docta drey, can you post about a typical week for you in years 1 and 2? did you ever attend lecture? im guessing this implies attendance is optional? what time did you begin your day, how much of it was studying vs listening to lectures, etc? i realize this is personal but it'd be interesting to know your personal schedule.
It is extremely personal and I would say that I am not a very good example of what to expect. Lectures are optional and I basically never went after 1st semester of M1 year. Weeks vary depending on course schedules. Days vary depending on projects due, tests, etc.
I also integrate my studying and reading into my everyday life. It is actually typically pretty uncommon for me to just sit down and study for some given set of time. Don't get me wrong, I do from time to time, but mostly in M1 year. After that it was rare that I would say "Today I study for 6 hours and it will be 2 hours each of immuno, pulm phys, and pharm." Actually, I never really did exactly that either. I never studied the nights before tests and only occasionally covered a few topics for a little bit during the day before a test.
I read a lot, all non-fiction, most of it scientific/medical in nature and integrated that into my daily routine (still do). During M1 year I read ~70,000 pages or so (rough estimate, a lot was articles online). I lived by myself that year, had no internet or TV at home, and basically spent almost every spare minute of my time reading or working out. I tend to stick to primary source data and infrequently use textbooks. I've only flipped through Robbins, I've never actually read a full chapter out of Harrisons, and the only "text" I've actually read cover to cover is Paul Marino's
The ICU Book. In terms of listening to lectures... that was what I tried to minimize the most. I downloaded the podcasts of them and listened at 2x speed just to make sure I didn't miss anything important. I rarely did and if it really came down to it, lecture was the first thing I dropped.
Beginning study days, having study days, and even what to study for me is dictated almost entirely by the idea of time arbitrage. I do what makes sense. If I need to sleep in and catch up, I do. Usually, however, I wake up every day at 6am, regardless of the day or whether I am on holiday or not. And every morning I read science and medicine articles and blogs. I even went on holiday in Cancun last year and would wake up at 6am, sit on the hotel balcony with my coffee, and read articles. If I feel like working out, I do it. If I am bored of a topic I switch it. If I am really grooving on a topic, I've canceled nights out or other pre-planned activities to keep going with it.
The point is, how you go about it is personal. There are a few underlying principles - the biggest ones are to do a little bit of something every day (I am currently at my fiance's family's place for xmas and I spent this morning reading about the National Lung Screening Trial results) and to be willing to block off time and ignore everything except the utmost of emergencies. I actually got a lot of tips from
Study Hacks and wrote my own referenced guide (attached). But you need to find which combination suits you and be willing to change it if it is no longer working.
TL;DR: A few good tips to start from, the biggest is do a little every day, but from there it depends entirely on you and how you function. Try and be efficient and take time to improve efficiency up front rather than do what feels comfortable but is slower. Identifying points to increase efficiency can be tricky.
