I think what you really want to ask is how do I study effectively? If you can develop a photographic memory and hundred percent retention capacity in your memory, you will have to read once and that would be enough. You don’t even have to study daily, leave alone eight hours.
You simply assume that you need to repeatedly keep studying something over and over again like rote learning to be able to remember it and for that you have randomly concluded that eight hours of study every day throughout the year is necessary. I suggest a more holistic approach with the goal of being able to remember all that you need to remember to not only get your through your exams and interviews but also later on in real life where you can apply your knowledge to make a difference in the world.
Please read the following articles to help you on the path towards the most effective as well as fulfilling education.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
Is a 5 hour sleep enough for a student?
If you are a student under 25 years of age, you would at least need 8 hours of wholesome sleep every night. Any person between the ages 18 to 60 needs at least seven hours of sleep daily and for younger people it is more. There are different stages of sleep in each sleep cycle and each stage repairs our mind and body in different ways. We need all the stages and we need at least five cycle of all these stage each night for a healthy life. To understand more about what is sleep and to understand what hinders wholesome sleep and what we could do to enjoy wholesome sleep, please read the two articles linked below. As a student you think you need lot more hours to study because you probably have to study the same thing repeatedly to help remember it. This is because you have a mind which is filled to its brim and already overflowing with all the restless thought activity going on in it all the time. There is no space for new knowledge to enter and be stored and so you keep repeatedly reading and finding it impossible to retain all that you read. It is like using a soaked dripping sponge to wipe and dry the floor clean of some spilled liquid. Is that possible? You would need a dry sponge to be able to do it, isn’t it? Similarly you need a quiet mind to be able to study and easily retain all that you study. Wholesome and sufficient sleep is one of the ways that the stuff in you temporary memory gets transferred to your long term memory. It is somewhat similar to the RAM and Harddisk in your computer. I suggest a practice of a few minutes of meditation and energy movements before and after each study session in addition to wholesome sufficient sleep. When you practice these, you will find it drastically improves your ability to absorb and retain all that you study. You will require far few hours of study time and you will be more confident and joyful in life. Read my answers to the following questions in Quora previously to understand how to do this. And here are the links to the sleep articles mentioned above. For more information and plenty of free resources to aid with the practice of meditation and deep healing, please visit my website.
Also find out why our mind is usually exhausted all the time and how to find out when the mind is tired and how to give it rest because sleep alone doesn’t give enough rest to the mind.
Self_Love_Respect ·
1y
Is it normal to experience uncontrollable self-talk?
If you define normal as something that happens with the majority of the people living on this planet, then yes, it is normal to experience uncontrollable self-talk. But if you ask whether it is good for you to experience this condition, I would say, no. In self-talk, who is talking to who? Self-talk means you are talking to yourself. But you need someone to be talking to, isn’t it? Self talk is usually the voice in your mind playing out. It is as if a recorded audio is on auto play in the mind. Whose voice? The voices of all the people in your life, the society around you, telling you constantly what to do and what not to do. It could be negative or it could be positive. If you successfully distract your mind from this activity, it would end up doing something else in the mind. These include the dialogues we carry out mentally with an imaginary person, memories of past events, worries about the future, planning, working, calculating, computing, watching something (video), listening something (audio such as podcasts), reading, studying, focusing, concentrating, paying attention, fantasising, imagining, dreaming, etc. We are habituated to this and so it seems to be happening effortlessly and automatically although we are doing it. Our mind gets tired of this constant uncontrollable, unstoppable habit and wants to rest. It actually gets exhausted. We easily know when our physical body is exhausted and we rest it by sitting down or lying down or taking a nap or long sleep or having a hot bath or a nice massage. But we have no metric or measure to find out when our mind is tired and we have no means to allow our mind to rest because any of the above resting that we give our physical body doesn’t rest the mind. Mental exhaustion shows up in the form of the following: Stress, worrying, indecisiveness, feeling restless, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, burnout, insomnia, impatience, constant irritation, etc. If you are feeling any of these it indicates your mind is tired and no amount of sleeping will be enough to make this mental tiredness go away. Long term mental exhaustion is the root cause for all the chronic life-style diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, etc. Positive self-talk is not an answer to this. It doesn’t help because the mind is already tired and we end up doing something more with the mind so it is neither effective nor does it give rest. I have written extensively in my Quora posts and previous answers about how to enjoy a quiet mind and allow our mind to completely rest and be rejuvenated. Please browse through and read a few of them if you are interested to begin controlling the uncontrollable self-talk.