SELF-IMPROVEMENT | SCHOOL | STUDY HABITS
The Best Study Techniques of Highly Effective Students
It’s a simple formula. Success requires work. Work requires time and concentration. Put in the time. Do the work. Success will follow.
There are study habits and techniques available to any student that will increase his performance and grades if only followed. But, the techniques take time and discipline to develop into habits. Once in place as study habits, they take time and discipline in their application every day.
Time implies work. These techniques will be unsuccessful without the work. Work implies effort — brain effort — much of it. Concentration, which you will note is the first among the techniques listed, is hard. Extended, hard concentration is what is required.
Concentrate intensely.
In elementary school, beginning in first grade, we had homework every night. In the small apartment where I lived, my desk was in the dining room, open to both the kitchen and the living room. There were five of us, my parents, me, and my brother (four years younger) and sister (six years younger). While my mother prepared dinner and washed up afterward, while my father watched TV, while my brother played noisily and incessantly, and while my sister (1-year-old) burbled and gurgled and cried at times, I had to do my homework at that desk.
I developed the talent of concentrating to such a degree that I blocked out the clamor and hubbub. All I saw was the material in front of me. All I heard were the thoughts in my head.
Once, in tenth-grade English, we were given a composition to write. We had the hour to do it. I was fiercely concentrating. About halfway through the hour, I absentmindedly reached for a pencil but didn’t find one. Still thinking about what I intended to write, I walked up the aisle to the teacher’s desk. I asked if she had a pencil. She began to laugh. I must have looked at her stupidly because she guffawed.
Annoyed, I said, “What!?”
“You have one behind each ear and one between your teeth,” came her reply through now muffled laughter.
When I was studying at the university library, friends said that they could come up beside me and stand for minutes for me to notice them. Only when they actually touched my shoulder would I become aware of them.
When driving, I’m the same way. Passengers can be talking as loudly as they care and addressing me directly. I don’t hear them. I’m concentrating on the road and trying to keep us from being killed.
As I write this, my John Denver playlist is coming at me through my AirPods. Only occasionally am I actually aware of the music. Most of the time, I’m concentrating so on what I’m going to write next that, while my ears hear the music, my mind doesn’t listen. I’m not consciously aware of it; it just isn’t there.
I can’t tell you how I do that. It comes naturally to me, or so it seems. I’m an INTP personality type.¹ ² ³ ⁴ I used to be a strict INTP, but as I aged I find that I’m now almost 50/50 INTP/INTJ.
I think a talent for concentration lies in my temperament.
You have to develop the capacity to concentrate that heavily.
I can say that I’ve always (with one exception) been interested in what I was studying. I think an intense interest in the subject facilitates intense concentration. The one time I was disinterested was in real property class in law school. It bored me. I had to have quiet when studying for it. Even then, I had to work to maintain concentration over time.
Read the source material, not the Cliff Notes.
Do the work. Don’t try to get away with reading summaries of the material. Avoid the Cliff Notes. Don’t read a book review instead of the book. To learn the material, one must read the whole of it as the author wrote it.
If there are footnotes or citations to secondary material, read them too. Sometimes, I go so far as to read the tertiary authorities cited in the citations. The more you read, the more you’ll know.
Do the work in advance. Be prepared for class.
Always be one, preferably two assignments ahead of the current one. When you walk into class, know the material as best you can. Never use class time as your first introduction to the material. Class time is for interacting with the professor, which you can’t do if you don’t know your stuff beforehand.
I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. If you can’t get the assigned material before the first class, spend extra time reading not only the first but also the second and third assignments. Put in the extra time the first week or two; then, you will be set for the semester.
Learn concepts and lessons, don’t just memorize.
Sometimes, one must just memorize the material. Twelve times fifteen is 180. You just have to know it by rote.
But other times, some broad lessons and concepts follow from the raw material. Just memorizing the raw material misses those. To really learn a subject matter, you have to see the concepts and discern the lessons to “get it.” So, look for those while reading, note them and learn how they come about. Learn what it is that supports them so sufficiently that you can at least derive them if not repeat them from memory.
Think critically.
When studying, develop the habit of thinking in a way that involves a continuous, objective analysis and evaluation of the issues. Reason in a disciplined and well-coordinated manner. Consciously work as you read to draw the concepts and lessons from the facts and ideas you’re reading.
