The habit of studying from images and texts, beyond being a way to grow intellectually, has obvious negative aspects
The clearest of these is that on many occasions it is done out of obligation, which means that in addition to the work involved in learning content, we must manage the time and anxiety that this psychological burden produces. There are also other drawbacks, such as the risk of seeing one’s health deteriorate from spending too much time sitting or straining one’s eyes too much, and even having difficulty sleeping.
To study well, it is better to know some psychological tricks
The conclusion of this is that Studying is good, yes, but it is better to do it efficiently Saving us avoidable efforts and dispensing with study habits and strategies that only lead to fatigue and frustration. Furthermore, the habit of studying can occupy many hours a week, a month or even throughout life, and that is why it is worth asking ourselves… Am I studying in the best way possible?
Precisely to help you evaluate your study methods, Here you can read a series of tips to study efficiently to optimize the time and effort you dedicate to your learning
Of course, when following these tips for studying you must assume the principle that studying better does not mean doing it for longer. That is why some of these keys are not directed so much at the act of studying itself as at how to best distribute time.
Tips to study better in your daily life
We are going to learn a few simple tips and techniques to improve our study ability. If you apply them to your routine during the course, It is highly likely that your academic grades will rise significantly
1. Cut study time into small pieces
Research on attentional processes and study performance show that it is better to control the time we dedicate to studying by setting a rather low time limit for each session The ideal is to keep the study time to no more than 30 minutes, since we show much greater ease in assimilating information that comes to us in short, repeated bursts than in a single long and tedious one.
What it’s about is keeping your brain at 100% at all times (by the way, keeping sleep at bay is sacred, and for that there’s nothing like sleeping well).
2. Create a study routine
Propose A study schedule and following it not only serves to offer an image of maturity and neatness, since it has notable effects on study performance Approaching learning in a disorganized way is a way to end up studying late at night, when sleep and fatigue take their toll on our ability to concentrate. In addition, getting used to a schedule will make it easier for us not to skip study times and will allow us to dedicate the time they deserve.
In that sense, the same thing that works for gym exercises also works for memorizing and assimilating information. Don’t leave everything for tomorrow!
3. Create summary notes on individual sheets
Do not rely exclusively on the technique of underlining texts. Underlining does not help memorize the text if it is not reviewed several times, and in any case sticking to memorizing the phrases that have a line below it keeps us anchored to the way in which the information is distributed in the original text .
Instead, making outlines and small summaries on pieces of paper (so-called “flash cards”) forces us to reformulate the information we have read and, in addition, it makes it easier to create combinations of notes that are different from those of the text but that help us better understand what we read, since we can join or separate the pieces of paper in the way we want to assimilate the information in the order wanted.
4. Keep distractions away
It may seem obvious, but It never hurts to remember this because these distractions can take the most unexpected forms and it is good to identify them
Therefore, it is recommended that you prepare your study space in advance, so that when you concentrate on the first page you no longer have any distracting elements nearby. Doing this before you start studying will help you avoid falling into temptation once you have started, and will also prevent it from being a frustrating experience from the first minutes (which would be demotivating).
Facebook, mobile phone and television should be on your black list, but you can include other elements of your daily life and do your best to isolate yourself from all of them during study time (remember that they are short, so… .it’s not too much to ask!).
5. Prepare your study material before anything else
Having everything you need prepared will prevent you from getting up to go look for things and, therefore, you will be distracted. Besides, Associating this set of objects with the study will mean that, every time you see it, you will enter into the dynamic of studying with ease.although you won’t be able to explain exactly why it happens to you! This way you will get the most out of your short study sessions, so that you don’t have to interrupt them by getting up from where you were sitting and running the risk of losing track of what you were memorizing or reviewing.
Therefore, pay attention to organizing the books and tools you need before sitting down to kneel. If you have everything perfectly organized, it will be easier for you to have all the resources at hand and you can be more efficient during your study hours.
6. Propose (at least) one unit of study for each session
Set a topic to study and study it. Organizing related information by sticking to a topic or category of any kind is much easier than studying scattered and disordered pieces of information. For that It is good that you read the lesson once to create a mental map of the location of the topics in the text and then focus on each of them
Of course, when you review the information studied (something you should do very often, as we will see), it is better that you do not do it on a single topic, but rather include elements from several, so that in this way you “cross” several sources of information. information and relationships between those concepts in your head, so that they form networks of more consistent memories that will be more resistant to lapses and inopportune forgetfulness.
Make the information contained in the texts your own. Relate it to episodes from your life, rephrase it in your own words and use examples you know In this way you will be able to achieve the meaningful learning you need, much more resistant to the passage of time than that which is based on the memorization of data that does not make much sense.
8. Avoid linear memorization
It is essential that you constantly test yourself and constantly review what you studied in previous days. This will allow you, in addition to consolidating the memorized information, to ask questions that would not otherwise occur to you and will help you understand your notes as a whole, instead of as separate pieces of information or arranged in parallel.
Think, above all, on similarities and differences between concepts pieces of information that do not appear very connected in the texts you have studied but could be connected in certain exam questions, for example.
9. Practice constantly
If you have the possibility, evaluate yourself with exams or questionnaires about the topic you study , mixing this with the study of new material. This may seem like a waste of time if you think that time well spent can only be dedicated to “soaking up” the information to be studied, but it is not at all, since it will help you detect errors and will also help you measure your progress. and, therefore, to keep motivation high, which will also have a positive impact on your performance.
The most useful method in this sense is spaced repetition : review what has been previously studied, allowing the intervals to become increasingly larger as time passes, so that at first a few days pass between the study and the review/test, and later one or two pass weeks, progressively.
10. Explain the lesson to someone else
This is literal. Explaining in your own words what you have learned is possibly the most valuable study advice, as it will provide you with two great benefits. On the one hand, Rephrasing the lesson is a way to mentally review what you have studied so the time you dedicate to this will serve to better assimilate what you had studied before.
On the other hand, it will help you evaluate yourself, detect points that you thought you had learned but that at key moments give you problems, and offer you a fairly faithful image of your progress.
