How to Make Studying Fun (or at Least Less Boring)

Studying is boring, right? Every time you have to open up a textbook or tackle a homework assignment, a million things go through your mind that would be more fun to do, like skydiving or watching paint dry or typing a YouTube comment about how the fact that I'm holding a fidget spinner right now makes you wanna puke. Yeah, I can see you warming up your fingers, Derek. Of course, studying is something that you just sometimes have to do, which leads to the obvious question, if you have to do it, is there at least a way to make it more fun or at least less boring? Well, that's what I wanna talk about today. I'm gonna get this out here right up front. There is no way to make studying always fun. After all, part of the learning process is to have to sometimes go through challenging and difficult material, and that's not always gonna be a walk in the park. But there are things you can do to make studying more fun more of the time, and that's what I wanna talk about in this video. So let's dive right in. First and foremost, if you wanna make studying fun, you need to get interested in your topic. All the way back in 1913, Francis Lockwood wrote in his book The Freshman in His College, in the long run, the secret of study resides in our ability to bathe our thought, our task, our lesson in the stream of interest. But how exactly do you gain that interest? Well, you certainly don't do it by jumping straight into the minute details. To gain an interest that's truly strong enough to power you through the hours of rigorous study, you need to expose yourself to the truly exciting facets of the topic first. Nobody reads The History of Middle Earth before reading The Lord of the Rings, or at least watching the movies first. And nobody goes digging through C-sharp documentation unless they're interested in building something in C-sharp, like a video game. That's why Bill Nye made Bill Nye the Science Guy, why Carl Sagan made Cosmos, and why David Attenborough helped to make Planet Earth. These three men are known first and foremost as science popularizers, because they knew what it took to get the public interested in science. They knew that showing electricity in action, or showing a shark hunting its prey, is far better at generating that needed initial spark of interest than talking immediately about Ohm's Law or talking about how the dorsal fin affects fluid dynamics. And the best teachers in the world understand this innately. They know that they need to get their students initially excited about the topic before they jump right into the rigorous minute details. But if your teacher's not good at that, you can do that yourself. One great way to do this is to find a book, or a movie, or a podcast, or even a video game that can give you an initial high-level introduction to the topic in an entertaining way, or that's somehow connected to it. I'll use my girlfriend Anna as an example. Anna is somebody who really doesn't like to read a whole lot of non-fiction. But last year we took a trip to St. Louis to go to City Museum, and on the way we listened to a podcast called Hardcore History. And if you haven't listened to this podcast before, it is one of the downright most entertaining podcasts in the world. It is my personal favorite podcast, and the particular episode we were listening to was talking about ancient Persia. After we listened to that episode, Anna actually got interested in the topic, and she went and bought the book Persian Fire by the historian Tom Holland. And this is a good book, but as you can see right here, it's a pretty thick history book, and it's not Anna's usual affair. But despite that, she finished the entire book because the podcast gave her that initial spark of interest. And I remember while she was reading it, she'd come up to me several times and say, hey, I remember when he talked about that in the podcast. So she was building an interest link. A second tip that'll help you become more interested in anything you're studying is to adopt a growth mindset. Carol Dweck's book Mindset, The New Psychology of Success contrasts people with fixed mindsets, people who essentially believe that talent or intelligence is fixed and doesn't change, with people who have growth mindsets, people that believe anything can be changed and improved upon. Early on in the book, Dweck demonstrates how the mindset that you have also plays a huge role in how interested you'll be in your studies, especially when the going gets difficult. During her research for the book, she followed pre-med students who were taking an initial chemistry course during their freshman year of college. And in this course, the average exam grade was a C+. It was one of those weed-out courses that's basically designed to be difficult so it weeds out people who are not a good fit for the medicine program right at the start. In the book, she reported that most students started out pretty interested in chemistry, yet over the semester, something happened. Students with a fixed mindset Those who found it difficult showed a big drop in their interest and enjoyment. If it wasn't a testimony to their intelligence, they couldn't enjoy it. In contrast, students with a growth mindset continued to show the same high level of interest even when they found the work very challenging. Challenge and interest went hand in hand. So try to reframe the way you think about your classes, not as tests or evaluations to show everyone how intelligent or unintelligent you are, but as continual learning opportunities, opportunities to learn, grow, and yes, sometimes fail, but to come back and improve upon those failures and to win