Exam season is upon us so instead of biting your fingernails and pulling an all-nighter we’ve teamed up with mindfulness expert Emma Mills to bring you some top tips on how to alleviate exam stress and be prepared.

Psychologists propose that the things we encounter, (like knowledge and exam facts) go in the first instance, into the short term memory (STM). This is a small, very immediate kind of place like the desktop of a computer. If what you encounter is deemed meaningful or useful and if you attend to it in the right way it is then passed on to the long term memory, kind of like a hard drive, where it is stored indefinitely (LTM) until you decide to remember it. The STM is said to be limited in capacity to 7+ or – 2 items, that’s why phone numbers, at least landlines, are often 6 digits long.

If they are are any longer like mobile numbers for example, we tend to intuitively use the block memory tool to memorise them. We say ‘ 01245-434-434, turning what would normally have been 11 items, into 3, albeit 3 blocks of items.

Why is this important? Well, the short term memory is limited and can only attend to so many items.  If you are doing lots of things at once, juggling tasks or thinking about a series of ideas while trying to revise, it will likely interfere with the transfer of information from your STM into your LTM, which is where you want it to be if you want to retrieve it later. There are some psychologists who don’t agree with this model of memory and say that, rather, merely being exposed to something— consciously attended to or otherwise— is enough to facilitate recall at a later date.

This might be the case if you have photographic memory, practice skim reading or feel yourself to be quite omniscient and all knowing. I have seen both of these in action and as you might have guessed, it’s a case of different strokes, different folks at different times.Whichever camp you feel most familiar with, learning meditation can be worth it’s weight in gold, as the qualities it cultivates in a person (like acceptance, non attachment, calm, non-judgement, relaxation, compassion, understanding, creativity, clarity, focus & lateral thinking) tend to be ultra useful in exam type settings.

Here are 8 things to try.

1. Practice one thing at a time in everyday life. When you are doing tea, do tea; when you are having a chat with your friend, have a chat with you friend.

1. Make a list of tasks that need to happen for your revision, sections to revise for etc. Work through each section piece by piece. If you notice the tendency to start flitting between things, just stop and come back to the task at hand. This is also a good tip if you want to get more done at work.

1. Breathing nice and easy, in and out in a conscious way. I try breathing in for 7 and out for 11 out as it’s nice and relaxing for the nervous system.

1. Get into the habit of doing a little meditation each morning. It can help you to build your capacity to concentrate. It’s likely to help you feel more relaxed, whereupon you learn more too. ( can we link here to an article i have written on the subject of meditation for beginners? I think i may have shared one with you before? If not let me know x )

1. Trust yourself. Expectation over the outcome of things tends to be quite a performance killer, in the work I have seen so far. No one knows what’s going to happen next, so prepare well and let go.

1. Enjoy the journey. Rather than going through the motions or seeing your revision as a means to an end, enjoy it for what it i. If you can’t enjoy it at least accept it as part of what seems to be happening in your life right now.

1. I like to do yoga, swimming, walks in nature and other activities to keep me relaxed during study periods. Walking in nature, or at least just being outdoors if you live in the city, is a nice way to settle yourself and gain perspective.  

1. I remember, when I took my degree I became so stressed and my response was to not eat very much. On the other hand, my best friend Rosie, well, her response to stress is cake. It’s quite helpful to come to learn, though observation, your own little ways. I designed a mindful eating programme called Relish, because I noticed that no matter how much food knowledge I had, like following a plant based diet and eating pretty well and having superfood green shakes,  as I have done for many years, come stress time, the old habits returned and they didn’t help the situation. In the programme I have an exercise called the budo response to stress which is very good for this.