Improving your Study Habits!

Having a study system is so important. You can easily get through school with mediocre grades but to be a top student, you will need just a bit more. The best method is to dig around and find out different study techniques and then use the techniques you think that can help you out quite a bit. Below are a few of the most well-known techniques that have helped a lot of people.

Feynman Technique: 

The technique of being able to explain complex concepts to a 5-year-old.

The main idea behind the technique is to take something difficult to understand and try to make it more simple in your mind by presenting it in the manner of a child. By doing this, you are forced to utilize clear and short language to clarify the concepts in their (non-existent ) minds. In the long run, this can help out since you will be able to fully understand the concept.

Another benefit is that you can identify the gap within your learning. The things you are not sure of yourself suddenly become quite apparent when you are explaining something aloud. Essentially, it's a method of measuring how much you understand about something yourself from vague and illogical notions.

Also if you feel like you are not able to do this by yourself but you have a younger sibling, take them hostage and try explaining it to them. If they are not able to understand, revise your explanation and make it simpler as the technique suggests.

Blurting Method:

Essentially for this, just read the information you want to learn, then rewrite everything you just read as much as you can remember without looking at where you read the information from. You can easily do this with your textbook, lecture notes, or even videos online. Once you are done, look at what you have written and crosscheck it with the information you just read and see what areas you are missing out on and which you have a grasp of and remember clearly. You can repeat this until your knowledge gaps are filled and you can write everything with ease.

Just get your source of information, some blank paper, and Blurt.

Spaced Repetition:

Spaced repetition is a method of reviewing material at systematic intervals.  The intervals are closely spaced at the start of the learning process (one hour, four hours, one day, etc.). The intervals get increasingly longer (four days, one week, two weeks) when the information is reviewed.

The easier something seems to be, the further the gap between it being repeated. If you find something really difficult to memorize or understand, repeat it every day until it seems like you are not required to repeat it all the time, and can be done every few days.

It operates based on smart revisions. Although it may appear difficult or like a nuisance or a chore, once you know how to use it and when to, it's rather simple. Since the goal isn't to repeatedly cram for exams.

A great app that does this for you is Anki. The app lets you make flashcards, like Quizlet but the unique feature is that depending on how well you know the information on the flashcard, based on that, the amount of times the card appears varies.

You are actively prompting your brain to come up with the answer (active recall), and spacing out the reviews over time at increasing intervals (spaced repetition).

Parkinson's Law:

Parkinson's Law is the concept that work expands to fill the time given to complete it. This could imply that you put off doing a task till the last minute and finish it then, or it could be that you take longer than necessary to finish a task.

For example, if you and your team have 2 weeks to finish a relatively simple project. A project which would realistically take a couple of hours to complete. But because you and your team are aware you have two weeks to complete it, you think you have plenty of time to do it and in the process waste your time until you come close to the deadline.

This easily prompts the questions of why this happens in the first place as well as how to overcome it since in the long run, this could severely waste your time.

To overcome this, you should work under more pressure and set a shorter deadline for yourself. If not, work will always use more than the time it needs to be completed. Have incentives which can make you look forward to actually finishing your work like eating a sweet or watching an episode of your favourite show. But to do this, you need to have discipline to not just give up immediately.