By Jyothi Swaroop Makena
6th September, 2023
Studying smart essentially means learning how to learn. This includes how to learn faster and more efficiently, while retaining information for longer.
Kornell compares our memory to water in a bucket that has a small leak. Try to refill the bucket while it’s still full, and you can’t add much more water. Allow time between study sessions, and some of the material may drip out of your memory. But then you’ll be able to relearn it and learn more in your next study session.
Start with setting practical goals for yourself. Take up chapters and concepts that are more scoring, topics of your interests as well as where you are lagging behind and then set a practical schedule and achievable tasks.
Multitasking makes you less productive, more distracted, and dumber. The studies even show that people who claim to be good at multitasking aren’t actually better at it than the average person.
Decades of research has shown that self-testing is crucial if you want to improve your academic performance. The Feynman technique is particularly effective in understanding concepts and memorizing them long-term. And as you prepare for a test, do as many practice questions as you can from different sources.
Throughout the process, don’t let the goal of getting straight A’s become an unhealthy obsession. After all, education is about more than getting good grades.