how to cope with stress before exams

- if you're the kind ofstudent who deals with a demanding, ambitious schedule, then it's possible you've experienced feelings of burnout. especially if you'rewatching a video called "how to deal with student burnout." but, what exactly, is burnout? yes it's a series of near perfect arcade racing games that sucked up large amounts of my time as a teenager, but it's also a debilitating state you

don't want to find yourself in. if you're looking for a definition, david ballard of the american psychologicalassociation defined job burnout as "an extended period of time where someone experiences "exhaustion and a lack of interest in things, "resulting in a decline in their job performance." replace job with student, and that definition doesn't lose it's accuracy. but, here's a more practical definition,

everything makes you tired, you don't care about anything, and everything sucks. burnout is characterized by near constant exhaustion, a lack of motivation in everything, frustration, cynicism, and a lot of other different symptoms. it's something that can happen when you're dealing with large amounts of stress for a long period of time, which is something that's, sadly,

all too common for students. here's the kicker though. burnout is a state of being that takes a while to get to. it doesn't happen overnight. and the good thing aboutthis, is that you can recognize the signs that are indicative of burnout, and take steps to prevent actual burnout before it actually happens. the first step in beingable to prevent burnout

is to figure out, what exactly causes it. now a 2006 study at the university of southern maine surveyed 354 students to figure out what the cause of student burnout is. a small percentage reported mental or physical issues to be a cause, and a few others reported that problems with professors were causing their burnout. about 13 percentfelt that it was caused by a lack of personal motivation,

either a lack ofinterest in their major, or as they describein the paper, anoveractive social life. a full quarter of the students surveyed reported outside issues to be the main cause, either family or financial issues, ortime management problems mainly caused by thingslike part-time jobs. however, by far the largest cause reported was assignment overload. a full 49 percent of thestudents who actually

reported feelings of burnout, cited an overbearing, overtaxing course load as the main cause of the problem. so, now that we know some of the common causes of student burnout, we can actually tackle the issue of preventing it or fixing it if you're already feeling it. now, the most importantthing to note here, is that it's essential to recognize the early signs of burnout if you can, and prevent actual burnout before it happens.

you're gonna be much better equipped to tackle these problems if you're not hampered by constant exhaustion, the depressive state that burnout brings. so if you feel like you're on the road to burnout, or you're experiencing some of the symptoms i mentioned before, take that seriously and take steps to prevent what they lead to. that being said,even if you feel

like you're past that point and you're completely burnt out right now, hopefully some of these tips that i'm going to round out the video with, can help you out. my first and foremost tip is, learn from that 49 percent. don't bite off more than youcan chew with your course load. a more general way you could put this, is, think very carefully before committing yourself to over stretching for long periods of time. be willing to challengeyourself, but realize

that you do have limitations, just like the rest of us. and if you go beyond those limitations for too long, there are consequences. now if you've had a look at my free book on earning better grades, you'll realize this is a rewording of the very first tip in the first chapter of the book, which is, don't overload the system. and, speaking of thesystem, my second tip is

to make sure that your system, your brain, and by extension your body, are in working order. a lack of sleep, good nutrition or exercise can put you in a non-optimal state. and when you're in a state like that you're less able todeal with the challenges of your schedule, and also, things that can cause burnout. a third tip is to make sure that you're organized. i've found in my life that if i feel unorganized,

if my task-management systems are full of tasks that i don't need to do anymore, and everything just seems messy, it causes a lot of undue stress which can lead to feelings of burnout. so if you're feeling like this, maybe take a day, or a weekend to clear out your task-management systems, get all that entropy out of there, clean your room, and make sure that, going forward, you feel like

your life is organized. another tip, and i think this is a really important one, is to make sure you're taking breaks. get away from your school or work life on a regular basis and give yourself some time to relax. now, as i've talked about in a previous video, when you're taking breaks, you wanna make sure you're having high-density fun. don't just go on reddit or facebook

and give yourself, like, ten minutes away from your work, actually schedule some time to completely separate yourself from your work life, and find something else you enjoy. you also wanna make surethat your work or school can't seep into that break time, that it's sacred. as an entrepreneur, i've found that, in particular, my email is something that can seep into my break time. so i make sure that my phone has no notifications on it, and i make sure i only check email at

certain times of the day. that way my breaks are actually relaxing. now, small breaks should be a regular occurrence in your schedule. there should be little ones each day, and then you shouldgive yourself some time each week to really unwind. however, sometimes,that alone, isn't enough and you might need a longer break.

part of the reason i took my three week vacation to japan, is because i wasstarting to feel some of the early signs of burnout. making a video and four different podcast episodes each week was really starting to be taxing, and i just needed some time to unwind and not have to work. now that i've had thatbreak, my mind is reset, i'm energized again, andi'm ready to jump back into making videos and podcasts.

now, related to taking breaks, i find that it's useful to have a hobby or pursuit where you can feel a sense of progress when you do it. for me, at least, ifind that taking breaks that only consist of consumption of media, like movies or video games, which is, honestly what a lot of people do, is not enough. so, instead, i think it's good to take

at least some of those break times to do something that hassome progression to it. my next and final tip isto simply ask for help. you don't have to do this alone. and if you're in college, there's probably somebody on your campus whose job it is to help you deal with stress related issues. even if there isn't, ormaybe you don't want to, talking to friends or family about

what's causing your stress can really help you relieve it. so, that's it for this video. hopefully these tips will help you deal with some of the feelings of burnout that you may be feeling,and we will be dealing with more stress related topics in the future, on this channel. in the meantime, if you've got other tips for dealing with burnout,

that i didn't mention in this video, feel free to leave themdown in the comments. and i will see you next week. (upbeat electronic music) - [thomas frank voiceover] hey guys, thanks so much for watching my videoon dealing with burnout. now, if you wanna get new videos every single week on being a more effective student, then you can click that big red

subscribe button right there. if you want, you can also get a free copy of my book on earning better grades, by clicking the book's picture. and if you want to find links and other resources that i used to research this video, you'll find them atthe companion blog post that you can get to by clickingthe orange logo right there. if you missed my last video, it was the conculsion to my accelerated japanese learning challenge,

and you can click the thumbnail to watch it. and if you would like toconnect to ask questions or have ideas for new videos, you can find me on twitter @tomfrankly, or leave a comment below. thanks.

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