Fixating on the volume of study material

Thinking of studying a whole book at a time can be overwhelming and stressful. This will necessarily hamper your focus and concentration. Yet, that is a common habit – ‘I have to study 10 chapters in 2 days.’ This can change into ‘I need to study 1/10th of a chapter every few days.’

There is a psychological effect you should know about – The Parkinson’s law^[10]. It states that work expands or contracts to fill the time available. If you overestimate the time needed to study based on how much there is to study, you’ll eventually end up consuming all of the time you set aside. This could result in a heavy loss of time. You can minimize this problem by focusing on small bits without declaring any time commitment based on the volume of studies.

Study tip: Distribute your learning in small chunks over a long period and restrict how long you take to study a chunk. Set earlier deadlines than what you anticipate according to the total amount of study material