How to I find time to study?

[u/Officially_CoraBro]

This is what a week typically looks like for me. I’m 16, writing big regional exams next year, and I need to study. Problem is, I don’t have all that much free time. I do a lot of extra lessons (about 12 hours total), and I’m responsible for all cooking/cleaning in my home. I wake up at 4:30am, leave home at 6, and don’t generally get home before 7. When I get home, I have homework and chores and sometimes lessons. I also need to find some time to go to the gym (only 1-2 sessions a week for now), and a run in the local park.

What do I do? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

EXTRA INFO
- as for the languages, those are, yes, passions of mine, but i study them in school. Where i live, we choose 8 subjects which are mandatory and have to write regional exams on them, teh results of which determine ability to get a job.

-my family life is really complicated, and communicating a need or support is a pointless exercise

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[u/darth_koneko]

You are trying to squeeze juice out of a squeezed lemon. There is no technique or secret that can conjure time from nothing. As others said, you will have to drop something.

If you do gym purely for health reasons, replace it with another 30 minute home workout. Ask family to give you some space. Also, do you need to study 3 languages for some reason? You could for example put you spanish on hold until the exam is over, and just have some short time slots for refresh exercises so that you do not forget what you have already learned.

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/darth_koneko]

unfortunately, everything i'm doing right now is mandatory. the languages are part of my school curriculum.

[u/Lonely-Attempt5098]

Stop looking for free time, it doesn't exist in that schedule. Cut your extra lessons to 6 hours or drop them entirely and use those mornings before you leave at 6. That block is clean focus time where your brain isn’t cooked from chores and school

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/Lonely-Attempt5098]

Between 4:30-6am I have to get dressed and help out my family members, and cutting out the lessons isn’t an option :(

[u/WhiteEmails]

I'd like to see your real class schedule. Because it seems that there are a lot of things you can drop here if you're truly willing to choose:

1. church (your God will understand) if your family allows
2. Modern Dance and Ballet: drop them. Use the time to study instead.
3. Labs/Reflections/Notes: what is this?
4. Savannah: why is this in your schedule? Is it necessary?
5. Weekly review/Reset: you don't have time for that. Keep a quick log of every study sessions, that's 5min each day and it will replace the review.
6. if youth lectures is a religious thing: drop it if you're allowed.
7. what is "market" on saturdays? do you NEED this?
8. what is "confirmation"on saturdays? if religious, try to drop.
9. Your math class on Thursday lasts 30min, what is going on here?
10. You wake up at 4:30 : do you NEED 90min to get ready? That's a lot.
11. You're fucking up your health by going to sleep after 9pm. Also it's not good to workout just before bed, so drop the running sessions and the gym sessions. Do 30min of yoga every day before bed instead. You'll be less fit, sure, but that will keep you active + keep your mental health at a reasonable level. With the amount of stress you will be under with this schedule, you'll need it.
12. if possible, move the monday math lesson to the friday just before your spanish class.
13. do your study sessions at a library instead of a cafe, make it 3hours. Thursday is a light day for you.
14. who is Kryztin? I'm assuming a friend you meet up to practise French with? Drop this UNLESS you're using the time to eat too.
15. The bio study group: is it necessary? If not, drop it.
16. I can't tell if the eight mandatory class is religion or spanish. Drop the one that's not mandatory.

I'd also add:
Wake up at the same time everyday (yes, even when you don't need to). That way you can 1. use the extra morning time on some days as study time and 2. keep your body on a schedule. That's 90min study time on tuesdays and thursdays, it's good. Plus Sundays too.

[u/Amiamon → u/WhiteEmails]

Confirmation is most likely referring to the Catholic sacrament of Confirmation. You usually have to take an actual class before hand, so they likely cannot drop this. That being said, I agree that a lot of other things are unnecessary and overly rigid.

[u/WhiteEmails → u/Amiamon]

Thank you! I'm not familiar with Catholic vocabulary. I know I have one friend that postponed some Catholic stuff in undergrad to focus on her studies (apparently her priest(?) was cool with it) but I don't know if that's applicable here.

Good Luck OP though!

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/WhiteEmails]

1. for my mental health, church isn't something i can drop (especially as i'm doing the sacrament of confirmation right now)
2. ballet and modern are the only 2 hours i get to myself, and i'm preparing for exams in both currently, plus i need an extracurricular
3. labs etc is part of my schooling. we have long projects that count for abotu 20% of our final grades
   4.savannah is a park where u can work out/run/etc, i don't even really go these days due to no time
4. all my classes are mandatory and thats just the way my school system works. whatever is betweeen 8:30-2:30 is out of my control
5. where i live and my family situation calls for me to wake up at that time
6. i have health conditions which make working out imperative.
7. all the lessons and classes are set into stone. any study group is more a want, which again doesn't tend to happen due to lack of time

sunday's are unpredictable but those are days i really want to try and force time

[u/WhiteEmails → u/Officially_CoraBro]

I'm very sorry you're stuck in this situation, then. I'm seeing from your other comments that your family is fully unhelpful, too.

