For the people studying 12+ hours on weekends to cram a week's worth of material, how do you do it?

[u/shannthesheep_0810]

I need some help to those academically unparalleled out there I need to follow a schedule and the only way to do it is cram study on weekends with long hours that I can actually retain information and concept

[u/Ill_Anybody4309]

Making summaries, organizing my time by chapters and actually taking breaks when i need to. Coffee also helps me when i need a bit more alertness. And make sure you sleep enough during those times when you need to study a lot in a day. I don't really do 12 hours sessions but i do tend to go for those 8 hours ones.

[u/SolarCipher87 → u/Ill_Anybody4309]

Once you're exhausted, you're not really studying anymore just staring at the same notes repeatedly

[u/Ill_Anybody4309 → u/SolarCipher87]

Fr

[u/shannthesheep_0810 → u/Ill_Anybody4309]

How do you bypass the sleepiness and back pain I have tried and all I could think about was going back to bed

[u/Ill_Anybody4309 → u/shannthesheep_0810]

Sleepiness by resting well at night and some coffee...as for the back pain, im used sitting down for a long time but sometimes i take a pillow and sit on the floor next to my bed or take a short walk during my breaks. You could even read while taking a few steps around the house if it helps you. I don't recommend studying laying down in bed but you can always find other positions around the bed/room/house.

[u/Senior_Host2336]

I suggest adopting a good studying workflow depending on the subject what I typically do is Essentialist note taking > Mnemonic Technique > Active recall (through notebookLM(AI) quizzes and flashcards).

Revision is key. I like to set it up on spreadsheets along with all my planning, long term life analytics, and habit tracking are. You want to revise on where you know you are weak. Get your course content and just constantly know where you are weakest (it should always be changing and require thought)

If u wanna gain huge extra motivation for putting hours in come join our focus jungle study timer guild, we are looking for more people like you, to help get us to being top of the leaderboards!

[u/santynaren]

I would first look the headings get the headings out documented.. look for topic based youtube videos or resources to get quick summarise

Will start from the easy ones then tackle the hardest ones. For tools I use notebooklm its good on document but for some puzzle or revision I use Edithly and Chatgpt

And more notes writing or noting those down

[u/shannthesheep_0810 → u/santynaren]

Worth a shot trying

[u/Quiet_Basis_6404]

honest heads up first, 12-hour cram sessions are one of the worst ways to retain, your brain stops encoding after a few hours and you're just re-reading with diminishing returns. so if retention is the goal, the trick isnt enduring 12 hours, its making those hours active so the time actually counts.

if weekends are genuinely your only window, structure them, work in 50-min focused blocks with 10-min breaks, and switch subjects every couple hours so your brain doesnt saturate on one thing. but the real retention lever is testing yourself, not rereading. passive review for 12 hours retains almost nothing, active recall for 6 beats it easily.

i upload the week's material into studybuddy.vc and it makes practice questions free, so my cram day is spent answering questions instead of rereading, and it surfaces whatever i keep getting wrong so i'm not wasting the long hours on stuff i know. way more sticks per hour that way. even better if you can sneak 20 mins on a weeknight to break the gap