Do you feel stressed by the IB exam? Does anxiety hit you from nowhere and prevent you from studying & living to the fullest? Perhaps there are habits that are making you feel miserable and preventing you from achieving your maximal potential. Let’s look into what these could be and how to overcome them 
1. Taking All-Nighters Way Too Often
Most people assume it is normal to do all-nighters in order to study. They give you a feel of productivity, pride and satisfaction from what you have achieved in little time. However, these feelings and mostly just fake accomplishments. Studies have linked all-nighters with causing irreparable damage to your sleeping cycle. In most cases they make you feel miserable the next day and in reality aren’t even as productive as you perceive them to be. Just think about the amount of YouTube videos and Facebook posts you have watched when pulling your last one…
2. Not Measuring Your Time
The majority of people don’t set a dedicated time to study for their IB exams. They study when they feel like doing so or when they have no other option because exams are already impending. However, have you heard about the Pomodoro study sessions? The Pomodoro Technique can help you power through distractions, hyper-focus, and get things done in short bursts. Best of all, it’s easy and allows frequent breaks in order to adequately breathe and relax.
- Choose a task that you want to achieve
- Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
- Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
- Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
- Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break (15-30 minutes)
Voila, an easy way of being productive like never before.
3. Chilling on Sundays
“Common, weekends are for having fun, I’ll start on Monday!” says everyone, all the time. However, how about giving yourself a head-start before another week of heavy studying? It doesn’t take much more than 4 pomodoros and they can even be divided into 2 sessions. That’s an hour of deep, focused, uninterrupted study in the morning and another one in the afternoon/evening. You will feel much better about yourself by putting in some work during Sunday, rather then feeling sad on Monday about how much homework you need to do.
4. Valuing Yourself Based on Grades
A common misconception: Grades in school dictate your success in life. Nothing further from the truth! It doesn’t mean you should drop out or stop studying at all. However, by not valuing yourself based on grades a lot of anxiety and stress will fall off of your shoulders. By being more relaxed and not freaking out about a little worse predicted grades than you anticipated, you are giving yourself higher chances of succeeding during the real exam. Less stress and self-judgment allows a calmer and more focused mind which allows you to reach outstanding grades. So stop judging yourself, start a pomodoro timer and deep dive for 25 minutes into some calculus revision for your HL math, you’ll thank us later.
5. Leaving Your Phone On While Studying
But what if a friend hits me up to go chill in the Vondelpark? Well, they’ll wait. There isn’t a worse enemy than a pop-up notification while you are studying for your IB exams. True friends will wait and the probability of world ending during one of your study sessions is pretty low, so keep the phone off. It’s as easy as switching the airplane mode on and getting rid of all the unnecessary distraction. Plus, if you follow the Pomodoro method, you can check it every 25 minutes and believe us, that you will feel so much more focused without worrying about notifications in the back of your mind.
Feels Familiar?
How many of these points sound like a habit that you have? Many of our students struggle with one or few of these habits that give them a hard time succeeding during their IB studies. However, that’s why we are here and why we are connecting past IB students, who have came through all of this with present IB students who will greatly benefit from the older IB peers. You can learn more about our tutoring services here and if you already want to sign-up then then do so here.