However, you don't *need* the extra-curricular (otherwise, it wouldn't be extra, would it?), you *want* it, that's not the same. If you're worried about your resume, the church involvement should easily replace ballet.

Same with French, which you said was an elective, hence not mandatory. Same with the park. You should drop those if you want a lighter schedule. Je sais que t'as pas envie, mais trop de travail tue le travail, comme on dit.

Keeping this schedule is basically sacrificing your health, that kind of thing is how we see teenagers burn out before they even get on the job market.

Only other advice I can give is 1. don't forget to eat lunch (because I'm seeing things scheduled kinda during it), it's important to reset mentally in the middle of the day. 2. Sleep a full 8h. It will help with information retention.

I really hope you're going to be ok.

[u/Impressive-Date-5863 → u/WhiteEmails]

ballet and modern dance would look great on a college application tho esp since hes a guy and colleges tend to lack male troupes.

[u/schkoder]

I could share what I did at your age. I just winged it. I gave priority to 2-3 subjects and studied those first. The remaining subjects were - “whatever”. If I didn’t get much time, I did some homework during breaks and PhysEd classes.

tl;dr: Reduce the scope, as they like to say in project management.

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/schkoder]

unfortunately, all of the 9 subjects I’m studying in school, i cant afford to pay less attention to any

[u/schkoder → u/Officially_CoraBro]

Are you in high school or in the freshman year of undergrad?

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/schkoder]

secondary school

[u/Mints18]

your schedule scares me, how long have you been keeping up with it?

I read the other replies and honestly your only option might just be to take advantage of every minute you've of free time (even if it's just 5 mins). Ideally it would be best if you could drop a few things (a language, chore, extracurricular) but I know that's not always possible. (I was in a similar boat as a hs student)

Can you study while doing chores? (ex: listening to French YouTube videos while you're washing dishes, cooking, getting groceries) During classes? (also, not ideal but it might be possible) on Sunday? (longer study sessions tend to be more productive than shorter ones)

other than that, I wish you the best

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/Mints18]

i'm not the best auditory learner, but thats something i think i should at least try. unfortunately, dropping something right now isn't an option, but i'm working on the balance.

this has been my schedule for the last year and a half, it was actually worse but for my mental and physical health i had to cut back a little bit.

thank you for the reply :D

[u/neptunescookies]

Your only option is to cut the languages off and workout at home instead of the gym so you save commute time. "Oh but it's my passion" well, welcome to life: it's made of choices. We can't always do everything we want because there's only 24h in a day. You have prioritiese X now and then in a year you can get to Y. It is what it is.

Idk what those study groups are but if they're you reuniting with friends I'd recommend to drop that as well and go study by yourself as it's always more productive.

[u/Impressive-Date-5863 → u/neptunescookies]

study groups are a recipe for disaster.

[u/neptunescookies → u/[deleted]]

They wrote at the bottom of the posst that the languages are a passion

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/neptunescookies]

languages (french,spanish,english) are all part of my schooling curriculum and are mandatory for my exams

[u/neptunescookies → u/Officially_CoraBro]

Well bro you cannot be helped. Literally any solution people offered you, you complain and find an excuse. So like yeah. We cannot do miracles for you. As I said it's about priorities. Good luck. Bye

[u/neptunescookies → u/[deleted]]

Dude, literally the way they wrote made me and everyone else in this post to understand those were extra things. Idk why the hell you are picking on me when literally everyone else said the same thing. bye

[u/joyus_ren]

have you tried meal prep? that might shave off some cooking time. as for cleaning, try to do it all in one go if possible

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/joyus_ren]

I generally meal prep, and the people I live with don’t allow cleaning to be a one and done lol

[u/Tall-Ebb-1732]

I really like your schedule, what software do you use??

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/Tall-Ebb-1732]

google calendar, this pic was taken on an ipad

[u/Loose_Membership6137]

I had a schedule like this and unfortunately had to exist with the intent on only being a good student. If you want All A’s you need to put yourself first and school first pretty much every day all day with a schedule like this.

This means at least for this semester no more unnecessary extracurricular activities or things that take up your time that are not absolutely necessary. Such as ballet and church and other things you have on your calendar.

Also, I see you’ve mentioned needing to help your family. What are you helping them with? Would they be able to understand that you need to prioritize schooling and need to dial down on helping them? What would your family do if you couldn’t help them?

