Study Skills, Tips and Techniques

[invisible]

please share your tips and techniques for studying effectively.

go ahead and criticise the techniques mentioned by others if they have not worked for you as long as you give good reasons why.

share your general study stories and anecdotes too.

 

[invisible]

NEVER do all day studying or all night studying. these approaches are the time sinks of doom. instead, do a 3-5 hour burst of focused reading or writing for a few hours at the start of the day. schedule the rest of the day for procrastination, and never feel bad about making time to procrastinate again.

 

[invisible]

keep focused on the assessment criteria. everything you are doing is to get a degree, NOT to impress your teachers or change their lives or ways of thinking, or to explore your own special interests, or to write mind blowing essays that people will be buying in an anthology in a bookstore in 200 years time. the only thing that matters is meeting the requirements for your program, answering the criteria and submitting your work on time. never get sidetracked on the aspects of a topic that interest you more when they have nothing to do with the questions you are required to answer, focus only on what the question is asking. never try to learn or comprehend EVERYTHING about a topic but focus only on what is relevant to the question being asked. when you hand a piece of work in, try to have a day of complete rest. always aim to hand your work in on time, because otherwise you will be unable to pace yourself properly and will never get a rest. fling crap level work at deadlines when absolutely necessary, so long as it is complete in the sense of meeting assessable requirements, but never think "i can just get an extension".

 

[Awesome]

I read an article that stated your most effective periods of learning are done in 45-60 minute intervals followed by a short break. I've adopted this routine and noticed that it does actually help. My study sessions are one hour long followed by 10 minute breaks. These short breaks are when you stand up, stretch, grab a quick bite to eat. To fight procrastination, do not negate your attention from studying in that hour. Pee breaks, thirst, hunger, social media, do that all before you study. These short breaks allow you to relax, and can keep the long term study session feeling fresh. Studying too long at once will start to take a toll on your brain and your critical thinking will begin to suffer.

Stop listening to music while you study. It's distracting and counter productive. If you must have background noise, I recommend white noise, pink noise, or brown noise. The linear sound of static helps drown out the chaos of your thoughts and only think about what you want to think about. I use pink noise exclusively when I need to study effectively.

Write your notes by hand, do not type them on the computer. This is more important in the classroom than actually studying, but it's still a great thing to know. You will remember information better if you write it by hand.

There's a program you can download that will actually block websites for a period of time that you can adjust. The best part is even if you uninstall it, those websites will still be blocked. This will keep you from being able to check Facebook for the time that you have set.

Keep your study area clean and tidy. Dirty dishes belong in the sink. Half full bags of chips go in the cabinet. Trash goes in the trash. Even better, go the extra mile and clean the entire room.

This one is just personal preference, I recommend you buy a specific pen or pencil. One that you have invested in and you enjoy using. When I have to fill up pages worth of stuff, it's nice to use a pencil that I spent a little extra money for, and feels good to use.

 

[Artisan]

I think it is very important for you to establish before you study what kind of learner you are.
Some methods will work great for Auditory learners but less so for Visual or Kinesthetic.

It also becomes more relative to the type of thing you learn. You see, all these study tips might seem great but a study session in mathematics or languages or economics is a different type of study then for example, Arts and Crafts.

For example In mathematics, it does not increase your capabilities if you redo the exact same problem: 1+1=2
In arts and crafts for example: Welding the same thing several times will increase your skill level each time you do it. It's more experience based.


For information based subjects like history, it is best to think back to what you remember from lessons you've previously had in the subject as a kid. Everything you do still remember is knowledge that was learned in a way that helps you store this in your long term memory. If what you learn is for more then a grade and you need to recall it in the future, be sure to learn it in the way that you learned the other information you still remembered form when you were a kid.

 

[drummergirlbk]

For classes that require a lot of reading, it helps me focus o the textbook to have some background instrumental music playing, particularly something like motzart or piano jazz like Dave Brubeck. Writing down everything I can seems to help me a lot. I'm a visual learner as well as an economics major so drawing graphs helps me a lot. I do this a lot in class lectures by relating the material to other theories ive learned and figuring out how one graph for one theory could coincide or contridict whats being said in the lecture. For that kind of stuff it helps me to have multiple colors of pens so I can either color code my notes or differentiate my different things on graphs easier.

 

[hk427f3]

If you're listening to somebody lecture, don't write down every bullet point of their powerpoint. That's stupid. Listen and think 80% of the time and then write down summaries of the important things.

 

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