Someone asked "How do I study?"

Studying "on-demand" seems like a pipe deam to most students. But what if you didn't have to wait for motivation to start? What if studying could be turned into a habit, or better, a skill?

1

To study in earnest, the first thing you need is to accept that you have the "need" to study.

Then acknowledge the method or the materials or the explanations to be important.

if your mind doesn't instinctively say "I need to study" and there is no "why" present readily; it's not really a "need" but rather "fear" that breeds anxiety. And if you do not value the material you are using, or the teacher you are following; you will subconsciously "delete" anything you learn from them, since your brain is really efficient at forgetting unimportant stuff.

So what is your "why"?

- is it a task left unfinished; maybe a project you need to work on?

- is there something that you do not understand, and need a review?

or is it that you have nothing better to do?

2

speaking broadly, studying can be done outside academics. 

Say, "Market Study"; for whatever reason, you are figuring out what is in demand nowadays. Maybe you need to figure out a career path that best suits you. Maybe you got a business idea that needs a feasibilty check. 

Maybe you need answers for some bigger question about life. Even the career choices require some deep answers; if you are not into going with the flow. 80000 Hours has some pretty good articles on the matter. But it does fall under some philosophical thinking.

for a while, in my case, "fear" was in fact a good incentive to bring my entire being into the flow state of studying. I used to fear the "unpreparedness" during exams; that I am unable to write anything and mind would go completely blank (to the point, I used to have nightmares about it). Coupled with 

"what must be done, must be done before anything else" 

and 

"the results will reflect the efforts put in; there is no place for hope."

Ideas and ideals like these often work like rituals, or mindsets that make your mind prepare for the study hour.

3

After that, or maybe, before everything I said till now, the environment plays a huge part in studying. [ bring in the Atomic Habits wisdom ]

if the environment is decided for certain purpose (i.e Bed for sleeping only, Washroom for shitting only) then it becomes much easier for the body and mind to follow. For the noble purpose of studying, decide a place, maybe a room or a table where only "the act of study" should occur. When the time is right, no distractions are allowed. Studying is your top priority, and books, your best of friends.

now that you are prepared to dive in, we also need to "keep you" drowned in the study session as long as possible. Don't we?

there are some techniques, like "Time Blocking" or "Pomodoro" to help you manage your attention and retention of learning sweets. [ for a full guide on a similar topic, watch: Marty Lobdell - Study Less Study Smart ]

oh, and there is a cool playlist of getting you through you college life: How to Do Well in College Jeffrey Kaplan  [ bonus thought nugget: go watch Predictive History ]. Although I have only watched the videos on Reading and Taking Notes.

4

but after all of that, said and actualized, people struggle to actually start studying. That is, they may feel like they are reading something or watching something, but the knowledge is being thrown into a bottomless abyss. Or in other words, "There is no retention".

There is a clear reason that your method of studying feels "disconnected" or alienated between the materials and the mind. 

Let's clear up the misconception, which is to some extent, "common sense" that just reading is not studying. What you read needs to actually register in your memory for the action of "memorization" to succeed.

Then, even memorization is not fully "studying", but part of it. 

The thinking brain has one core function; it "thinks", or "analyzes", or "processes" information. Simply holding the information is no different that stuffing an unnecessary amount of food, simply to throw it up later; failing to actually harness the nutrients from the food you ate.

The thinking brain asks for stronger neural connections, and actions that further strengthen that connections between the neural pathways. The simplest of these actions are to simply,

- think while you are reading; try to visualize what you read. 

- Ask a lot of questions. 

Question your learning, and try to "Create confusion" to then simply clear it up. this is the "problem solving" approach where you first identify the potential problems, before you encounter them in real scenarios

- take notes.

it does not have to be pretty. but it will associate the action of writing down with your visual memory, so you should remember better. It also leaves a physical record (cosidering you are using pen and paper) of you studying, so you will feel like achieving something afterwards. [ Jeffrey Kaplan has a video on it as well. he used an interesting analogy of building the structure/skeleton first, and then adding "flesh" to it. ]

- take breaks; get ample sleep. 

rests resets your brain to absorb more information, and a good night's sleep saves the information in the long-term memory.

- review summaries. the actions done repeatedly become muscle memory, and act like second nature.

[ you can watch Jeffrey Kaplan's video on "Reading to retain knowledge" for another perspective. ]

5

I briefly mentioned taking notes while studying. But there is a certain manner you need to take notes. 

- it must not end up as random doodles

- it must not also be a full transcript of the lecture. i.e do not note down everything, or even try to do so. 

if you are trying to note down everything, it will surely hamper your focus while learning in real-time. And of course, your notes will not be much helpful either. 

Instead, the proper way, is to focus fully on the learning material and writing down only the important bits while the lecturer is speaking, or if the video is not finished yet. Before moving onto the next topic, the lecturer should allow you to ask questions, and you can pause the video to make some more notes as a quick review. 

Keep the "absorbtion" (studying) and "expression" (taking notes) separated.

finally, acquire good quality materials to learn from. If the study materials are of better quality, the study itself feels easier and meaningful. But gathering materials of good quality is another steep wall.

There is also a concept in the learning community called "Tutorial Hell" where you have so many tutorials for anything imaginable, that you struggle to find the one you can actually sit down to watch. In the age of internet, knowledge is in abundance; both Gold and the garbage. So it is necessary to filter the garbage content out of the window. 

Hence there exists another genre of content that "suggest" you or provide curated content to do the filtering for you. 

