10 tips to study better and efficiently

Some psychological tricks that can help you get good grades.

The habit of studying from images and texts, beyond being a way to grow intellectually, has obvious negative aspects, has obvious negative aspects.

The clearest of these is that on numerous occasions it is done out of obligation, which means that in addition to the work involved in learning the content, you have to manage the time and anxiety produced by this psychological burden. There are also other drawbacks, such as the risk of seeing how one's health deteriorates by spending too much time sitting or straining the eyes, and even having difficulty sleeping.

To study well, 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. In addition, the habit of studying can take up many hours a week, a month or even a lifetime, and that is why it is worth asking ourselves .... Am I studying in the best possible way?

Just to help you evaluate your study methods, here you can read some tips on how to study efficiently in order to optimize the time and effort you put into your learning..

Of course, when following these study tips you must assume the principle that studying better is not about studying longer. That is why some of these keys are not so much directed to the fact of studying itself as to the way to better distribute your time.

Tips to study better on a daily basis

Let's learn a few simple tips and techniques to improve our ability to study. If you apply them to your routine during the course, it is highly probable that your academic grades will increase significantly..

1. Cut study time into small chunks

Research on attentional processes and study performance shows that it is better to control study time in chunks. show that it is better to control the time we dedicate to study by setting a rather low time limit for each session.. Ideally, study time should not exceed 30 minutes, since we are much more easily able to assimilate information that comes to us in short, repeated bursts than in a single long, tedious one.

The idea is to keep the brain at 100% at all times (by the way, keeping sleep at bay is sacred, and for that nothing like a good night's sleep).

2. Create a study routine

Set yourself a study schedule and following it does not only serve to give an image of maturity and neatness, but has a significant effect on study performance.. Approaching learning in a disorganized manner 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 to avoid skipping study times and allow us to devote the time they deserve.

In that sense, the same way 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 to memorize the text if it is not reviewed several times, and in any case, sticking to memorizing the sentences that have a line underneath 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 (the so-called "flash cards") forces us to rephrase the information we have read and, in addition, it makes it easier to create combinations of notes that are different from those in the text but that help us to better understand what we read, since we can put together or separate the pieces of paper in the way we want to assimilate the information in the desired order.

4. Keep distractions away

It may seem obvious, but It never hurts to remember this because these distractions can take the most unsuspected forms and it is good to identify them..

Therefore, it is advisable that you prepare your study space beforehand, so that when you concentrate on the first page you are not near any distracting element. Doing this before you start studying will help you to avoid falling into temptation once you have started, and it will also prevent it from being a frustrating experience from the first minutes (which would be demotivating).

Your blacklist should include Facebook, cell phone and TV, but you can include other elements of your daily life and do your best to isolate yourself from all of them during your 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 ready will keep you from getting up to get things and, therefore, distracting you. In addition, associating this set of objects to the study will associating this set of objects to the study will make that, every time you see it, you will enter in the dynamics of studying with ease...... even though you won't be able to explain exactly why this is happening 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 are sitting and running the risk of losing the thread of what you were memorizing or reviewing.

Therefore, pay attention to the organization of the books and tools you need before you sit down to sink your elbows. If you have everything perfectly organized, it will be easier for you to have all the resources at hand and be more efficient during your study hours.

6. Set (at least) one study unit for each session.

Set a topic to study and study it. Organizing information related to each other by staying to a topic or category of any kind is much easier than studying scattered and disordered pieces of information. To do this, it is a good idea to read through the lesson once to create a mind map of the lesson. 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 one of them..

Of course, when you review the information studied (something you should do very often, as we will see), it is better not to do it on a single topic, but to include elements of several, so that you "cross-reference" various sources of information and relate these concepts in your head, so that they form more consistent networks of memories that will resist lapses and inopportune forgetfulness.

7. Avoid literal memorization

Make the information contained in the texts your own. Relate it to episodes in your life, rephrase it in your own words and use examples you know.. That way you will achieve the meaningful learning you need, much more resistant to the passage of time than the one 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 have studied in previous days. This will allow you, in addition to consolidating the memorized information, to ask yourself questions that otherwise would not occur to you and will help you to understand your notes as a whole, rather than as separate pieces of information or arranged in parallel.

Think, above all, similarities and differences between conceptsThink, especially, of similarities and differences between concepts, pieces of information that in the texts you have studied do not appear very connected but could be connected in certain exam questions, for example.

9. Practice constantly

If you have the possibility, test yourself with exams or quizzes on the subject you are studying, mixing this with the study of new material.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 devoted to "soaking in" the information to be studied, but it is not at all, as it will help you to detect failures and will also serve to measure your progress and therefore keep your motivation high, which will also have a positive impact on your performance.

The most useful method in this regard is spaced repetitionThe most useful method in this sense is the spaced repetition: to review what you have studied previously, letting the intervals be bigger and bigger as time goes by, so that at the beginning a few days have passed between the study and the review/testing, and later one or two weeks progressively pass.

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 tip, as it will bring you two major benefits. On the one hand, rephrasing the lesson is a way of mentally reviewing what you've studied, so the time you spend on it will be shorter.So the time you spend doing this will help you to better assimilate what you have studied before.

On the other hand, it will help you to self-evaluate, detect points that you thought you had learned but that at key moments give you problems, and give you a fairly accurate picture of your progress.