Take notes. Write a summary or outline of the subject.
An effective way to learn a subject matter is to write a summary or outline. Don’t just parrot pieces of it. Interpret it. Paraphrase it. Take the time. Do the work. Then use your outline to study for the test, resorting to the original material on the (few) occasions when you find you’ve forgotten some essential piece of information.
The best way to learn something is to teach it, so write your notes so that you could teach the subject to someone else from them.
Teaching is more than the recitation of one’s notes. Effective teaching requires the ability to identify, explicate, and communicate not only the raw data but also the lessons and broad concepts to be derived from them. If you know enough that you can manage that, you can pass any test.
Have a long attention span. But, take breaks from time to time. Study hard; play hard.
Develop a long attention span. You won’t master the subject matter by studying ten minutes here, twenty there. Study at least in one-hour blocks. When I’m working on something, I can get so involved that four hours will have elapsed before I come up for air.
But, at that point, or once an hour if that suits you better, take a break. Get up and walk around. Get something to drink. Do some pushups or jumping jacks. Talk to someone for a few minutes. Splash your face with cold water. You might even go away from studying for half an hour and have a run if you have the time.
In my first year in law school, I was at the law library at 8:00 and studied until my morning class at 10:00. I was not studying for the upcoming class. I had already done that two days before. The class was from 10:00 to 11:30.
Lunch was from 11:30 to 1:00. During that time, I would go for a run or sit in the sun in the park barefoot and with my shirt off sunning. I’d eat a light lunch. I never studied during that time.
The afternoon class was from 1:00 to 2:30. By 2:45, I was in the library studying, where I would remain until about 6:00.
Then it was to the gym. I would swim, or run on the indoor track, or play racquetball for an hour, then spend half an hour stretching and sitting in the steam room.
After a cold shower, I was off at about 8:00 to the law-school library across the street, where I studied until 10:00 or 10:30. I would walk or bike home, often stopping on the way at the coed, nude, hot-tub spa for half an hour. (Hey, it was San Francisco; it was 1975. They had lots of stuff like that then.)
It was not only a means to relax and unwind but also a way to meet like-minded people, many of whom, men and women, became lasting friends.
The point of all this is that I interspersed physical and social activities with the hard mental ones. The more I did of the former, the better I did at the latter. Of course, there are a limited number of hours in the week. I devoted the largest portion of them to studying, preparing for classes, and spending as much time as I could one-on-one with my professors. But I was careful to reserve sufficient time for “play,” relaxation, and re-energizing.
Form a study group.
Get from three to five other students to join you in a study group. Meet regularly. Be serious about it. Don’t just idle away the time or banter and gossip your way through it.
Discuss the material. Ask questions where you don’t know or are uncertain about the subject matter. Divide the material up between you and have each one in turn present his portion to the others as if he were the professor.
Again, work in your study group one or two lessons ahead of where the professor is. Reserve some time to discuss material he recently covered, but use most of the time to prepare for upcoming classes.
Have a care to choose your group members well. They must be studious, serious, and determined to learn, as must you be. You will be trusting each one to prepare his portion of the work adequately. If he’s not as serious and interested as you, it will avail you nothing.
Have an active life outside of academics. Take time to re-energize.
You need an active social life or a hobby or other interest outside of studying. For me, it often was going to one of the gay bars or other venues to meet someone. Or, I might go for a late-night bike ride through the Presidio. By 1:00, I was generally home and in bed though not necessarily asleep and not necessarily alone. That was as much my play as sports.
I’m an INTP personality type. I’m not only comfortable spending significant time alone inside my own mind, but I also require it to regenerate and revitalize. So, I spent a lot of my free time bike riding, running, playing racquetball, or reading. You will note that all these”regenerating” activities were solitary endeavors except racquetball. That’s because re-energizing for me is time alone. It takes effort for an INTP to interact socially with others. His re-energizing time is spent alone within himself.
For you, it might be different. It might be that you regenerate by socializing. Figure out whatever it is, and do it regularly.
Conclusion.
OK. That’s it. Success requires work. Work requires time and concentration. Keep that in mind. Follow the study habits above. You’ll be a great student.
