How to study 12+ hours per day without hurting your

[ehrenfest]

Exercising or taking breaks from studying is not a waste of time. Spending 12+ hours a day on a desk studying is a waste of time. Life's too short to have your head into a book 24-7. Your health is by far more important than your studying. If you don't want to make friends and be remotely social, that's fine, but you can't live a healthy life of sitting down and studying the entire day.

If the reason that he is studying is that he is ambitious and eventually wants to get out of his chair and perhaps get out of a university that is not very stimulating and make important discoveries, I think it is fine to be reclusive. If on the other hand, he is just studying because he hates the world, that is probably not good. There are a lot of college campuses where it seems like everyone is set on maximizing their alcohol consumption, minimizing their learning, and caring enough about their careers only to graduate. If he is at a college like this, I would say ignoring the social scene is not a bad idea.

BTW, I have heard that there is a limit to how much your brain can remember from a day's worth of studying, and twelve hours of studying is probably pushing that. Make sure you break up your time between learning new things and doing practice problems.

 

[mathboy]

Back to the topic: Someone mentioned studying lying down. Have you tried that? Personally, whenever I'm not writing, I'm lying down on my bed.

Yes, I've found that I sometimes have to lie down sideways on the sofa to read to relieve my sitting problems. But it only works if I'm only reading. When I want to write out my solutions (which is most of the time), I can't lie on the sofa anymore.

 

[mathboy]

BTW, I have heard that there is a limit to how much your brain can remember from a day's worth of studying, and twelve hours of studying is probably pushing that. Make sure you break up your time between learning new things and doing practice problems.

Good point. I learn about 1 section per day, which is not much, because I spend about 11 of those 12 hours doing problems from that section.

 

[eastside00_99]

Good point. I learn about 1 section per day, which is not much, because I spend about 11 of those 12 hours doing problems from that section.

Its comendable really: my personal hero had similar habits as you and kept it up for over 10 years of his life. Later he left mathematics though.

I would recommend, just to get some yin in your yang, that you read an interview by J.P. Serre to see what his experience of working on mathematics has been like. I don't think being a mathematician is about having encyclopedic knowledge of mathematics; to me, it is about playing with ideas, expressing them, re-expressing them, talking about them with others!, and so on. That's what I worries me is that you are not playing with the ideas.

To being on the level of a Harvard grad after a year: all I can say is yeah right! Being in the same class doesn't mean you are on the same level; I can sign up for Midevil French Literature 3 but doesn't mean I am on the level of Ezra Pond. Besides, four years of idle playing with mathematics combined with some solid study far outshines 1 year of straight study just in experience alone.

 

[aXiom_dt]

its really surprising to see how many people are willing to discourage a individual from making something of themselves on a physics forum

 

[NerfMonkey]

its really surprising to see how many people are willing to discourage a individual from making something of themselves on a physics forum

Yes, I agree; your post is a perfect example of why we need to encourage people to devote more time to studying (especially in the grammar department).

 

[hrc969]

To being on the level of a Harvard grad after a year: all I can say is yeah right! Being in the same class doesn't mean you are on the same level; I can sign up for Midevil French Literature 3 but doesn't mean I am on the level of Ezra Pond. Besides, four years of idle playing with mathematics combined with some solid study far outshines 1 year of straight study just in experience alone.

If you read my post carefully I never said I was at the same level as him, just in the same class. But this depressed him because he felt I was more advanced than he was when he was my age (and hence that I was smarter than him) and I was at a public school and he had been at Harvard. Also class in question is my proposed research area and while I might not be at the same level overall I probably surpass him in that are now in that particular area. Plus I have gained much more experience since then. Our respective fields are different so we can't really compare. However, just as ΔxΔp≥ћ/2 mentioned there are people that realize that someone is smarter than them and let them affect them negatively, I have also seen this and thought I would share my experience.

 

[Poop-Loops]

Get some exercise and take time to eat dinner. 15 minutes isn't enough to enjoy it.

Getting an hour of exercise somewhere in there will revitalize your brain and let you learn more. So even though you won't spend as much time learning, your brain will be working better, at least making up for it, plus your body doesn't deteriorate.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

I don't see how one can only do one thing for 12 straight hours.
I mean the maximum one can do for straight hours is for 8 hours (and it's usually for sleeping).
You are ofcourse overexaggerating about your learning time span at home.

And if you really mean it, so get a life kid.

 

[malawi_glenn]

yes, its not all about the amount of time you study, it is quality and what you are study. Go to lectures and lessons etc, get to know your classmates and some teachers.

We also mean: what kind of math are you studying now?

 

[RufusDawes]

Do you have Asperger's?

Hes studying engineering, was that a rhetorical question ?

 

[Sojourner01]

How do you study 12+ hours per day without hurting your bum?

Here's an answer: Don't.

If you're spending that long on a satisfactory-or-better amount of academic achievement, you're wasting time; working hard, not smart. Prolonged seclusion and inactivity is not at all good for you, and behavioral and even neurological problems can creep up on you from extreme isolation. The rest of the world runs to the beat of a different drum to that of study and reflection, and shutting it out just doesn't work.

I feel I'm wasting precious time. I'm being serious here.

It's a waste of time because you are wasting it, if I may be frank. Can you guess what the reaction of most of the truly visionary mathematicians to your approach might be? Probably "Get a life". Most people senior to you will have no problem with casting you aside and choosing to associate with someone else for having an overly anal attitude to one particular aspect of the field.

