When Lucy asked whether 9 hours was an appropriate amount of time to study I was to say the least, fairly shocked. 9 hours!

I had a number of concerns with the suggestion that a student should study for 9 hours. Firstly, to maintain concentration for 9 hours will be extremely difficult if not impossible. While you may sit down at your desk for the whole 9 hours and be ‘studying’, your actual output will be considerably lower due to diminishing returns on time.

As a result, you will likely have significant amounts of ‘dead time’, which involve you neither studying, or relaxing, but simply sitting at your desk, for the sake of clocking up the relevant amount of hours.

Secondly, maintaining these sort of hours for two weeks of holidays will likely lead to burn out. If you place these two holidays in the big picture, you will have two weeks of holidays, 2 weeks of school prior to exams, and at least a 2 week period of intensive exams.

This means you will have to maintain peak focus, motivation and study for a 6 week period. 9 hours days in the first two weeks makes maintaining this degree of study very difficult across the period. This runs the risk of you simply coming to a complete halt in your study come trials.

So, how much should you be studying. This really depends on how much work you need to complete. Your focus should be on output this holiday with study hours simply being a guide to reflect the degree of work you need to complete.

If you have lots of work to do, you may on occasion need to study up to 9 hours (I would not make this a regular thing). On the other hand, you may be on top of your work, and 4 hours is sufficient.

In my experience with working with students, I usually find however that 6 hours is sufficient. It allows a high level of output, and is not too long so that procrastination and lack of concentration occur.

All the best,

Rowan