How to Study as You Head Back to School
Schools never teach us how to study, yet it’s the most important skill for succeeding at school. Get-It-Done Guy has 7 expert study skills to help you master your learning.
How to study is one of the most important things a student can learn. It’s September in my hometown of Boston, and students are arriving in force, everywhere. Moving trucks are lining the streets, futons are filling the houses, and AXE Body Spray is flying off the shelves.
Everyone is here for one thing: to learn what the schools are teaching. They learn by studying. Yet oddly, one thing the schools aren’t teaching is how to study. We assume people will magically pick it up without trying. Er, no. Learning how to study is simple, but not easy. You can increase your chances of doing well in school by mastering 7 particular study skills.
I was the weird geeky kid in school, years before geeky was “in.” So everyone hated me, and I had no friends. But because I lacked a social life, I did have an awful lot of time to figure out how to study. That’s why I eventually graduated from both MIT and Harvard Business School. Here are some of my top study tips. I hope they work as well for you. And I hope you have friends, too:
How to Study Tip #1: Skim the Big Picture, Then Dive Deep
When you’re reading something you’ve never read before, the key study skills are memorizing it and organizing it in your brain so you can use the information at a later date.
First, build a framework for the big picture. Don’t try to read the material in depth the first time through. Instead, skim it quickly. Get a broad idea of what it’s about. Gloss over details you don’t understand.
This will give you the “big picture,” a sort of executive summary. The big picture of the American Revolution might be “King George’s abuses of the colonies lead to a declaration of independence. France finances the revolution and fights England in Europe, so England doesn’t do quite enough to keep the colonies. Eventually, America is born and several years later, founding fathers write the Constitution we still have today.”
Now read it again. This time, focus on the details and fit them into the story in your mind. You’ll include details like Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration, why the Articles of Confederation failed, Benjamin Franklin’s trips to France to build support, and why the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution.
How to Study Tip #2: Take Notes
Take notes by hand. When you write by hand, you involve multiple brain systems: physical movement, visual input, and auditory input. You’ll also find yourself memorizing the mental image of your notes, as well as the book, lecture, or video where the information came from.
With a computer, you engage only your visual system and up-and-down movements of your fingers. Plus, computers are distracting. If you insist on using a computer—and if you’re under 30, you probably will insist—at least try it both ways. Take notes on paper for a month and then on computer for a month and stick with the system that works best for you.
You can also take notes using mind maps, which helps your brain make new associations. You can find details in the Get-it-Done Guy episode on how to take killer notes.
How to Study Tip #3: Use Physical Books
There’s also evidence that you learn better from physical books than from ebooks. Your brain uses subliminal cues to help make the material distinct and easier to recall in your mind: how the light hits the page, where things are on the page, how you’re holding the book, what the cover looks like, and so on.
How to Study Tip #4: Call Out Difficult Material
If you’ve spent a lot of time on a concept and just can’t quite get it, write it down in your notes and put a big star next to it. Go on to study other concepts. A few hours later—ideally after you’ve done something relaxing and totally unrelated—come back and dive into the starred concept again. Your brain uses sleep, day-dreaming, and distraction time to consolidate information. The second or third time you visit something new, you’ll be more likely to understand it.
How to Study Tip #5: Use Irregular Reviews
Reading material once isn’t enough to learn it. Review your notes the day after you take them. Review by trying to recall what you’ve learned. When you can’t recall something, look at your notes or the textbook to remind yourself. This part is important! If you want to know how to study, memorization is only half the skill; recall is the other half.
Review material a couple of hours after you learn it, a day later, a week later, and then a month later. Each review will take less time than the one before. Reviewing at increasing intervals actually works better than daily reviews! Memory gets reinforced most if you review right as you’re on the edge of forgetting.
How to Study Tip #6: Study With a Group
The point of school is to learn stuff yourself. That means no cheating. If you copy from someone else, you may get the grades, but you won’t actually learn. They’ll learn the material, you’ll just learn to copy. In today’s world, you need the actual skills if you want to get ahead in your career.
That’s why a study group can be super helpful for learning new material. For each class you’re taking, schedule study time each week. Invite your friends Kaitlan, Dawn, Trevor, Victor, Krista, Carlos, Luis, Helen, Timmy, and Lucrezia. Get together to study. You each bring your own books, laptops, and study materials. Work on your own work, but use each other as a resource. If you don’t understand something, explain it to each other or explore it as a group.
Groups have power! Scheduling these meetings guarantees you’ll take the time to work on that subject. You’ll also learn other ways to think about the material. Plus, you all have different strengths. You may each suck at something, but at least you’ll suck at different things (and conversely, be good at different things). Together, you’ll cover more than you would alone.
How to Study Tip #7: Get Enough Sleep
Finally, sleep. Yes, sleep. When you dream, your brain consolidates new information, transfers it to long-term storage, and begins to connect it to everything else you know. You’ll wake up understanding the material even better. If you stay up until 3am playing beer pong and then try to get up at 8am for class, well, you’re making choices. Make different ones. You’ll be happier.
See also: How Can Sleep Make You Fit?
It’s been a few minutes, let’s review. We’re talking about how to study. Get the big picture by skimming, then fill in details later. Take notes by hand, star and review difficult material, review at irregular intervals, study with a group, and get enough sleep. That’s a lot to remember, so make sure you take notes. Then review them tomorrow and at the end of the week. You only have to learn how to study once and you’ll be able to master a lifetime of learning.
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Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