Hence we come down to study guides, study hacks, or suggestions videos. I don't need to teach you that stuff. But if I had to suggest, you can probably start with watching Ali Abdaal's videos. I was also quite impressed by the work ethics, or, "study ethics" of James Scholz; who used to stream his study sessions only daily basis (~7 hours+). He is also the one who suggested Atomic Habits, besides Deep Work and Can't Hurt Me.

6

Finally, for something to be turned into a habit, it needs to go through the discipline of "consistency". 

All the concepts and tips I shared in this article are to be practiced in loops of daily schedules. Unless you have a genuine interest about the act of "studying" (yes, we call them "nerds") and can study whenever and wherever you want to; you must cultivate these methods like a skill. It also applies for people who do not put much importance in studying (much less about forming a habit). There is in fact a valid reason for that.

If you solely rely on your "mood" or "feelings" to motivate you to study, you may struggle to do it when you must. Feelings are unreliable, and motivation is fleeting. If something significant (exciting or tragic) were to happen right before an exam, are you sure you will not be distracted by it when you try to study on the last day?

Therefore, we must prepare for contingencies in advance. And there are two ways to go about it (that I know of),

1. To maintain a regular schedule

2. To maintain a deadline

I will not talk about schedules, since I myself am unable to work it out, as of yet. But I can suggest that you look into Time Blocking; which Cal Newport mentions a lot.

Instead, I am more interested in working with deadlines.

Deadlines are fascinating concepts. Everything has a deadline, or a "time limit". Even life ends with its due deadline (but alas! we are never warned about it). And for everything with such limits on time, we need to prepare for it in advance.

7

In one of our university course lectures, Drubo sir talked about Proactive and Reactive learning approaches. If you were given 10 days to prepare for an exam, how would you divide your time to, say, read 100 pages of materials? Let's look at some possobilities:

1. Any sane person would first divide the pages by the given time. So we can read 10 pages per day, and by the last date, we would have read all 100 pages. 

Easy, right?

2. But, what if you get sick on the 8th day, and cannot study no matter what on the 9th and 10th day? [ replace sickness with any other emergencies ]

The wise dude in the dark alley would suggest you to instead cut down the given time to 8, and keep the last 2 days for "revision" (yeah, surprise! that is a thing). Then you can also use that time to address any emergencies that needs your immediate attention.

3. But, again, what if you don't get sick on the last 2 days, but on some random days at the middle?

The wise dude would smirk at you and say, "then the 2 days for "revision" at the last gets used in the middle days of "unavailability". Common sense, right?"

4. But even the wise dude is not all-knowledgeable. Because he doesn't know that students tend to not study when given that much time. 

"So what should they do?!", said the wise dude, angrily. Then Drubo sir mentions that in Thailand, students would study on the first 4 days (so 25 pages per day) and take rest (or merry) in the other 6. 

This takes care of their attention span (not entirely), gives more time for any contingencies, and relieves them of worries of "unpreparedness". 

Wise dude nodded in agreement.

8

5. But what I prefer (wise dude squinted his eyes) might sound a bit complex, but hear me out, alright?

What if, on the first day, we skimmed through all 100 pages, noted down the topic names and important diagrams and exercise problems that we need to practice, and mark difficult topics separately from easier topics? Then, from the 2nd day onwards, we "flesh out" the materials by studying difficult topics first, practising diagrams and solving exercise problems? 

Observe what is happening here. 

Instead of going through 100 pages in sequence, we are getting a top-down view on the complete 100 pages; essentially (partially) completing our preparation on the first day. We are now aware of the whole syllabus, the important parts that need more attention, and diagrams/visualizations that usually earns you more marks compared to writing pages full of gibberish. This is the concept ot Building Skeleton / Structure in Jeffrey Kaplan's video on note taking. 

Next we talked about "Fleshing Out" the topics; also referencing Jeffrey Kaplan's video, it means to study or learn in details what each topic is about. Now the Skeleton acts like a Metadata for the details and you get an organized study done which you can now visualize like a Branching Tree with the Exam title in discussion at the root node. Essentially being able to access any information just by recalling what the topic was about.

This approach doesn't really contradict the previous 4 approaches I talked about. Rather, it strengthens the study done so far, and more importantly, your neural pathways.

9

And as a bonus trick, let me introduce you to "Imaginary Deadlines".

See, we humans are ultimately animals wandering in nature. And by nature, we have a thing called "survival instinct" which fires up weird feelings whenever we feel in danger. Deadlines are one such danger that modern-day humans fear the most. And, in no surprise, humans work more intensely and efficiently as the deadline closes in.

So, how can we use this primal trait of ours to our advantage? 

I suggested Drubo sir to take our exams 1 week earlier than the actual date. Or, to just announce it as such (╯°□°)╯

So what happens if you are given a 100 pages to study in 3 days instead of 10? 

You will cry and complain on the first day, but realize soon that it's of no use. Then you will study diligently for the next 2 days. And surprisingly perform closer to how you would after 8-10 days of regular studies. That is, if the exam were to be taken after 3 days of the given time.

Now, let's study with our Skeleton/Metadata and Fleshing-out approach. Then put this "Imaginary Deadline" away, get our 10 days in full. So we get our studies roughly done in 2 days, and following the [ 4 ] approach, we have 2 more days left before our students from Thailand start enjoying their rest. We can address the easier topics and revise the entire syllabus in those 2 days, and call it a day.

That's all I can share for now.

If studying is a problem, bringing it to a system is the solution. And the more efficient you are with learning and "re-learning" stuff, the more value you have in the current market.

- @b1tranger