How to Study SMARTER, Not HARDER - YouTube

have you ever read a page in a book but then had  to go back and read it again because you realized  

you didn't actually take any of it in then this  video is for you because i talk about study  

smarter not harder quite often on this channel in  fact the most viewed video on this channel with  

4.6 million views is a video titled study hard  and study smart and people ask me all the time  

how do you study smarts well reading a page in a  book or chapter in a book and then not retaining  

any of the information is a waste of time and a  great example of not studying smarts there are a  

lot of reading hacks or studying hacks online on  how you can study smarter and remember everything  

you read or remember everything you study but at  least in my experience most of them are not that  

effective so in this video i'm gonna go through  the most powerful most effective study methods  

and technique that i have used and that helps me  through university but they can also implement  

yourself so that you can study more efficiently  and achieve better grades without actually  

increasing your studying time advanced information  processing this is a memorization technique that  

i picked up from jim quick who is a reading and  memory improvement expert and it's such a simple  

idea but it's incredible how powerful it is and  how much time it saves you can study for two hours  

and retain the same amount of information but  someone else who studies for eight hours it really  

is that powerful so the key to memorizing what you  read is asking more questions if you read a book  

and you get to the end when you think back and  realize that you don't remember anything you read  

it's because you're not asking questions and this  is a huge problem when reading big thick textbooks  

that let's be honest and not the most interesting  and engaging books to read but by simply  

asking yourself questions when reading it can  exponentially increase the amount of information  

you retain from that book i never just picked up a  textbook and started reading it without regularly  

asking questions throughout because if you're just  passively reading rather than actively reading  

you're wasting your time and you're not studying  smarts you need to engage your mindset where  

you're more receptive to the information you're  reading when i was reading a thick heavy textbook  

i would make notes on a separate piece of paper  and i'd put a line down the middle of the page  

and on the left side i would make notes and these  would just be the most important snippets of the  

text that i thought might be useful for the exam  on the right side i'd have my own thoughts and  

questions on what i just read and jim quick talks  about this method of retaining information from  

books quite often he says that there are three  main questions you should be writing down on the  

right side of the page the first question is how  can i use this and so it forces you to link pieces  

of information from the book to the bigger picture  how does the information that you just read  

link in with the knowledge that you already know  and what happens at this stage is that your brain  

is linking these new pieces of information to  things that you already know and strengthening  

your neural network therefore making it easier  to remember in the future the second question is  

when will i use this what this question does is  that it adds urgency when is your exam coming is  

it in two weeks or three weeks or in two months  maybe often when you're reading a textbook you're  

just skimming through it passively because  you're not engaged in the reading there's no  

urgency there and the reason why so many students  are cramming 24 hours before the exam is because  

there's a sense of urgency you know you need  to get that material memorized before the exam  

the next day so that's why you're far more engaged  and by asking the question when will i use this  

you're adding artificial urgency to your studying  because you do have a deadline usually your exam  

date but it's all too easy to forget this when you  have weeks or even months to study before the exam  

and the third question is why must i use this  because if it's not a must then there's nothing  

compelling you to do it so it could be because  the notes that you just wrote down could be the  

answer to a certain question in the exam for  example if your lecturer has asked you to read  

a certain chapter in a textbook there's usually  a good reason why they've recommended it and that  

reason could be because the content in that  chapter is likely to come up in the exam the  

second study method you should be using to study  smarter is spaced repetition and space repetition  

is where you memorize some information and then  a period of time later maybe a couple of days  

or one week later you come back to it and you  re-read it to reinforce it in your memory and  

this was the single most effective memorization  technique i used at university it saved me so much  

time because i didn't have to spend hours trying  to memorize each individual piece of information  

instead i would just memorize it for a few minutes  until i just kind of remembered it and then a few  

days later or sometimes just a few hours later  sometimes a few days later i'd come back to it and  

