First tip:
Make sure you’re actually studying, not “studying”.
Actual learning happens when you’re focused and your concentration is optimal. Focus and concentration decrease over time spent studying. Taking strategic breaks is likely the most effective way to boost your focus while studying.
Here’s a student’s performance over time, while studying. Notice how the “performance” sort of goes down after a while. Let’s define productivity as being student performance X minutes spent. In this chart, productivity would be the surface area below the graph line, all the way down to OX, which is basically a definite integral of the function of the graph line, but that’s not something you need to know.
Here’s what happens when you take a “strategic break”. You do waste some potential productivity, highlighted with red, but you also increase your performance, and you actually gain supplementary productivity, highlighted with green.
Here’s what happens when you take several “strategic breaks”. Same as above, only that now you get even more “supplementary productivity”, highlighted by green.
Now imagine that the total time spent on studying isn’t 60 minutes, but..4–6 hours. Can you see where this graph is going over 4–6 hours?
The total amount of “productivity gained” by the use of strategic breaks over a longer period of time is actually higher than the total amount of productivity gained for a shorter period of time. I don’t have a graph for this, but basically, what it means is that strategic breaks are even more awesome if you study for more than 1 hour.
How to use strategic breaks?
Place a timer on your table when you start studying. Stop it when you feel your attention’s drifted a way from studying. Take a 2 minute break. Start another “lap” of studying. Stop the timer again when your attention begins to drift away. Do so a couple of times, average these times, and discover your “maximal productivity window”. In our graph, it’s somewhere around 15 minutes or less.
Depending on what you’re studying and how much focus you need, I’d argue 5–15 minutes for a “maximal productivity window” is optimal. Some people, from experienced meditators to some professionals in which focus is key (surgeons), can go for hours in this maximal productivity windows. Most of my students, however, have a 2–5 minute maximal productivity window. Doesn’t matter, what matters is you can extend this over time, with practice, but knowing where you’re at now is the smartest thing you can use to increase your productivity. Why?
Because you can sort of pre-schedule “strategic breaks”, or simply use your will and attention to know it’s time to take a “strategic break”.
You’re effectively tripling your study time, as pertaining to overall productivity.
Take this example:
Jon Snow and Robb Stark. Robb spends 12 hours learning valyrian, every day for a week. Jon Snow uses strategic breaks and does the same studying in about 3–4 hours a day. :)) He clearly does know something.
Second tip:
Charting your studying and the “3 day rule”.
I got this after searching for a “Tree of Knowledge” pic.
Your brain is amazing! It can do all sorts of amazing things. A lot of how it does amazing things has to do with visual thinking. Visualisation is, on average, one of the most effective techniques for understanding/memorisatio
Aside from a lot of ways to use visualisation to better understand what you’re studying, such as mind maps, flow diagrams etc..
You should really try charting your “what am I supposed to study”. You don’t even need to try all that hard, most material you’ll ever going to study already provides you with a very useful tool:
the summary/table of contents/syllabus:
- This is my personal opinion here, but the best approach towards studying a large chunk of material is to memorise the table of contents. Then it’s all easy, similar to picking “apples” from a “tree”, because you’re basically organising all that you’re learning into that “tree”- your table of contents.
- you can extend the table of contents to have subtopics and subsubtopics and so on, until you basically have a “tree” of all there is to know about that thing that you’re studying. And somehow, magically, it’s easier to remember.
- this actually helps me remember more or less the contents of about 20 000 pages of legal literature. I’m not saying I know it by heart, but I can paraphrase most of it easily, just by thinking at it’s “tree” and visiting a branch, a smaller branch, the smallest branch and boom, I get what I need.
- sometimes, what you study has a lot more to deal with a process, or a “logic”/algorithm, and visualisations help with that too.
:D With some subject matters, it’s not enough to have the “tree” of it all in your head, simply because there’s one way the subject matter is organised, and there’s another way in which various areas of the subject matter touch each-other. This means you also need to add such connectors or make mini trees for each of these processes.
Let me give you an example:
Criminal law in my jurisdiction is a very simple and symmetrical tree. It has 1 main trunk, principles, application of criminal laws and the definition of what a crime is, is not etc, that flows into 2 branches, one describing elements of crimes, sanctions, calculating sanctions, what happens with more than 1 crime being committed by the same person, other measures etc .. the other branch being particular crimes, definitions, what they are, what their specific sanction interval is, is the attempt sanctioned etc
However, I need to “know” this tree, as well as smaller ‘trees’ or “conditions”. This is because it’s tougher to go about checking for which crimes the attempt is sanctioned by going through the tree, when I can simply have a “record” of which crimes don’t sanction the attempt (shorter list) and why, sprouting out like a little tree next to the large tree.
That’s why civil law’s a f***ing Amazonian forrest =)) if you ask me.
This is how a mind map of civil law basically looks. The river is just a stream of a bodily manifestation of your anxiety.
The 3 day rule is something special. It means that if you have a lot of stuff to study, you should divide your work into chunks coverable in about 3 days, with a “rehearse day’ 3 days later.
