Advice From An IITian : Managing Study Time for JEE

Question asked by an IIT JEE aspirant – “I made a timetable for JEE but I am not able to follow it. How to manage my study time for JEE?” When I saw this question, I knew I had to answer it. I have been exactly where you are right now.

This is a guest post from Rohit A (IIT Kharagpur).

From An IITian : Managing Study Time for JEE

During my JEE preparation, every time I felt like I wasn’t studying enough, I would get this drive of motivation and would sit down and create an extremely detailed study time for JEE with nothing unaccounted for. But I never followed this for more than a week. I would give myself an arbitrary excuse for not following it. As a result, I never studied in an organised fashion for quite some time, until I figured out how to manage my study time for JEE.

I am now going to tell you something that I wish someone had told me sooner, during my JEE preparation. Ready for the big secret? Here it is – Don’t plan a study schedule right away. Read that again.

When you plan a study schedule during a rush of motivation, you are committing two major mistakes.

1) The obvious one: You will set extremely high goals and targets that you won’t be able to reach. When you fail to achieve these goals, you will obviously feel disappointed.

How to overcome this? Set small achievable goals and gradually increase them over time.

2) The second, non-obvious, subtle mistake: You are giving yourself immediate gratification by creating a study time right away. Before you have actually started studying, you are convincing yourself that you have or are immediately going to study at these fixed times, which you fail to do.

This is similar to watching a motivational video on YouTube, and then doing nothing about it, believing that you are motivated and will therefore start your task later and move on to another video.

Start whatever task you are planning to do later, right away. It might seem hard, but do it. Do it until you are satisfied with what you have done. Do it even after the temporary motivation wears off. Once you feel that this is your normal state of being, start planning your time table for JEE.

Now you are less likely to set high goals and will actually start studying instead of procrastinating. Over time, slowly start increasing your goals, and get out of your comfort zone. Increase your hours of study. In this manner, you can manage your study time for JEE preparation.

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