There are many parts of the syllabus left but don’t have enough time on your plate? Do you not feel motivated to study because there is too much to study? What if we told you that you could cover twice as much in half the time and be much more efficient? This discussion focuses on the tips and tricks for studying smart and not hard. We will give you ten proven scientific techniques to do that.
Study in chunks:
Studying in chunks increases efficiency during study hours and gives the brain enough time to process the information during the breaks.
Research has shown that if you study for 30 minutes, take a short five-minute break, repeatedly do it three times, and then take a longer break, you will find studying less cumbersome.
If 25 minutes is not your perfect chunk of time, you can increase it to 30 or 35 minutes. How do you find your attention span? Take up a book and start reading. Note the time you start at it. The moment you find yourself getting distracted or dozing off, check the time. That is how you find out the perfect chunk of time you can study while holding up your concentration.
The chances are that when you complete that single chunk of time which could be 25 minutes, for example, you haven’t finished that topic of concept. That will work in your favor because now the Zeigarnik Effect will start acting. According to this effect, the human brain has the capacity to recall incomplete and unfinished tasks more efficiently than complete tasks. So, while you are on that small break from studies, your brain is trying to get adapted to that unfinished topic or concept. Therefore, you will be able to understand it better and more deeply when you get back to it in the second time slot.
20% read and 80% revise:
Sometimes, when we read the entire day, moving from one subject to the other, whether we are using a book or a laptop, we get very bored. Our brain gets so tired that it stops concentrating on the information.
Please read a topic, hide it with your hands, ask yourself a question about what you just studied, and try to answer it from your memory without opening it. Relate it to a concept that you have learned some time back.
Try to formulate your examples for every concept to understand it, and go back and check with your teachers to ensure that your examples are relevant to that concept.
Spaced repetition:
Instead of studying the same pattern of concepts one day, it would be best if you studied one part of the topic and then moved on to the next topic. Come back later or the next day to revisit the concept you studied earlier and complete it. Then move on to the next concept. This way, you will repeat the same concept on different days and at times. This is called spaced repetition.
Your mind learns the concept more deeply when you cover it repeatedly, rather than trying to finish it in a single day by sitting for long hours and trying to cram the concepts. Also, studying different topics and subjects helps your brain to interlink and integrate concepts between topics and subjects, which is a great way to strengthen your understanding.
Notes:
Taking notes is extremely beneficial for students as when they revisit the notes later, they find it easier to rewind the whole lecture in their heads.
A great tip for studying smarter is to do a reading of your class notes as soon as the class is over. You can browse through the notes and add whatever is still stuck in your head but is missing from the notes. When you revisit your notes later, they will be complete. This will enable you to have smart revisions.
Study like a teacher:
Instead of thinking like a student and getting confused with the topic, please think about the topic like a teacher. By doing that, you will begin to anticipate the important questions from that topic and it will also get easier for you to understand it.
Researchers have proved that teaching someone helps you learn better. The tip is to teach-test-mix, which means to teach someone, then test yourself through practice questions or model tests, and mix up your topics and subjects for this exercise. If you don’t find a potential listener, you can pretend to teach it to yourself.
Survey and review:
Before starting to read the textbook, you should survey the topic. Hastily go through it and browse all the topics in that chapter. Then, move on to the questions section. Read the questions once and then start reading the chapter. This will ensure that you read keeping in mind the question pattern. Follow the 20% read and 80% revise tip discussed above when you start reading.
Mnemonics:
Mnemonics are a great way of remembering fact-based information. Researchers suggest that recalling information is easier when connected to other information you already know. You can imagine this memory model as a web of files, where the ones with more connections are less likely to be lost and easier to recall.
An influential theory was published in The British Journal of Educational Psychology in 1976 that put learning in terms of different levels of processing. It suggests learning can fall on a spectrum of surface-level processing, like rapid-fire memorization to deeper processing or linking new information to a known information network, leading to better recall. With mnemonics, you make more of these connections, ensuring better recalls.
Study place:
Some people will suggest you sit in the same fixed place with a table lamp every day to study. But it does not work for everyone.
Some students, especially kinesthetic learners, like to keep their bodies moving and walking while studying. They find sitting in one place boring.
Therefore, where or how you want to study is for you to choose because you know yourself better than everyone else. Once you have figured out where you like to study, stick to that. Do not let other people influence your study choices.
Timetable:
Planning is the best way to study smart. Your brain is more inclined to accomplish a job if it is prepared to do it beforehand.
People who don’t plan rarely succeed. It would help if you plan your week and day and even hours. You will be surprised to find how productive the same number of hours will be if they are well-planned.
Also Read: Ideal Study Schedule When Exams Are Around the Corner
Sleep:
Some students like to study till late, while others prefer to study in the early mornings. Both ways are fine unless your sleep cycle is not getting affected.
A human brain needs at least 7.5 hours of sleep every night to function properly. Sleep acts like brain food and medicine for fatigue and exhaustion. Ideally, 12 pm to 8 am is a great time slot to sleep. Research has proven that the earlier you sleep at night, the better your brain performs, which ensures better grades.
Please do not do all-nighters before your exams. A professor at the Texas College of Medicine, David Earnest, stated that sleep deprivation has a staggering effect on working memory. The brain keeps losing its efficacy with each hour of sleep deprivation. This is because it affects the Hippocampus, the part of the brain central to making new memories.
If you have gone through the whole discussion, you will have decided which steps you need to take and how you need to alter your study plan to make it more efficient. You don’t need to follow every one of these study tips; you can follow the most compatible with your learning style and intelligence to make the most out of your study time.
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