Let me explain:
Let’s say you have to study something that has 3 major “chunks”. “Chunks” can be chapters, or several chapters that basically cover a certain topic/larger aspect. Branches of my “tree”, if you like.
I’d go about it like this:
- Take 1 chunk and spend ~ 3 days on it, ending with a “rehearsal”/”summary of what I’ve studied” at the end of every day, as well as at the end of the 3rd day.
- I’d move on to the next “chunk” and do the same thing as with the previous chunk.
- It’s been 6 days so far, now I’m going to spend 1 day on rehearsing the first chunk, for the first half of the day, and the second chunk, for the second half of the day
- It’s been 7 days so far, now I spend the next 3 days studying the 3rd chunk, the same way I studied the first chunk.
- It’s been 10 days so far, now I spend 1 day rehearsing the 1st and 2nd chunk, for the first half of the day, then the 3rd chunk, for the second half of the day.
- It’s been 11 days so far, now I spend the 12th day rehearsing everything twice, in a sequence ( 1–2–3 chunks, 1–2–3 chunks).
- Perfect, I’m probably a lot better at knowing what I studied than if I would’ve simply covered it differently.
If Jon Snow would follow the same path, he’s likely going to really do much better than Robb Stark, knowing a lot more than nothing.
Why 3 days? Apparently it’s because of neural adaptation:
Neural adaptation | Wikiwand It takes about 3 days for your brain to adapt to stuff.
Rehearsing stuff you study is also beneficial for long-term knowledge.
Third tip:
Be incisive and question everything.
Whatever it is that you’re studying, do it critically. Think about it and asks yourself questions. Why is thing X like this? Etc
However, do it smartly.
With some stuff, it clearly doesn’t help if you start critical thinking too soon. First stage is to try to understand what it says, then to start critically about it. Here’s what I do, particularly with “large chunks of material”. I go through it and read it, more or less how I’d read a newspaper. I get a “general feeling” of what it’s about. Let my mind wander about. Speed is key here, all I want to achieve is a general picture of what I’m about to learn. I’m not learning, I’m just trying to reduce the total amount of dumb questions I could ask myself before actually getting to the point where such questions are answered trivially.
I’m also writing down some questions that I have, or highlight some stuff I think is important, but I do very little of highlighting, it doesn’t serve much of a purpose.
IF you’re studying for an exam, you probably already went to a class on that topic, and have already went through the “familiarisation phase”, so there’s no need to do it again. You probably already have some sort of “tree” in your head about it anyway.
But seriously, question everything. Try and figure out the minimal amount of questions which, when answered, provides you with the highest output/knowledge. Questioning also helps you assimilate: When you answer yourself, you actually re-enforce segments of the material you’re studying, and accommodate them to pre-existent knowledge. You’re doing a good job at fitting in stuff in your luggage.
There’s a lot more to this point, particularly since it helps with training the overall length of your ‘maximal productivity window’. You’re effectively making your brain work more and it’s a lot like working out your body: your overall performance does improve.
Fourth tip:
Use cheatsheets.
Suppose you have a lot to study, a limited amount of time, and some stuff just doesn’t flow right in your head.. Take 1 sheet of paper and try to fit in it whatever it is you don’t understand/can’t remember and you think you’d need for your exam. Think about what you’d like on that paper so that you can maximise your results. For stuff like math, most people put formulas on the cheatsheet.
Here’s the trick: go through several iterations of a cheat sheet, re-do it, again and again and you’ll see how you progress at “fixing” some things you don’t understand, simply because you want to fit in something more important/difficult on your cheatsheet.
Another way to go about it is to simply use several cheat sheets from the very beginning, and try to reduce it all to 1 sheet of paper eventually. Then, spend some time on that ultimate cheatsheet and see what you can eliminate. point is, if you have it there, that’s one piece of knowledge you clearly need and don’t have. How long does it take you to memorise/understand/learn to use what’s on 1 sheet of paper :)). You’re done.
Fifth tip:
Strip away the unessential.
This is presumably a Bruce Lee quote about eliminating dead-weight and transforming yourself into a mean lean killing machine.
It also applies to studying:
Be a minimalist. Clear every distraction. (Facebook, Quora, TV, phonecalls etc)
In fact, put some of the books you have away.
You only need 1 thing, your eyes can only focus on 1 thing, pick that thing and use that thing, nothing else.
Your focus is something you use to maximise your productivity. So make sure your focus is qualitatively as good as you can produce.
General tip:
This cool guy is the Vitruvian man, meaning he was drawn by Leonardo while taking into account some ideas about proportions expressed by another guy, Vitruvius. The dude in the chart is well exercised, well rested, probably sleeps well and :)) studies very effectively.
Just kidding, but seriously: Eating well, exercising regularly, sleeping well, adding power naps.. these all contribute to your performance.
Breathing techniques can help you calm down, increase your focus, do all sorts of amazing things.
Look into actual breathing techniques. I particularly like the “boxed breathing method”, In-5 seconds, keep-5 seconds, out-5seconds, keep 5 seconds. Keeps you calm and steady. But figure out what works for you.
Try and explore what’s out there, and you’ll have better success at improving yourself.
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