eventually. This is a global mindset. If you can do this, you're gonna find that your studies across any subject you tackle are gonna be more enjoyable and more interesting. Another great way to make studying more fun and interesting is to do it with a partner. But studying with a partner is a double-edged sword that can go wrong really easily. And I find that there are two main pitfalls that you fall into when you do this. First and foremost, if you study with the wrong partner, they're going to distract you and you're never gonna get any work done. And I've definitely been here. During my freshman year, I tried to study with the people in my dorm and all we ended up doing was opening up Duke Nukem soundboards and wasting all of our time. But just as easily, you can find a partner who goes through the work so quickly and does so much of it that you end up glossing over the problems and the concepts and never end up really learning them yourself. So if you're gonna do this, you need to not only find a partner who is focused and stays on task the whole time, but who also ensures that you understand the problem's solution and that they understand it as well before both of you move on. The next tip is to change your environment in non-distracting ways that make studying more enjoyable. And there are a lot of ways you can do this. One of the best ways is to find a study playlist that you enjoy listening to that doesn't distract you. And I've been making a playlist here on YouTube called The Ultimate Study Music Playlist for a few years that works really well when I need to get some work done. It can also help to find a study spot that you really enjoy being in, like your favorite spot in the library or a good coffee shop or maybe study with a cat. And having a good drink next to you while you study definitely helps as well. Pretty much every single morning, I make a pot of cinnamon clove tea, which is basically my favorite kind of tea, and I drink that while I do some writing. And it might sound weird to you, but the ritual of having that pot of tea and being able to pour multiple glasses while I write makes the process of writing more enjoyable. So I do it. And that brings us to our final tip on the list. You wanna make studying more fun and more enjoyable then create many rewards that you'll get for doing that study. See, your motivation to complete a task is defined partly by the reward you're gonna get for doing it. And with studying, there's a pretty obvious main reward. You'll get a good grade, you'll graduate from college, and you won't have to live in a van down by the river. But that doesn't have to be the only reward you give yourself. You can also create many rewards that can be an incentive for finishing an assignment or even just putting an amount of time in. Now, you've probably all seen the gummy bear trick on Facebook, and that might work for some people. I think I would just eat all the gummy bears and close my book right away. But for the most part, these rewards should be high-density fun. Letting yourself go out with friends or letting yourself play Overwatch for a while, something that isn't stupid like scrolling through Facebook for five minutes. It's also important to plan out the details of these many rewards in advance. As the author Pierce Steele talks about in his book, The Procrastination Equation, rewards are a lot more motivating when they're pre-planned because they build anticipation. You know in the back of your mind that once you finish studying, you're gonna get to do something fun. And that's gonna further increase your motivation to power through that study session. This video is made possible in part by Skillshare. Now, earlier I talked about how important it is to get interested in the things you're studying. And that's especially important for required classes you have to take. But there are also things that you've probably always wanted to learn. Things you already have an interest in. Like maybe playing the guitar like I am. Or learning digital illustration. Or maybe just learning how to cook so you don't have to keep living off of Hot Pockets every day. If that's the case, then you should definitely give Skillshare a try. With over 16,000 courses and a ton of different topics, there's something for almost everybody and almost all their courses include challenges and projects that you can tackle to start putting what you're learning into action right away. A premium membership on Skillshare will run you about 10 bucks a month, which basically makes it a Netflix subscription that'll actually make you smarter. But the first 500 people that click the link in the description below and sign up will get a free two month trial of unlimited learning. And trust me, in two months you can learn a lot. So if you're interested, definitely go give that link a try. I wanna give a big thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video and supporting this channel. And thank you so much for watching. If you found this video helpful, give it a like. And if you have additional tips that I didn't mention here, definitely go down in the comments and share them so other students can benefit. You can also hit that subscribe button right there to get new videos every single week. And if you want a free copy of my book on how to earn better grades, click right there. Additionally, you should definitely go check out this week's podcast episode where we discuss a book called Essentialism, which is one of the best books I've read this year. So click right there if you wanna check it out or click right there for another video on this channel. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys next week.