Set a Routine

Decide when and where you’re going to study, and do it before you can talk yourself out of it.

Around 60 percent of my self-study was done on the bus. I have a long commute, and so what better way to spend it than studying? Once I’d got on and sat down, I would immediately open my laptop, get my head down, and start studying. I would listen to music (no singing) or white noise to reduce distraction. It sure made my journey seem quicker.

Once you have a routine, you don’t need to worry about motivation. There’s no point sitting around waiting to feel motivated. Don’t think about that. You know what you’re supposed to be doing — just start. As Oliver Burke says in his book The Antidote:

“Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? […] You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.”

There are many benefits to living a life of routine, including improved mental health. Applying routine to your studying just makes good sense.

Practice, Practice, Practice — The Right Way

Taking tests is a skill. You need to practice that skill.

Two things you should not be doing when studying:

“Reading”; “Remembering”.

There is no greater waste of your time than sitting around reading stuff. Except (perhaps) for reading the same thing over and over again in an attempt to memorize it.

A classic study by Thomas S Hyde and James J Jenkins shows that trying to remember material in a superficial way has virtually no effect. You can’t just read something over and over, and then expect to be able to pass an exam on it. To truly remember something, you need to think deeply about the subject, and fully understand it.

Forget flashcards. You will be tested on your ability to take exams. That’s it. You need to practice taking exams.

My exams were three hours long, with three essay-style questions. So after I worked out what questions were likely to come up, and how I would answer them, I got to work practicing essay questions.

At first, I would just write on my laptop, with access to my notes, taking as long as I wanted. Then, as exams got closer, I would start handwriting my answers. Then I took away the notes. Then I started timing myself.

I remembered an insane amount of stuff this way. Law is all about remembering cases and principles. For each of my four exams, I covered four topics. For each topic, I remembered:

the names of at least 20 cases (that’s approaching 400 cases overall);

the year each case took place;

the principle deriving from each case.

And quite often:

the names of the judges that heard the case;

quotes from the judgment.

Plus:

at least two pieces of academic commentary on each topic, including the publication year.

I learned all of this by writing essays, over and over. Usually, I wrote no more than one a day. Whenever I was reading, I was also writing. My reading was directed by what I needed to write in my essay. For instance, if I was studying Tort Law, and the question was “under what conditions can a claimant successfully sue for purely economic losses?”, then all my reading for that day would be directed to answering that question. As soon as I found a relevant point in a journal article, I’d integrate it into my essay. This might not be advisable in all subjects!

By the time my exams arrived, I had basically memorized a set of essays that I could reproduce in the examination room depending on which questions came up. I’d written these so many times that it was just a case of pulling the relevant sections from the essays I’d practiced and combining them in an appropriate way.