In my experience, obsessive study is associated with the following personality traits:

- Lack of social graces
- Inability to communicate ideas effectively
- A wholly unjustified superior attitude that places one at odds with one's peers
- Tendency to fly off on tangents that are unconstructive and a waste of everyone's time

None of these will help one iota in achieving anything meaningful in your life.

 

[CompuChip]

its really surprising to see how many people are willing to discourage a individual from making something of themselves on a physics forum

Nobody is discouraging anybody, in fact, I wish I had the patience to sit and study for even 6 hours straight.
Medical fact is, that sitting without physical activity for 12 hours is not healthy. Fact is, that not having any social contacts at all is not healthy.
I know from experience that it can be hard not to fall in both those traps, but you really should try.

Sorry to repeat everyone else in this topic, but if you don't want to become a 30-year old hermit with 90% chance to get a heart attack or severe thrombosis before your 40th birthday, you should really take the advise given.

 

[plutoisacomet]

Adderall or Ritalin will make anyone study 12+ hours.
That's the mark of a PHD(Post Homicidal Depression) candidate.
So who needs social contact anyway? Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Whitman, and Theodore Kaczynski did fine with little human contact. LOL

 

[CompuChip]

Don't forget this guy

 

[mathboy]

Don't forget this guy

Who is he?

 

[plutoisacomet]

Yeah, I remember him. It's so easy even a cave man can do it!

 

[mathboy]

Ok, what if I spend 3-4 hours per day doing something else (that's not studying or sitting down) and then spend 8 hours per day studying instead. Is that ok then?

 

[plutoisacomet]

Actually guys I work full time, so I put in about 6 hours per day on Saturday and Sunday and about 2.5 hrs per day during the week.

 

[plutoisacomet]

yeah, that's fine mathboy. Or just keep your current schedule as is from Monday to Friday and commit the weekends to your friends and family 100%

 

[mathboy]

Actually guys I work full time, so I put in about 6 hours per day on Saturday and Sunday and about 2.5 hrs per day during the week.

A person working full-time and has no kids to take care of can still put in 8 hours of studying per workday (and this is without hurting yourself since you are still active during the day at work).

 

[dotman]

A person working full-time and has no kids to take care of can still put in 8 hours of studying per workday (and this is without hurting yourself since you are still active during the day at work).

Not really. You're neglecting some or all of the following:

-- travel time to and from work
-- meals
-- personal grooming
-- sleep
-- full time != 8 hr/day (oftentimes, ~10 or up is more the case)

And that's just off the top of my head.

It's simply not sustainable. Have you actually worked full time and tried this? Or are you just talking out of your you-know-what?

 

[Ki Man]

Back to the topic: Someone mentioned studying lying down. Have you tried that? Personally, whenever I'm not writing, I'm lying down on my bed.

I suggest you steer away from this if you happen to be tired and are studying after dusk though

 

[aXiom_dt]

Yes, I agree; your post is a perfect example of why we need to encourage people to devote more time to studying (especially in the grammar department).

that, on the other hand, is less surprising

 

[eastside00_99]

http://www.simonsingh.com/Fields_Medallist.html"

 

[Jax]

This is a serious question, even though it may sound funny: How do you study 12+ hours per day without hurting your bum?

Maybe it's worth your while to seek the advice of a doctor or physical therapist.

Perhaps your pain is due to poor posture causing too much load on certain muscles that are either weak or not acclimated to endurance. In this case, you could do exercises such as (powerlifter) squats or romanian dead lifts to strengthen your hamstrings, glutes, and back muscles. You could easily listen to audio lectures on an ipod while working out; go to iTunesU for free audio/video lectures. Listening to lectures after you've read on a subject will help to understand the material better anyways.

Or, it is possible that you have poor blood circulation. You could also use a bike machine at a local gym and use an ipod to view video lectures at the same time. Endurance road bikers might spend 8 hours on a thin bike seat with little cushion. If you're really hardcore you might use some biker shorts (because the shorts come with padding inside them). If you feel self conscious about wearing spandex-type material, mountain biking shorts have the same cushion but look more like normal shorts on the outside. You might also learn to fidget while you study. Shake your leg rapidly, it's basically like being on an exercise machine at low intensity.

Finally, you could always get out a little bit, like others have said. You could walk to whatever math lab there is on campus and offer to tutor. Tutoring may help you understand concepts better. Not only do you need to know the correct concepts, but you must now also know the correct order to explain them in. There you go, a couple transit breaks that will force you to get out of the house.

 

[lewis198]

Hi mathboy, on a serious note here, you have to think about your health. If you do not exercise for a certain amount of time per day, then your lymph system will not work properly, as well as your circulatory, muscle and bone system. You're setting yourself up for major complications in the future. You need to sweat, and moderately physically tax yourself every day.

 

[lewis198]

Wow, I honestly didn't read the above post. Sorry about that.

 

[Poop-Loops]

Are you people honestly suggesting he go to a doctor because he can't sit on his butt for 12 hours a day?

Humans were never MEANT to do that.

If he had trouble standing on his head for 12 hours a day, would you also tell him to see a doc?

 

[aXiom_dt]

Are you people honestly suggesting he go to a doctor because he can't sit on his butt for 12 hours a day?

Humans were never MEANT to do that.

If he had trouble standing on his head for 12 hours a day, would you also tell him to see a doc?

you're my hero