How to prevent burnout and manage stress during exam season

Art by Saya Sijo

To start with, what is burnout? “Burnout” is recognised by the World Health Organisation as a syndrome, meaning a collection of symptoms or signs associated with a specific health-related cause. It is a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. It often stems from experiencing long-term stress and constant pressure.

Exam season often requires a lot of persistence, resilience and long hours of studying, which is why it is especially important to make sure you are looking after yourself during this time.

In this article, I have compiled a few tips to help manage stress and prevent burnout during these busy next few months.

Stay active

Sometimes, when we have lots of tests to revise for and an endless pile of things to do, going outside for a run, or going to the gym can feel like a waste of precious revision time. However, it has been shown that just 25 minutes of daily exercise can cut burnout risk by 62%. The mental benefits of exercise have a neurochemical basis. Exercise reduces levels of the body’s stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. It also stimulates the production of endorphins, chemicals in the brain that are the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators.

And if you are still not convinced, regular activity also improves how your brain functions. When you exercise, blood flow to the brain increases, which helps memory, concentration and processing information. This means it is easier to revise and actually retain what you study. 

So if you can’t remember when you last played your favourite sport, or went for a walk in your local park, then this is your reminder to stay active, and your mind will thank you.

Get your sleep!

We see all over social media these students pulling crazy all-nighters, staying up late into the night to cram for their tests, but is this actually beneficial? 

During sleep, especially during the deep stages of non-REM sleep, the brain consolidates memories, organising and storing information that has been learned during the day. This means that a good night’s sleep can significantly enhance our ability to recall key facts.

Just like exercise, sleep also regulates stress hormones like cortisol. If you’re not sleeping well, those levels stay higher, which can leave you feeling constantly on edge or overwhelmed. Your mood is closely tied to sleep as well. Poor sleep can make you feel more anxious, irritable or unmotivated. With good sleep, you’re more emotionally steady, which makes it easier to handle pressure and setbacks without feeling like everything is too much.

So even though in the short term, sacrificing sleep for revision may feel productive, in the long run, it will only do you more harm than good.

Work smarter, not harder

There are several ways that the way we work might actually be burning us out.

• For starters, revising for hours at a time without breaks can actually be harmful. After a while of studying nonstop, your attention begins to drop, mistakes increase, and everything feels harder. This means that you might be using more energy for worse results. Instead, break your revision into chunks. Techniques like the Pomodoro technique can be used to section work into 25–50 minute time slots. However, one key thing to remember is that although taking breaks is vital, these breaks shouldn’t be a time for a quick 5-minute scroll. There should be something that actually resets you, like a few minutes of stretching or fresh air. And plus, 5 minutes is never just 5 minutes, is it? 

• Secondly, the way you are revising can impact your levels of burnout. Passive methods of revision, like rereading notes, may feel productive in the moment. It is known in Cognitive Psychology as an “illusion of competence”. However, when it comes to testing this out with practise papers or questions, you struggle to remember things. Instead, use active recall and retrieval practise like flash cards, or the Feynman technique, to make sure you actually know the content. This way, you can memorise more in the same amount of time, leaving more time for rest and relaxation.

  
  

By looking at how you study, you can make sure you are using time effectively and not overworking yourself.

In conclusion, in order to prevent burnout and manage stress during exam season, you need to sometimes put your needs first, even if it feels counterintuitive at the time. By taking care of your mind and body, and not overworking yourself, you are doing your future self a huge favour.

Written by: Noa Archer