Pressure, Priorities, Productivity: Trying to cope when everything feels too important.

Exams are probably the single most daunting task we as students are forced to undertake throughout our academic careers; they are bearers of misery, stress, and anxiety. Believe me, I hate them too. 

But what if I told you that the key to maintaining an efficient and low-stress balance (or as low stress as possible) throughout your school life consists of only three things: 

Pressure, priorities and productivity. These three things are the absolute necessities for a structured and healthy daily schedule, not only during the school term but also during holidays and study leave; they facilitate and accelerate your routine, which will ultimately propel you towards your ambitions, reduce your stress and yes, help you finally begin that revision.  

For us, as exam - taking students (speaking from experience in real time), beginning revision can be scary, terrifying even and maintaining a study schedule can be even harder. But what many people don't realise is that most of the time it isn't actually your ability to study or capacity to retain information in your brain, but simply a fear of starting. Oftentimes, the threat of upcoming exams (aka. Impending doom as many of us see them) creates a mental hurdle that becomes harder to overcome as the days go by because we end up in a vicious cycle: fear, avoidance and breakdown. We’ve all been there before, and by following these steps, hopefully we can jump over these hurdles in time for exams.  

Pressure - controlling how much you put on yourself and taking advantage of it 

Pressure is one of the most harmful aspects of school life, which can make or break you during exam periods, oftentimes having pressure put on you is challenging and mentally taxing – of course, it is. But, learning to channel the pressure so it works in your favour can be one of the most effective methods at making yourself focus, especially under time constraints. It has been proven that placing yourself under some pressure whilst studying for an exam (whether that be time pressure or setting yourself personal goals) can boost efficiency and productivity, which significantly increases your performance overall. In terms of the science behind this theory, placing some pressure on yourself engages your ‘flight or fight’ response, which may seem counterintuitive but can in fact be extremely beneficial for short bursts of focused activity. However, as we all know, too much of anything is bad, especially pressure, so ensuring that you are placing pressure on yourself in healthy ways is also vital. Finding a balance between complete chaotic panic and total apathy is challenging, but with practice and patience, you can definitely overcome your difficulties with starting revision. 

Personally, I find that the most effective way of motivating myself is focusing on my aim to simply feel confident about my knowledge and abilities, something I have realised naturally stems from just getting on with some studying. I strive to have that feeling of ‘I know I can do this’ as soon as I open up my exam paper and the elation of ‘I know I aced that exam’ as soon as I close it. That is my goal and my only goal: to feel that sense of self-confidence that I never used to have. As someone who has struggled to overcome the initial fear of starting revision (yes, I am in denial), this method of just pondering for a second how I would like to feel about myself and my revision in the future, and placing that little bit of extra pressure on myself, drives me to push myself more than I usually would (as an extremely lazy person).  

Priorities - get the most important tasks out of the way first  

All right, now you’ve started your revision, the hardest part is over, and now it’s time to dive straight into completing the important things. But what even are the important things? Now, that’s a great question. Many people struggle with prioritising the things they need to do, including myself, for instance I often find myself doing the NYTimes wordle halfway through double physics to keep my streak going, and I have to snap myself out of it because PRIORITIES HELLO? What I’m trying to say is that we’ve all been there and of course we all want to do the easy things first, the tasks that don’t challenge us much mentally, allow us to take a break and even have some fun, which is something I fully support; naturally we need a break from the hard core revision and homework… but if something has got to be finished, it’s got to be finished.

Unfortunately, I do not have a magic solution for overcoming the work. I wish I did, truly, but sometimes putting in a little bit of effort can really go a long way as long as the work you put in is effective and relevant. It is hard to remain focused on your priorities, especially when everyone around you seems to be doing so much more: studying 8 hours a day, every day, no matter what, and you can barely seem to get through one set of flash cards. It often makes us want to try and do everything at the same time to fit in and ‘keep up’, but take it from me, it’s not about the quantity of work you do, it’s the quality. For this reason, prioritising the subjects and topics YOU struggle with is so important, not the subjects your parents care about the most, nor the subjects all your friends are struggling with. Here, it’s okay to be selfish and make sure you do what you can to focus on yourself and prioritise the things important to you. So, go on and finish that maths paper or do that Spanish revision, whatever it is you are struggling with, your future self will be so unbelievably grateful for focusing on your priorities right now rather than on the priorities of someone else.  

One method I think is unmatched at helping kickstart work on your most important tasks is creating a ranked list of everything you need to do and simply organising them by deadlines, and even if you feel like you have a hundred things on your to - do list, this will help sort them into the most and least relevant. For example, if you have three exams next week and you really do not know which one to start with first, simply start studying for the earliest exam. It doesn’t matter if you are more worried about your second or third exam, just get the revision for the first exam out of the way, so then you won’t be cramming the night before because you spent all your revision time on the second and third exams.

Something else I find extremely helpful for prioritising is making checklists, because the combination of being able to see what tasks you have whilst being able to tick them off as you go through them makes it easier to cope because the finish line is always in sight. The psychology behind this is based around ‘the reward effect’ where dopamine gets released in your brain after you receive a reward (checking a task off your list), this actually stimulates more motivation and pushes you to do more, so you can continue chasing that feeling of pride and fulfilment. Using a checklist, or for that matter, any other form of rewarding yourself after completing a task, can significantly increase how much work you get done and make you feel better about the tasks you have completed, as there is physical evidence of your hard work.  

Productivity - keeping your motivation high and maintaining your work pace  

Finally, the key to successful revision and personal improvement is staying productive throughout the exam period, aka not working yourself to death before the exams even start. Effective studying and productivity are something all students crave, yet it can seem almost impossible because of things like ‘burning out’ and overworking themselves. The idea that constantly pushing yourself to the brink always equates to good results is a complete misconception and revision is not a sprinting race where everyone must rush to the finish line to see who can get the quickest run possible, revision is more like a marathon where it is essential to maintain your pace so you don’t fall behind, but you must also save some energy for the final stretch, which is now. It is the home stretch of the exam season, and now is the most valuable time to feel productive, no matter how the rest of the year has been; it does not matter if you feel like nothing has gotten done thus far. Forget the past. Look to the future. We can only move forward on this tumultuous boat ride that is exams, not backwards, so do not let yourself sink!  

Good luck!

Written by: Izabela Dhinoja