Study Smart Not Hard
What if I told you that
you could cover twice as much in half the amount of time and be much more
effective today. I'm going to tell you how to study smart and not hard and give
you proven scientific techniques to do that.
Study in Chunks
The Pomodoro Technique
says you should study for 25 minutes take a five-minute break and then repeat
this three times over and then take a longer break but 25 minutes may not be
your perfect chunk of time. So how do you find your attention span I would take
up a book and start reading and the moment I find myself getting distracted or
dozing off I'll press that timer and bingo that's my perfect chunk of time. Now
chances are that when you complete that single chunk of time which could be 25
minutes for
Example, you haven't
totally finished that topic of concept and that's actually a good thing because
now the Zeigarnik effect will come into play which states that
“the human brain tends
to remember incomplete and unfinished tasks much better than it does completed
tasks”.
So while you take that five-minute
break your brain is going to process that unfinished task or concept and when
you get back to it in the second lot of 25 minutes you're going to have much
more clarity.
20% read 80% Recite
Sometimes I find that we
read the entire day we go from one subject to the next but we are either
reading from a book or from a laptop and the brain gets so bone tired that it
totally stops paying attention, now how about this you read a concept close
your book ask yourself a question and try to answer it without opening that
book back in your own words and related back to a concept perhaps that you've
learned some time back and the perfect smart study tip is 20% read 80% revise
and also try to come up with your own examples to understand every concept and
don't forget to go back and check with your teacher whether your examples are
relevant for that concept.
Spaced Repetition
Instead of spending the
entire day going over one single topic how about you study one concept and then
change the topic and you come back maybe later or the next day and go over that
concept a little bit and then switch to the next concept so what will happen is
that you'll repeat that concept over a few days and a few times and that is
what we call spaced repetition now the mind learns the concept better when you
go over it over and over again rather than spending a large amount of time on a
single day trying to attack that concept also varying topics and even subjects
helps the brain sometimes to interlink concepts between topics and subjects and
that's a great way also to solidify your understanding.
Notes
One really clever way to
save your time it's to go over your class notes within minutes of the class
getting over and all you need to do is to just browse over those notes and put
whatever is still stuck in your head and you haven't been able to write it down
put all that information quickly on the paper so when you go back later on and
open those notes they'll be complete and this is one really special smart study
tip that'll help you save a huge amount of time.
Study like a Teacher
Instead of studying like a student and trying to remember this tons of information how about you think like a teacher now two things will happen when you do that one is you'll begin to anticipate which are the important questions really from that topic and two of course it has been scientifically proven that teaching someone helps you learn better and the smart study tip here is teach test mix teach someone test yourself frequently which means take a lot of practice tests or mock tests and mix mix means mix up your subjects mix up your topics and if you don't find anyone to teach teach your favorite stuff toys.
SQ3R
This is a technique
that's is going to help you get the most out of your textbook so when you pick
up the textbook, first survey the chapter just go over browse all the pages in that
chapter go right to the question section Q for questions go over the questions just
read them once before you start reading the chapter and the 3 R's are read, recite and review. Read and recite go back to
the 20% read 80% recite tip number 2 and review goes back to the spaced
repetition so when you pick up your textbook Browse, go to the questions come
back read shut your book ask yourself a question and recite and then review
over a period of time.
Mnemonics
Today I'm going to tell
you not only to use mnemonics but you can also use coined sayings and image associations and the smart study tip here
is that the weirder the image the stronger the association. Let's talk about
coined sayings; coined sayings for example are SOHCAHTOA remember using that in
trigonometry to remember your Sin, Cos and Tan.
Place
Some people will tell
you that you should sit in a fixed place with the table lamp on in the same
place every single time to study but I don't believe in that some people work
better when they study on a fixed place at a fixed time with the table lamp on
and some people don't some people like to move around they like to go to
different places they like to have some action when they are learning so the
important thing is when it comes to place is for you to find out what works
best for you and once you figure out what kind of places you like to study in
just stick to that let nobody tell you just stick to only a particular type of
place.
Time Table
There is no smarter tip
than planning plan your week plan your day in fact even plan down to the last
hour and you'll be surprised at how much you can achieve because the brain is
more productive because it knows exactly what it has to do and for how long we
have some great timetables for you in another video and I'm going to put the
links down so you can go back and take a look at those.
Sleep
Some of you will ask me
should I study late in the night or should I study early in the morning and
there is no right answer but the right answer is that sleep is brain food. So
you need at least about 7.5 hours of sleep every day and typically 11 p.m. to 7
a.m. is a great slot. So no all-nighters before your exam and remember that if
you have a theory exam the next day it has been scientifically proven that the
earlier you sleep in the night the better you tend to perform so if some of you
feel that you're wasting time sleeping and instead of sleeping for that one
hour can I just study for that extra one hour you'll find it to be completely counterproductive
so sleep and sleep well before an exam is my super smart study tip.
Thank you
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