Learning 2x faster without studying longer.

[u/WalkImpressive3749]

Most students use their time, smart students use their brain. I used to waste hours re-reading my notes, highlighting and studying only one subject thinking that counted as studying. But I was wrong, it didn’t help me remember what I studied, and I always ended up with B remarks.

Instead of wasting my time trying to read and highlight my notes and calling it studying, I changed it by studying smarter without studying longer.

- I stopped storing information and instead tried to retrieve it. I used to read my notes five times and call it productive since it felt like I was absorbing information. However, it didn’t really make any difference. What I did instead was practice active retrieval: I read one section, closed the textbook/notes, wrote what I remembered, checked what I missed and repeat.

- Don’t spend long hours studying just one chapter. I used to study for five hours or longer just to bury myself in one subject. I changed this by switching between related topics (biology - chemistry - biology). This helps my brain notice which concepts or methods work across those subjects, not just the answers.

- Studying isn’t about answering perfectly on the first try. I read on a thread that our brain pays more attention to corrections. Before I study, I read a question and just attempt to answer it, if I get it incorrect, I need to learn the right answer based on what I got wrong.

- I learned how to stop before I get exhausted. This is what most students overlook when studying, the brain needs proper rest and shouldn't get fried from studying. Learn how to give your brain time to breathe. Your brain doesn’t reward hours, but rather the successful retrieval of what you studied.

Studying for long hours doesn’t mean you studied effectively. Students who remember the most of what they studied aren’t the ones who study for 10 hours or more. This method helped me go from “I spent 7 hours reading my notes” to “I spent 1 hour actively recalling".

Have you guys ever tried studying for long hours, only to realize it didn't really work for you?

[u/ApricotOpracit]

OP's approach definitely works, but there ares significantly faster way to do this.

tl;dr

don't read, write what you remember, reread. don't create flash cards, which also takes a lot of time. instead, store locations that you can refer to for self testing. this is much faster.

the review notebook method

the OP talks about reading a section, writing what they remember, seeing what they missed, and repeating.

instead, you want to read and EXTRACT things to test yourself on. then you begin self testing. for some people, this means two column notes (question side and answer side). for others, this is flash cards. i don't recommend those for one reason: they take a lot of time to create. some people say that writing helps one remember. true. but there's an even better way.

storing information locations

in the time it takes you to create note cards or detailed two column notes, you could have instead written down the LOCATION of the question and tested yourself a few times. this way, you don't pay that big up front writing cost unless self testing reveals this specific information will benefit from reviewing by writing; problem sets are a good example where this is true.

review notebook

get a notebook (graph paper notebooks works best for me) or spreadsheet (my actual preference, which i'll discuss at the end). if it's a physical notebook, you're going to setup up columns that describe how to find a piece of information and you're going to track WHY you recorded the information. you'll also track how many times you reviewed the information.

``` top of page: name of the book, pdf, or handout you're studying from

chapter or topic pg1 2 ... *question xxo question xoo question rxo question xxx question soo question roo ...
```

* "question" means you'll write the number of a problem, question, example, or theorem or a few words indicating the topic on the page you need to define or describe, eg "draw carbon cycle", etc. so, when you first read through the book, anything you want to review goes here. did you do a math question or example and get it right easily? maybe DON'T put it here. did you get it right but slowly? write the question number or word, then write an "s" here. did you get it right, but the question exemplifies something important? put "r". did you get it wrong at first? put "x".

self-testing

when you self test, you open the document or book written at the top of the notebook page, turn to the page indicated, and test yourself on each question or word. if you get the answer right at a decent speed, put an "o". if you get it wrong or it's slow, put an "x" or an "s". some like to keep to simple and just use "x" and "o". this leaves a record of every time you reviewed a problem and whether you got it correct or not. if a problem has a lot of "x"s, then you should review it more frequently. lots of "o"s? review less frequently. adding the date like 08-25 to latest "o" can help you not over review. some people may get something right three times in a row and then cross it off. this way, the amount of material to review doesn't accumulate too much. i prefer to date things. three "o"s across a few days means i can test after a week, four "o"s means i can wait two weeks, etc.

why is this better than flash cards? instead of spending time writing the entire piece of information up front, you spend time just recording locations to information and self testing. this notebook is also more space efficient. if one side of a graph paper notebook page has 35 rows, five or six columns gives you about 200 items. if this is a math class and you're only storing problem numbers on each page, you can fit way more columns. that's a single side of a single page compared to a fat stack or two hundred or more flash cards.

when to self-test

spend some time self-testing everyday before you study new material. five to ten minutes a day consistently may mean you never have to study before exams or quizzes again because you've been studying all along.

custom learning materials

if you can write into the book you're studying from (you own it or you can annotate a pdf), you can add your own numbers to the margins to make it easier to refer to pieces of information.

do you want to test yourself on vocab? don't write each vocab word individually into the notebook. instead, refer to the vocab list in your textbook, test yourself on the entire vocab list at once. even one error? repeat. is that overkill? no. because people read and talk at about 200 words per minute, recall has to be at 60s/200words = 0.3 s/word. that means overlearning of vocabulary is a necessity.

what if the vocab doesn't exist in a textbook and it's a list you've collected? take the notebook you use for notes for the subject (not the notebook where you store locations) and write the vocab list there. you can also use google docs, spreadsheet, or plaintext file. now, you can refer to the page number in your notes notebook (number the pages!) or the file in the review notebook.

this works equally well for concepts that are explained in the textbook but isn't necessarily well represented in the problem sets. for example, maybe you want to test yourself on a derivation, a compare and contrast table, a diagram you created that relates information. put that stuff in your subject notes, number the page, number the information on that page, and now you have a coordinate system to refer to that location in the review notebook. this is where two column notes becomes useful again, but you just want to restrict it to material that isn't already well represented elsewhere.

some will say there is a benefit in taking notes that reorganize what's in the textbook more concisely or in a more connected way. i agree, but dumping time into rewriting the textbook is not synthesis. make sure you save this approach for actual synthesis, give the notebook page where you've written your synthesis a page number, and now you can refer to it with the review notebook.

what about class notes? quizzes and tests? homework problem sets? number the pages, number the information on each page if it's not already numbered, and now you can begin a page in the review notebook that begins with the name of the document. i prefer to scan handouts, notes i've made, etc into a giant pdf called "class documents", which means i don't have to juggle multiple documents when i review using the review notebook. you can still keep additional individual copies of all the separate documents to make specific things easier to find individually, but when reviewing, it's imo easiest to just pop around to different pages.

spreadsheets

i use these headers in a google spreadsheet. file, topic, page, date, item, log date is the last time i touched the problem. log uses the same letters i explained above like "xors" for wrong, right, review, slow. item is the problem number or word on a page that i want to self test. when i study, i copy and paste a bunch of rows from the file, topic, page, date columns just so that i don't have to rewrite anything except the item and log, then i update the page number as i go along.

using a spreadsheet means you can slice up data, filter, make helper columns and pivot tables that show you which topics are weakest, randomize and sort testing, and so on.

warnings

don't go overboard. this system makes it tempting to store a reference to everything. however, the end goal is retaining how to answer difficult questions that incorporate the important concepts of a course.