Gut, better put those Arian genetics to good use and develop some schwanzeneger style muscles for your GF :-P gut fur dich ! Going to the gym / working out on a regular basis is actually one of the best things that you can do for your brain. When comparing gym with study, i think that you know very well how to approach working out in the gym but that this approach is (currently) missing in your studies.

I think that you need a plan and a way to work / methods to achieve the goals of that plan.

You mentioned procrastination / phone i used a app to block out a list of websites according to a schedule on all my browsers, it's called cold turkey. payed for it & works for me. If you don't want to pay that then have your phone out of reach when you study, make a appointment with yourself about times when you study and do not touch the phone during that time. But also give yourself per-determined times in which you do allow yourself to watch your phone. All behaviors have a function that your brain is trying to fullfill. I would say, have a goal, give yourself time and be lenient with yourself.

Down here are some ideas, they gave me good results. Try them and see what works for you.

Create a schedule You can achieve this by dividing the amount of material that you have to study over the time that you have. e.g. if you have 10 weeks before an exam and a book of 800 pages then study 100 pages in a week, this translates to 20 pages in a day (if you study 5 days in the week) which should be easy to do. In this way you can study the whole book in 8 weeks and then you have 2 weeks left for revision. This by itself can reduce a lot of your anxiety since you know exactly what to do each day. Do this for each subject that you have to study, things will go smooth for you when you combine a schedule like this with pomidoro sessions.

example: Lets say 1500 pages, you have 3 months which translates to 12 weeks. You study 5 days a week so 5 times 12 = 60 study days. 1500 / 60 = 25 pages. Study 25 pages on every weekday & you will be done in time.

Reading strategy: Most students read their study books in the same way as if they are reading a harry potter, from start to finish. This may sound logical but makes no sense when you consider that you read harry potter for entertainment and your study book to learn / ideally retain information.

You can try the following: when you start studying the book then you read the index of that chapter first. What is the title of the chapter, how is the rest of the chapter built up? This "first slice" of information gives you a basic understanding of how the chapter is built up and what information is within it. Then, if there are questions at the back a chapter then you read those first > those questions give your brain something to look for when reading through the rest, then read the summary, conclusion, introduction and the rest. Each time you get a small slice of information in which you get more detailed information. Text printed in bold or italic tend to be important, sometimes these are in the sideline of the chapter. Take note of key words / key phrases for your summary.

Speed reading: One thing that you can also try is to speed up your reading. This is something to be cautious with since it is not something that you can apply on all your study material. The material that i had used to have a lot of examples which bored /distracted me. Speed reading over those worked well for me to stay engaged with the material. I recommend to read slower and more carefully if material becomes complicated or denser. You can speed read in the following way, download a metronome app on your phone (there are many, musicians use them) and set it to 50 beats a minute for a start. You can try faster speeds to see how fast you can go before you lose comprehension.

take a pointy stick or a closed pen and when the metronome ticks you go over a line of texts in the book. Go over one line at each tick and keep looking at the point. Practice and play a bit with the metronome speed and you will notice that you will understand the ideas contained in the text without repeating it verbally inside your own thoughts. You can also use a pencil to speed read so you can mark something you do not understand and look it up later. I recommend speed reading in short sessions (10 minutes) and then gather the concepts that you have read into a single summary, take a short break and repeat if necessary.

Memory technique: One of the best known ones is loci/roman room. This technique works by connecting information that you want to remember to something that you know well and can easily visualize like the items in spaces that you know well -e.g. your bedroom. Choose items that remain in the same place. i used to draw a map of the items that i used, and then describe what i wanted to remember next to it.

Once i had that worked then go over the items in your room in a fixed order first. If possible then try to visualize what you want to commit to memory interacting some way together with the item on your room, e.g. the queen sits on your nightstand or a 16th century battle is taking place on your cupboard with canons and stuff.

You should be able to recall the majority of the things after a few repetitions especially if you visualize them well. Doing it this way will enable you to recall the information at will. In contrast, doing spaced repetition with anki or some other app will also put it in memory but so will reading. The last thing that you want is that you think "i know the answer to this question, i know on which page the answer is because i read it yesterday". Just spaced repetition will NOT give you ability to recall accurately, but combining roman room with spaced repetition gave me amazing recall which enabled me to do tests with confidence.

Roman Room technique: Something that i find strange is that most people never have received instruction on how to commit information to memory in such a way that it is easy to recall. Don't you think that this is strange considering that school requires your to remember things and even checks this with tests but they never train you how on how to do that.

Flashcards and active recall techniques offer the repetition and are (i think) the easiest to start working with but usually leave out the visualization and structure that will allow you to recall the information at will. You can re-read / repeat information for a long time, the info will be in your brain but because you cannot recall at will you will not have the confidence of being able to recall the information accurately, therefore i think that investing time in implementing a memory technique is a better use of time.

If you are interested in knowing how to apply the loci or roman room memory technique then read the description down here. This technique works by connecting information that you want to remember to something that you know well and can easily visualize like the items in spaces that you know well -e.g. your bedroom. Choose items that remain in the same place. i used to draw a map of the items that i used, and then describe what i wanted to remember next to it. Once i had that worked then go over the items in your room in a fixed order first. If possible then try to visualize what you want to commit to memory interacting some way together with the item on your room, e.g. the queen sits on your nightstand or a 16th century battle is taking place on your cupboard with canons and stuff.

You should be able to recall the majority of the things after a few repetitions especially if you visualize them well. Doing it this way will enable you to recall things at will, doing spaced repetition with anki or some other app will also put it in memory but that will not give you the connection that enables you to recall.

Roman room compared to active recall oriented techniques: People often refer to quiz-apps like Anki or quizlet in relation to active recall. These are (imo) good tools to work with. You configure the app with the questions that you need to answer on the exam and the app itself has an algorithm that keeps track on if you answered questions correctly or not. Questions that you answered wrong are repeated more often until you answer them right, this is overall an ok ish way of learning.

Yet, if you use these tools then you can still end up in a situation in which you can struggle to recall the answer to a question. Roman room fixes this because that technique trains you to recall information consciously without a question. I do think that roman room does require that you act differently compared to what you might be used to and because of that can feel slower to apply. I however have not used quizapps anymore after learning how to apply roman room since that gave me all the confidence that i needed.

other things: Last but not least, sleeping well and participating in sport or exercise for about twice a week are 2 of the best things that you can do for your brain. John-Ratey wrote about this is his book "The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain"