Night Owls Studying Tips and Tricks

Students are two types: early birds and night owls. Early birds are early risers who find it easy to divide their mornings between lectures and study time. Night owls, on the other hand, have a difficult time doing that. The latter usually face a real challenge concentrating in early lectures and they rarely study in the morning and that’s why they need special studying techniques.

If you are a night owl, you might want to try some of the following tips and tricks to concentrate more:

1. Create a Cheat Sheet

Before starting your day, it is better to create a sheet of the things you want to finish within the day. Try adding assignments that you know will require concentration in the evening and always start your main day in the afternoon. This is the best schedule for night owls. Don’t let others convince you to follow their own schedule; it simply won’t work. Your concentration time is totally different from theirs. Add tasks that require minimal concentration in the morning and try to finish anything else during your peak concentration time.

2. Prepare at Home

As a night owl, you have to face the fact that some important lectures might be scheduled in the morning. To deal with that, you need to prepare beforehand at home. Ask your professor what is the topic of discussion in the upcoming lecture and add it to your night cheat sheet the night before. Research the topic thoroughly and write your questions in a piece of paper to direct them at your professor. Preparing beforehand will help you a lot in your off-time. You won’t need to concentrate much and you won’t miss your lectures.

3. Take a Nap

Power naps help you more than you think. Since you are a person who does not sleep a lot at night, try scheduling your power naps throughout the day. Add a small 20-minute nap between study sessions or go home and sleep a bit if you have gap hours between morning lectures. Your brain needs to take a rest to refresh and concentrate more.

4. Exercise and Meditate

To study better, you need to sleep better. If you are one of the people who find difficulty sleeping, try to add a regular exercise plan to your schedule. Add the workout routine to your morning schedule and try your best to not end your day with it. Try listening to music to sleep or just calming nature sounds that are currently found everywhere. Add a constant sleeping time to adjust your biological clock and learn to shut down your thoughts through meditation.

5. Turn off Distractions

Unlike early birds, you probably prefer to study alone at night and that’s better. This also means you might lose track of time. Try to stay away from any distractions that might waste your time. You might have extra time to check your social media accounts, email, chat, etc. during the day, but make sure to turn everything off during your studying time. Social media, email, etc can be time-consuming when you don’t have people to warn you about the time.

P.S. Winston Churchill and Barack Obama were fellow night owls.