The single most common piece of advice I’ve given is to take the day off before your exam. Don’t study. Don’t go to work.
Rest your brain.
Don’t drive in traffic. Nothing that is annoying and stresses you out.
Rest your brain.
You’re going to need it.
I’m also pretty sure that it is the least followed thing I teach. I get emails from people about how they were listening to the show on the way into their exam all the time.
“What?!?!?! Are you kidding? I’m flattered, but it’s a total mistake.”
I think you just can’t resist. You’ve been studying for so long you don’t know how not to.
If you’re sitting around, you can’t help but think, “I could just study a little.”
Today, what I’ve got for you are 60 things you can do on your day off that will help your brain recover and be ready to work when you take your test. 60 things that will keep you busy and rejuvenate you rather than drain you.
Here we go:
- Shoot hoops on your own
- Shoot hoops with a friend
- Play with your cat and a piece of string
- Watch other people play with their cat and a piece of string on YouTube
- Go for a bike ride
- Go for a swim
- Clean the house
- Polish the silver
- Clean the garage
- Dust everything
- Rent a carpet steamer
- Paint an extra bedroom (nothing too intense here, not the kitchen or anything like that)
- Mow the lawn
- Plant flowers
- Mulch the flower beds
- Chop down a tree with an axe
- Wash all of the bedding and towels in the house
- Reorganize your kitchen drawers
- Play solitaire for real, not on the computer
- Bake cookies
- Cook a really nice dinner
- Walk around a bookstore or library for fun and don’t even look at the cubicles
- Go to the movies
- Go bowling
- Go roller skating (but be careful, it’s way harder than I remember)
- Pick apples
- Paint a pumpkin
- Draw on the sidewalk with chalk
- Go for a long walk – at least an hour and no headphones
- Write a short story
- Mop the floors
- Wash your car
- Practice juggling
- Clean out your car
- Hammer nails into wood (You’re not building anything, just pounding nails)
- Cut wood with a saw ( You’re not building anything, just sawing wood for its own sake)
- Go to a shooting range
- Go for a long run
- Play the piano
- Play the guitar
- Play Rockband on Xbox
- Walk through a garden store or nursery
- Clean out your email
- Sort Christmas ornaments
- Build a castle out of a very large box
- Pull weeds
- Play Jenga
- Throw sticks into a river or stream and watch them float away
- Peel hard-boiled eggs
- Clean under your bed
- See how high you can stack rocks before they fall over, then beat that number
- Go to the batting cage
- Go to the driving range
- Play miniature golf (the real thing is too stressful)
- Frisbee golf
- Find a body of water to put your feet in
- Fly a kite
- Go somewhere that you don’t have study materials and listen, actually listen, to your favorite album, musical, whatever
- Read a novel. The trashier the better (physical book is better than kindle)
- Have lunch with a friend who knows nothing about your exam and don’t mention it. Talk and laugh.
You can see that it takes a little planning. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. In our turned-on, plugged-in lives it takes work to do nothing. Amazing but true.
You can see the theme here. Nothing stressful. Nothing hard. Physical and outside is best.
Plan this day well in advance. It’s important.
Of course, before you can take the day off before an exam, you have to be comfortable that you’ve finished studying. You have to be comfortable that you’ve covered enough material.
I’ve got some things that will really light your socks on fire when it comes to studying. You’re going to want to read through this issue of the Physician Assistant Exam Scholars newsletter a few times. It might just be the key you’ve been looking for.
Find out more here:
Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian Wallace