🔎The Search
I found myself adjusting my routine quite often. The initial days of my USMLE step 1 preparation was the first time in my life that I was determined to sit down and study hard. But I found myself doing a lot of things around the concept of studying.
I'd read Reddit posts of people scoring 250+ and adopt some of their schedules. I'd watch a YouTube video on how this guy used to study for tens of hours each day for so many months to score 260 and feel inspired. I wanted a perfect schedule. If I am going to put so much effort into preparing for this test, it only made sense if I had an ideal structure. Some days I'd study enough to morph my inner dialogue positively. Yet, other days I'd find myself tinkering with minutes; adjusting my wake up time from 6:00 am to 5:50 am, and trivialities like; should I use this app vs. that app to track my time. Trying a different morning routine every other day, shuffling activities to keep things interesting, and switching between rooms I'd study in were a few of the things I muddled with before settling for the mundane.
🤑 The Mundane
What is the mundane, you ask? It is the idea that structure develops around effort.
Keep scribbling, and you will form art.
Out of sheer frustration of not finding a perfect routine, I started doing things haphazardly. I'd still wake up around the same time every day, go through a few of the resources I was using for the preparation, and try to reach a vaguely defined goal each day. But I did not have time-blocked google calendars to keep up with or detailed to-do lists to check, or a set routine to follow. A few weeks into doing this, I found myself completing as much work, if not more, as before. The knee jerk reaction to whatever was happening was to conclude routines do not work or at least don't matter. A careful analysis of what played a role in my "success" would surface an exciting and hopefully useful tool.
😇 The find
You put in the work, day in and day out; how, when, using what apps, wearing what colored t-shirts are stupid trivialities. As you keep doing the straightforward, hardcore, ground-level work, a structure inevitably develops. You will then, mostly without even noticing, start fine-tuning your workflow to fit you. That will be the perfect work/study routine for you. So next time you find yourself scooping the wonderland of the internet for that one study hack that will cure your laziness remember;
you can never find it. You can only invent one.
...not by sitting and scribbling down a routine but by starting to work/study and trusting that a structure will develop around the effort.
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