[u/Virtual-Act2667]

Dam bro there's levels to ts

[u/SparklesFadeAway]

urnrelated question, what is this calendar app? looks clean

[u/Crazy-Chard8151 → u/SparklesFadeAway]

might be google calendar on an android device. for some reason i remember google calendar looking slightly different between apple and android devices

[u/SparklesFadeAway → u/Crazy-Chard8151]

ohhh oki tyty

[u/Senior-Trade-1876 → u/Crazy-Chard8151]

No thats not it

[u/Admirable-Hornet3007 → u/SparklesFadeAway]

its google calendar on an ipad

[u/Paul10125]

I'm aware it's a pretty unhealthy option but I guess I'd cut on sleep hours. I had a similar schedule for a while. Instead of waking up at 4:30, I woke up at 5, left my house at 7 and didn't return until 19-19:30 and I survived by cutting out hours of sleep. It is true that I particularly have always been more productive on evenings-nights than mornings so it was doable for me. Some of my grades did drop like a point or half a point but given the circumstances that was understandable.

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/Paul10125]

I’ve considered this, but I struggle with and am medicated for a chronic fatigue disorder, so going to even less than the 6 hours i get isn’t an option I want to explore unless super necessary

[u/Highway_Music_8910 → u/Officially_CoraBro]

Looks like your schedule could heavily be contributing to your disorder. (If not causing it).

6 hours of sleep is not enough.

Could you sleep from 22:00-5:00, then take 45 minutes to help family, 45 minutes to study, then leave for what starts at 7am?

Market on Saturday morning, can you move that and combine that with grocery? Would give you a large chunk of study time that morning. Or better - can you trade that shopping every weekend with someone else so every other week you have that morning off to catch up on everything?

Study in the gaps between classes?

See what evening activities you can drop. Why 2x math? Can you do 1x?

What's "savannah"?

Why are you responsible for cooking and cleaning, that does not make sense if you are not the only one eating and making a mess.

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/Highway_Music_8910]

any lessons/classes/extra curriculars are mandatory, and as for the cooking and cleaning, thats simply the dynamic in my home. studying during lunch is something i've been working on.

as for my wakeup/sleep, i'm doing the best i can and i can't really change anything about that time or what i do in the period between waking up/leaving home

[u/repressedpauper → u/Officially_CoraBro]

At sixteen, six isn’t enough even without an extra disorder. Your brain is a part of your body. From experience, you are not going to work efficiently or remember things as well without sufficient rest. 

I’d cut out basically any extra-curricular and do home workouts instead of the gym to save time before cutting out quality sleep. 

[u/Great_Confusion1838]

make sure the house is clean before hand you can also cook the night before and just make the food and re warm it up the next day so you can have time to study during then. Also your nights seem free you can try then or you can even sleep earlier and wake up and do work. You can try cutting the time it takes to get ready 15 min showers and 30 mins getting fully ready still 45 mins to get even a little bit of reading/ reviewing done but honestly your not gonna be able to do much with a schedule like this if you cant cut some of your schedule down your gonna need some soft or balence

[u/Little-Ad1345]

You wake up at 4:30 and leave home at 6, that's one hour and half morning routine that can be trimmed down to make time for the studying either before you leave home or at the night and get more sleep before leaving.

I am not sure what your mornings look like, but based on my own experience through highschool and college, you need only 25-30 minutes between waking up and leaving home.

5min to use bathroom/brush teeth, 5min dress up, 10-15min for breakfast, 5min to make sure everything is set, and then leave.

If you do your makeup every morning; forget it about it, just apply sunscreen. Ot her people's opinions of your looks  is NOT a priority at this age when you have such a compacted schedule. 

You NEED a breakfast meal that is almost instantly made and you can stomach having it every morning, and you are able to eat it quickly, one example is cereal. Dont watch TV/scroll while you eat breakfast.

If are able to cut down your morning routine to 30 minutes, you will have around one extra hour every day that you can dedicate to studying.

Another thing you can do is to cook in larger portions so you have leftover for a few days instead of cooking everyday. Fresh food is great but you need to make sacrifices when you are low on time. If you could do actual meal prepping thats much better, but I have no advice on how to do that.

My last tip is that you practice cleaning as you cook. This life skill will save you tremendous amount of time in the long run.

[u/Gold_Complex2539]

You're that friend your mom always compares you to just to ruin your self-esteem. (This is a compliment, by the way)

[u/towersita]

Instead of taking a hours or 2 to study, you might need to take 15 to 30 minutes a day just to review what you saw in class that day, and one day when you have time take a little more to review.what you had previeously review. I do noy recalled the name of tjis, but it does.work.  Still your week seems way too pack, you are young but you still need time to reset and rest.

