of work, but timed properly or screencast, over half of it was probably procrastination. (hedged) — 00:05:47
  • ★ Ali's planned 30-minute lunch break playing The Witcher 3 runs to an hour and 20 minutes. — 00:05:47

00:06:25 — Preparing and teaching the end-of-term physiology supervision at Girton

  • ★★ Ali keeps a bank of questions at the end of each supervision presentation, to work through if the group gets through the material quickly; for this one he puts questions on the term's topics into Keynote to end with active recall of earlier concepts, and says his students seem to enjoy being tested this casual way. — 00:06:32 · active recall, Supervision
  • ★★ This week (week of 16 December 2019), instead of writing essays, Ali's students prepare presentations on their essay titles for the class, so that everyone learns from everyone else. — 00:07:01 · Supervision
  • ★★ Ali drives to Girton College, Cambridge, for about three hours of physiology supervisions, with pizza halfway through as an end-of-term treat. — 00:07:31 · Girton College, Supervision

00:07:55 — Writing the rest of the day off before the new rotation, and sign-off

  • ★★ In the evening Ali decides to do no more work and to write the rest of the day off. — 00:08:00
  • ★★ The next day, 18 December 2019, is Ali's first day of work in his new rotation on obstetrics and gynaecology. — 00:08:00 · Obstetrics and gynaecology

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked whether to buy a Jarvis desk like his or an IKEA one, the channel replies that the Jarvis is great. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: active recall · Notion

Also: Projects: Skillshare classes

Organizations: Girton College · University of Cambridge

Concepts: Feynman technique · Obstetrics and gynaecology · Pomodoro technique · productive procrastination · scoping the subject · Supervision · write-off principle

Products: Keynote

Only in the description or credits: Jarvis

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