10 Rules of Good Studying
By Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE
Follow these techniques they
enhance your studying skills
1.
Use recall: After you read a page, look away and recall the main ideas.
Highlight very little,
and never highlight anything
you haven’t put in your
mind first by recalling. Try
recalling main ideas when you are walking
to class or in a different room from where
you originally learned
it. An ability to recall—to generate the ideas from
inside yourself—is one
of the key
indicators of good
learning.
2.
Test yourself. On everything. All the time.
Flash cards are your friend.
3.
Chunk your problems. Chunking is understanding and practicing with
a problem solution
so that it can all come to mind in a flash.
After you solve
a problem, rehearse it. Make sure
you can solve
it cold—every step. Pretend
it’s a song and learn
to play it over and over again
in your mind,
so the information combines
into one smooth
chunk you can pull up whenever you want.
4.
Space your repetition. Spread out your learning in any subject
a little every
day, just like
an athlete. Your brain
is like a muscle—it can handle only
a limited amount
of exercise on one subject
at a time.
5.
Alternate
different problem‐solving techniques during your practice. Never practice too long at any
one session using
only one problem‐solving technique—after a while,
you are just
mimicking what
you did on the previous problem. Mix it up and work on different types
of problems. This teaches you both how and
when to use a technique. (Books
generally are not set up this way,
so you’ll need to do this on your own.)
After every assignment and test, go over your
errors, make sure you understand why you made them,
and then rework
your solutions. To study most
effectively, handwrite (don’t type)
a problem on one side
of a flash card and the solution on the other. (Handwriting builds
stronger neural structures in memory than
typing.) You might
also photograph the card
if you want
to load it into a study app
on your smartphone. Quiz yourself randomly on different types
of problems. Another
way to do this is to randomly
flip through your
book, pick out a
problem, and see whether you
can solve it cold.
6.
Take breaks. It is common to be unable
to solve problems
or figure out concepts in math or science
the first
time you encounter them. This is why a little study
every day is much better
than a lot of studying all at once. When
you get frustrated with a math
or science problem,
take a break
so that another part
of your mind
can take over
and work in the background.
7.
Use explanatory questioning and simple analogies. Whenever you are struggling with a concept, think to yourself, How can I explain
this so that
a ten‐year‐old could
understand it? Using an analogy really helps,
like saying that
the flow of electricity is like the flow of water. Don’t
just think your explanation—say it out loud
or put it in writing.
The additional effort
of speaking and writing allows you to more deeply
encode (that is, convert into
neural memory structures) what you are learning.
8.
Focus. Turn off all
interrupting beeps and
alarms on your phone and computer, and
then turn on a
timer for
twenty‐five minutes. Focus
intently for those
twenty‐five minutes and try to work as diligently as you can.
After the timer
goes off, give
yourself a small,
fun reward. A few of these
sessions in a day can really move
your studies forward. Try to set up times
and places where studying—not glancing
at your computer
or phone—is just
something you naturally do.
9.
Eat your frogs
first. Do the hardest thing
earliest in the day, when
you are fresh.
10.
Make a mental
contrast. Imagine where you’ve
come from and
contrast that with
the dream of where
your studies will take you.
Post a picture or words
in your workspace to remind you of your dream. Look at that
when you find
your motivation lagging. This work will
pay off both
for you and those you love!
Ten Rules of Bad Studying
By Barbara Oakley,
PhD, PE
Avoid these techniques—they can waste your time even while they fool you into thinking you’re learning!
1. Passive rereading—sitting passively and running your eyes back over a page. Unless you can prove that the material is moving into your brain by recalling the main ideas without looking at the page, rereading is a waste of time.
2. Letting highlights overwhelm you. Highlighting your text can fool your mind into thinking you are putting something in your brain, when all you’re really doing is moving your hand. A little highlighting here and there is okay—sometimes it can be helpful in flagging important points. But if you are using highlighting as a memory tool, make sure that what you mark is also going into your brain.
3. Merely glancing at a problem’s solution and thinking you know how to do it. This is one of the worst errors students make while studying. You need to be able to solve a problem step‐by‐step, without looking at the solution.
4. Waiting until the last minute to study. Would you cram at the last minute if you were practicing for a track meet? Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time.
5. Repeatedly solving problems of the same type that you already know how to solve. If you just sit around solving similar problems during your practice, you’re not actually preparing for a test—it’s like preparing for a big basketball game by just practicing your dribbling.
6. Letting study sessions with friends turn into chat sessions. Checking your problem solving with friends, and quizzing one another on what you know, can make learning more enjoyable, expose flaws in your thinking, and deepen your learning. But if your joint study sessions turn to fun before the work is done, you’re wasting your time and should find another study group.
7.
Neglecting
to read the textbook before
you start working
problems. Would you dive into a pool
before you knew how to swim?
The textbook is your swimming
instructor—it guides you
toward the answers. You will
flounder and waste
your time if you don’t
bother to read
it. Before you begin
to read, however, take a quick glance
over the chapter
or section to get a sense of what it’s
about.
8. Not checking with your instructors or classmates to clear up points of confusion. Professors are used to lost students coming in for guidance—it’s our job to help you. The students we worry about are the ones who don’t come in. Don’t be one of those students.
9. Thinking you can learn deeply when you are being constantly distracted. Every tiny pull toward an instant message or conversation means you have less brain power to devote to learning. Every tug of interrupted attention pulls out tiny neural roots before they can grow.
10. Not getting enough sleep. Your brain pieces together problem‐solving techniques when you sleep, and it also practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you go to sleep. Prolonged fatigue allows toxins to build up in the brain that disrupt the neural connections you need to think quickly and well. If you don’t get a good sleep before a test, NOTHING ELSE YOU HAVE DONE WILL MATTER.
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