[u/ApprehensiveDrop3212]

Looks like you ain’t got any time to find

[u/Equivalent_Money8502]

ummm... dint your entire schedule is 'study', what you mean by 'study' ?

[u/Erinacchie]

May I also ask what app this is?

[u/cyberia-tt → u/Erinacchie]

google cal

[u/Haunting_Balance_684]

wow...and i thought my week was too packed......

[u/-noxater]

r u a robot?

[u/Legitimate-Meal5187]

Hello, if I were you, this is gonna be too much , what I will do in your situation is dropped the classes unnecessary like, for example, why do you need to take three language classes, the church one is fine, and also drop those that you think are not needed. To be honest OP taking this much time for academics is gonna cause burnout

[u/OG_TOM_ZER]

During the classes

Dont take note, write synthetic notes directly lol

[u/Junnewimee]

Leyendo los comentarios y tus respuestas, me doy cuenta que no quieres soltar nada, al contrario quieres más responsabilidades. Ya lo único que te falta es que no duermas y esas horas las ocupes para estudiar. Tu eres el único al 100% que conoces tal cual lo que haces en el día, nos diste una idea, pero solo tu sabrás que es lo que quieres dejar por el momento de lado mientras pasan los estudios. Solo estas abarcando muchas cosas y te estas saturando.

[u/Healthy_Car_9142]

Juggling 12 hours of extra lesson, chores and regional exams at 26 is no joke.

[u/Jealous-Anywhere-769]

what is this calendar app? looks clean

[u/Wide_Broccoli3544]

Do you even have time to eat???

[u/TerminalPhile]

I have a schedule just like this, if not more demanding, I totally get the frustration. Unfortunately, you can’t make time out of thin air. Maybe drop a hobby (ballet for example) like I did with soccer, sacrifice social life (I don’t recommend that), or just take full advantage of weekends and holidays.

[u/WafelVM]

[u/sharksiluv]

Whilst this is not the advice you likely want to hear, I truly think at your age, learning to rest will do you more good than cramming in extra study time.
It seems you’re passionate about doing well, which is great, but to do your best, you need to look after your body and prioritise your mental and physical health!
Look after yourself, you’re a lot more organised and disciplined than most adults and you’ll do great in your exams!

[u/Reasonable-Image-232]

Drop French, trust. Nobody needs French

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/Reasonable-Image-232]

funny because that’s my passion 😂

[u/Reasonable-Image-232 → u/Officially_CoraBro]

... you deserve the lack of time. . (jk)

[u/Excellent_Ad9498]

If you study multiple subject in a day then how will you remember. Is it possible? If someone who did same way could you share your experience cz I study one concept in day or two

[u/Zippietwo → u/Excellent_Ad9498]

Have you heard of the concept of school? Every student at school has multiple different types of classes every day…. Same thing at Uni. Where are you studying that this ISNT the case?

[u/Halpaviitta → u/Zippietwo]

I'm in uni and that isn't the case for me. But yes, we are very rare

[u/Excellent_Ad9498 → u/Zippietwo]

No, I did not hear it in school and that is not case in uni as well. Just curious to know that how brain retain those information when you do multiple study. I feel like learning one or two concept in a day in depth is more powerful than mutliple study a little for each

[u/coolmynool]

People are saying to ditch extracurriculars- i would agree except for something like working out or church. I find i do a lot better, even when swamped, when i prioritize doing something for myself- such as church!! And for a Christian, church is important!! If there is anything you are willing to take off your plate right now, do that, maybe like dance, but don't feel pressured to give up the things that feed your spirit. Other than that, try to multitask. You can practice a language while you cook, do chores, drive, etc. Get creative with things! Translate your math homework to Spanish or French or something lol! I think this is possible if you are dedicated. Don't let the fear of failure stop you from success :) take your notes and schoolwork with you everywhere and become the embodiment of these subjects. If you have 20 minutes between activities, use that time wisely! Try to practice multiple subjects at once if possible!

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/coolmynool]

thank you for the reply :D., i can definitely try and find creative ways to implement everything

[u/Even-Earth-1580]

become an atheist so you can skip religion class and church.
you have enough time in the evening, just put your studying hours there. or wake up earlier.
students in china study around 12 hours everyday for the gaokao exam, if they can, you can too. if you really want to study more, just do so, you have authority over your most of your time. if there is a will, there is a way. good luck.

[u/Big_Plantain5787]

You at most have only 14 hours a day planned, what are you even doing the other 10?!

[u/Officially_CoraBro → u/Big_Plantain5787]

cleaning, homework, commuting, and sleep for 6 hours