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48h Study With Me + Highlighting Tips

2020-01-29 · Study with me · Ali · recording, 10:45 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying (also: Medicine and his doctor years) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Evidence-based framing, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Over two working days as a junior doctor, Ali studies respiratory physiology and marks physiology essays, and explains why he still highlights despite the evidence against it: in colours, to spot later what to turn into flashcards, deciding on a second pass whether a flashcard is still needed.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Day one on the maternity day assessment unit: respiratory physiology and his highlighting colours

  • ★★ On day one Ali is rostered on the maternity day assessment unit, where pregnant women over 24 weeks are assessed for problems such as bleeding, pain or reduced fetal movements. — 00:00:00 · Obstetrics and gynaecology, Day One
  • ★ In the obstetrics and gynaecology junior doctors' office Ali starts studying respiratory physiology. — 00:00:29 · Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • ★★ Reading lecture notes, Ali asks himself at every point whether it makes sense and whether he could explain it to a five-year-old. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ When a line of his notes comparing the lungs and chest wall to balloons in an airtight chamber does not make sense, Ali googles why balloons expand under negative pressure until he has an answer he could explain to a five-year-old. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali reads the lecture notes PDF in Notability on his iPad Pro, highlighting different parts in different colours. — 00:00:58 · Notability, iPad Pro
  • ★★ Ali says highlighting is generally considered an ineffective study technique because it is far too passive and takes no brain power. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Highlighting and thinking he will remember it would be a fool's errand, Ali says: there is no way he will remember something just because he has highlighted it. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Ali highlights lecture notes so that when he looks over them later the same day he can immediately spot what to turn into flashcards or into questions for his students. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali highlights in pink the examinable facts that might lend themselves to flashcards, such as the pressure between the visceral and parietal pleura being minus five centimetres of water. — 00:01:27
  • ★ Ali says that during inspiration the pleural pressure falls from minus 5 to minus 8 centimetres of water. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali calls the pleural pressure of minus five centimetres of water one of those numbers you simply have to know, not one that comes from first principles; knowing it helps you understand the breathing cycle. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali highlights in light blue or indigo what is interesting or insightful, which he finds works best for familiar subjects, where most of the information is not new when revising. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ In his first and second years of medical school, when all the information was new to him, Ali practically highlighted whole pages in different colours, which he feels was a lot less useful. — 00:02:26

00:02:52 — An outline in Notion, lung compliance on YouTube, the gynaecology clinic and rereading slides in bed

  • ★★ Ali says the point of highlighting is to spot things at a glance when you next look at them, so with highlighting less is usually more. — 00:02:52
  • ★★ Ali highlights in purple what he does not immediately understand. — 00:02:52
  • ★★ Realising he has lost the forest for the trees, Ali switches to Notion to make an outline of the lecture notes so he knows where things fit, which he says he should have done at the start of the session. — 00:03:22 · Notion, scoping the subject
  • ★★ Unable to explain lung and chest wall compliance to a five-year-old from the lecture notes alone, Ali finds YouTube videos on the concepts and watches parts of them at double speed to get to the insights. — 00:03:51 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali sees a patient in the late pregnancy assessment unit and spends the afternoon with a consultant in the general gynaecology clinic, observing consultations and helping with examinations. — 00:04:50 · Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • ★ After work Ali has coffee with some fans from 6 to 7pm and plays badminton from 7 to 9pm. — 00:04:50
  • ★★ Rereading lecture slides in bed, Ali says that when studying properly he would do something active like active recall, but he lacks the energy and is not yet preparing for an exam, so he only needs to understand the material. — 00:05:19 · active recall
  • ★★ Before bed Ali writes a diary entry in the Day One app, where he keeps a somewhat regular journal. — 00:05:19 · Day One

00:05:48 — Day two: a simulation day, a careers talk, marking physiology essays in bed, and goal setting

  • ★★ On day two Ali has a hospital simulation day of medical emergency scenarios on a fake patient, to improve leadership, teamwork and staying cool under pressure. — 00:05:48
  • ★★ After work Ali gives a talk at the Cambridge careers service about marketing and communication. — 00:05:48 · University of Cambridge
  • ★★ In bed Ali marks physiology essays; the first batch answers how and why the shape of action potentials varies in different types of excitable tissue. — 00:06:45
  • ★★★ Ali says he struggles with goal setting because he does not really believe in setting goals, but recently his mind has started to change, and his friend Thomas Frank has been part of that change. — 00:07:15 · Thomas Frank

00:07:44 — Skillshare (sponsor read)

00:08:25 — The pink highlights revisited: fewer flashcards, decided on a second pass

  • ★★ After two days of reading respiratory physiology, the pleural pressures Ali highlighted in pink as possible flashcards are so ingrained, being fundamental to the subject, that he no longer needs flashcards for them. — 00:08:54
  • ★★★ When making flashcards Ali thinks less is more: it is tempting to make loads of flashcards for every lecture, but then they become completely unsustainable to go through. — 00:08:54
  • ★★★ To cut the workload of flashcards, Ali advises highlighting material at first and deciding on a second pass through the lecture whether you still need a flashcard for it; if you already know it, don't bother. — 00:09:23

00:09:52 — Putting off the supervision reading, and sign-off

  • ★★ Too tired to read more physiology for the next day's supervision, Ali decides to wake up early and go over surfactant and its effect on lung compliance and surface tension. — 00:09:52 · Supervision

Threads in this video

Mentioned

People: Molly Hunt · Taylor Swift · Thomas Frank

Works: Fearless

Organizations: University of Cambridge · YouTube

Concepts: active recall · Feynman technique · Obstetrics and gynaecology · scoping the subject · spaced repetition · Supervision

Products: Day One · iPad Pro · Notability · Notion · Philips Hue · Spotify

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