25-Minute Study Bursts
You don't need 2 uninterrupted hours to engage in self-education
Do you feel like you can’t find time to study your favorite subjects?
I was—and to an extent still am—right there with ya.
When I first started taking my self-education seriously, I felt like I needed to spend hours at a time hunched over my books, or else it wasn’t worth it.
Therefore, I’d plan to study for 2 hours straight at night, and end up skipping it and watching TV instead because it was just too much for my tired post-work self to do.
It was too big and scary. I just wanted to eat some combination of chips and dip and call it a day.
I’m not sure where I got this terrible, self-limiting idea from. I’m sure the anecdote of Jack London studying 19 hours a day didn’t help.
Regardless, over the years, I’ve found that short bursts of intensive study are usually the best way to approach self-directed study sessions, for a couple of reasons:
20 or 30 minutes isn’t intimidating, so you won’t feel as much resistance to do it.
Focus usually starts to dip for me around 35 minutes of hard reading anyway (for me at least)
You can spread these intensive bursts throughout the day and rack up hours.
It’s amazing how much you can learn in these short, intensive sessions, and how quickly all that knowledge adds up.
My recent self-study schedule
To illustrate this in action, lately I’ve been following a study schedule that goes more or less like this:
35 minutes of reading in the morning before work.
25 minutes at lunch. (usually a lecture, video, or podcast to support my reading)
25 minutes of reading at some time between 7 and 9 PM (sometimes I skip this one).
35 minutes of reading before bed. (This is usually a novel, sometimes using Audible if my eyes are sleepy.)
That’s two hours of self-directed study per day, but it doesn’t feel hard or impossible. And I rarely feel afraid of the next session, because I know I can do anything for 25 minutes.
Study less, study smart
Marty Lobdell is the professor who sold me on the idea of short study bursts. I recommend checking out his popular video on how to study efficiently:
To slowly build your power of concentration and turn studying into a habit, he recommends increasing the time per session as you get more experienced.
For example, you might start with 15-minute reading sessions and then, in a month, once you’re used to it, move up to 25 minutes.
By the way, you can also Pomodoro this and do multiple study sessions in a string with a 5-10 minute break in between. Sometimes I’ll do that at night if I’m feeling especially curious and motivated.
Anyway, I hope this helps you hit the books more frequently!
You don’t need two uninterrupted hours of free time to read well. All you need is 1-3 short periods of 25 minutes per day. Over time, this will be much more sustainable and lead to impressive knowledge acquisition.