Struggling to stay awake and focused whilst studying? Finding that energy drinks aren’t helping? Do caffeine pills make you irritable?

Like most people I tried remedies in a box or can to help me stay awake when I had an important test to do, but found that I was even more distracted and less motivated to study.

Over the years I’ve found various quick fixes and tricks that have helped me and may help you too.

• Too Tired To Study
• Tiredness Reduces Your Studying Efficiency
• Plan For Success
• Review
• Get It Done

Too Tired To Study

The problem for most of us when studying is that we are more likely to sacrifice sleep, especially as the date for the exam or test gets closer.

The temptation to cram in as much time as possible is very difficult to overcome, and may lead us to seek stimulants to wake us up.

And to compound the problem, our tired mental state may stop us from doing the things that we need to that would help us achieve our study goals.

Tiredness Reduces Your Studying Efficiency

I hate having to study when I’m tired. Everything seems to take that much more effort and the results don’t seem to justify the action.

Sleep deprivation reduces our mental performance. It reduces our attention and memory as well as our decision making.

Being tired also reduces our ability to understand our study material and increases the likelihood of us struggling during the actual test or exam.
Cari Gillen‐O’Neel, Virginia W. Huynh, Andrew J. Fuligni

Plan For Success

Success takes planning. Don’t fail to plan enough quality sleep into your revision cycle. 

It seems obvious because it is. Sleep is the best tool you can use to help you be able to study for an exam.

The following tricks are quick fixes, to get you through those difficult patches, but remember nothing beats sleep when it comes to preparing your mind to study.

• Drink plenty of water
  Hydrate yourself and feel better. Water helps keep your brain focused and alert.
• Make sure you’re eating healthy
  Eat natural. Think – whatever crawls, flies or comes out the earth or water. A healthy balance of good fats, carbohydrates and protein. Not processed foods.
• Use a gadget that alerts you when you’re tired 
  I use V-CAF an Apple Watch app that alerts you when you are most likely too tired to study effectively.
• Take timeout for deep breathing
  Deep controlled breathing has worked well for me, depending on how tired I am. If anything, it breaks up my study allowing me to have a quick easy break before trying to study more.

Review

The best thing to do when you have to revise is to plan your sleep accordingly.

Sleep used with the following tips will improve your chances of successfully studying for those exams or tests:

• Drink more water
• Eat healthily
• Use tiredness monitors such as V-CAF
• Use breathing techniques

Get It Done

If you’re reading this and you are currently studying for exams, I wish you the success you deserve.

Use these tips to help you get yourself through those difficult patches and I’m sure you’ll feel better about completing your exams.