How To Take The Best Breaks During Exam Preparation

Exam preparations are some of the toughest times when it comes to student life. You need to be fully focused when studying. But we all know that it’s practically impossible to stay focused for long amounts of time. At such times, taking breaks becomes imperative. Not only that, since your focus drains after a certain amount of time, your breaks need to be very effective in recharging your focus while taking little time.
 Many ways have been devised over time, some study tips from toppers and hardcore research from psychologists themselves. This is a compilation of sorts of the best of the ways together.

1. Know your milestones: Firstly, have a sense of direction to your studying, that means, at any point of time, you need to be aware of the topics you already know and the topics you need to work on. When studying in such a manner, you need to study to understand. Studying to remember tends to come with caveats. At the time of the exam, the information tends to jumble up, and it's hard to remember because your concepts are not clear. Understanding concepts provide for solid memories, so even if you forget, with a solid base, you can derive what you want from the base up.

2. Use the Zeigarnik Effect to your advantage: The Zeigarnik effect is a psychological phenomenon wherein an incomplete task triggers a stress response in your brain. You can use this to your advantage. Study your topics incompletely and keep them for the next day. The incomplete task will make you revise the things you’ve already studied more often. As opposed to completing your topic, the brain tends to clear out information about tasks you have already completed to make way for new tasks, this will offset that effect, and you will remember your study material better.

3. The Pomodoro Technique: Without getting into too much detail, the Pomodoro is a time management technique which allows you to maintain focus for long periods of time. This is accomplished by doing focused work in short bursts as opposed to extended periods of time. The usual time slabs recommended are 25 minutes of focused studying and 5-10 minutes of break after that. This technique works because of the simple fact that the brain tends to work better when you have shorter deadlines. You let fewer distractions lose your focus, and that translates into better task completion. This technique combined with the Zeigarnik effect is sure to reap you benefits!

4. Do activities that don’t require much thinking: While the last 3 points cover the aspects of how to study, this one covers what to do during your break to recharge your brain faster in a short amount of time. During your break, do not sit to work on hobbies that require cognitive effort. Even if you enjoy doing sudoku or solving crossword puzzles in your break time, you shouldn’t do them. It may be counterproductive to you in general and may not work to refresh it at all. Instead, do activities that refresh you physically. Go out for a walk, have a light snack, some light physical activity, etc. will have a better impact at recharging your focus.

5. Change of Scenery: Sometimes, studying in the same place in the same position tends to tire your brain out more than studying the same topic over and over. In such cases, changing your environment helps. A change of scenery keeps you from feeling cooped up subconsciously and keeps you from feeling burned out. Listening to some soothing music also helps.

6. Know why you need a break: Considering all the above points, you should also be extremely honest with yourself regarding your breaks. More often than not, it may happen that a 15-minute break gets stretched to be more than 30 minutes. It’s important to keep yourself accountable for what you want to do and how much you can do before needing a break. It’s important to keep yourself from procrastinating by being completely aware of your expectations from your breaks. Be disciplined in your approach with your breaks and maintain a list of topics you are to do to keep yourself accountable.