re-read it and a few days after that i'd do the  same and it saved so much time and honestly it's a  

really stress-free way of memorizing information  because you're not spending hours getting  

stressed out over why you're not able to memorize  and retain your study material space repetition  

takes advantage of what is called the spacing  effects which was a phenomenon first identified  

by hermann ebbinghaus way back in 1885 in his book  memory a contribution to experimental psychology  

which suggests that active recall with increasing  time intervals helps the brain process and retain  

information so when trying to memorize some of  your study material you might read the material  

then come back to it six hours later and then  again 24 hours later and then after that you might  

come back to it in three days and as soon as you  start to solidify the information into your memory  

the periods in between the time you read it will  increase to seven days even 14 days and upwards  

and every time you come back to review the  information you'll realize that you'll start  

to remember the material better each time to the  point where if you had a question in the exam  

you'd be able to remember everything perfectly  one cavity to using this memorization technique is  

that you need to be organized and start preparing  for your exams well in advance obviously if you're  

cramming in your revision for your exam tomorrow  this isn't going to work as well however the next  

study method utilizing the pareto principle just  might help you the pareto principle the pareto  

principle also known as the 80 20 rule suggests  that 80 of outcomes results in 20 of the causes so  

for example it's very likely that 80 of the grades  that you achieve come from 20 of your studying  

so you need to prioritize this 20 but what exactly  does this mean when you're studying there are some  

tasks that you'll be doing that are not that  important they won't directly help you with your  

final exams and this is the 80 of your study and  these tasks might include background reading for  

your textbooks or completing homework assignments  from the lecturer then there are tasks that do  

directly affect your grades and this is the 20  of your studying that you need to prioritize  

this involves answering past paper questions and  consolidating and summarizing lecture notes in  

preparation for your exam your brain can only  retain a certain amount of information before  

over time it starts to forget in late 19th century  german psychologist herbert ebbinghaus dubbed this  

the forgetting curve so if you're trying to make  your studying as efficient as you can and study as  

smart as possible it's important that you spend  more time focusing on the study areas that will  

directly affect your exam paper and this often  means you don't need to read whole textbooks but  

rather just focus on areas that you think or that  you know will be in the exam definement technique  

when you're studying for an exam it's important  that you put effort into truly understanding the  

information it's extremely difficult to memorize  and recall something if you don't understand what  

it is or what it means and if you forget some  part of it you'll not be able to continue because  

you've only memorized the order of the words not  the actual meaning so what you should do is read  

the entire piece of information and rewrite it or  reword it in your own words the feynman technique  

is a good way of testing yourself to see whether  you truly do understand something definement  

technique involves teaching the content that you  have just learned to others and it involves four  

basic steps step one study this is as simple  as it gets just sit down and study a topic  

step two and here's the interesting part teach  what you just learned when you were studying to  

someone with zero knowledge of the subjects  but make sure that your books and notebooks  

are closed you should teach someone who hasn't  even read the basics of the field you're studying  

simplify the concepts to the greatest extent  possible use pen and paper or whiteboard to draw  

diagrams if necessary just like a teacher would  so for a high school student imagine explaining  

it to a sixth schooler for a university student  you just have to assume that the person has no  

knowledge of the topic step 3 observe which parts  of the topic you were able to explain well and  

which parts you couldn't explain well and now go  back to the book and try to understand the topics  

once again if while you're explaining the topic  you notice that you used a lot of academic jargon  

bear in mind that it may be because you didn't  understand the topic well enough you should be  

able to explain complex topics in very basic  terminology step 4 repeat the above mentioned  

steps until you can explain the topic without any  gaps or use of jargon in your explanation without  

opening your book several studies have shown that  students have better memory and recall abilities  

when they have the expectation that they will  have to teach it to someone else and it makes  

sense because a teacher not only has to learn  the information for themselves but they also  

have to know the material well enough that they  can explain it in a very simple terms they also  

have to be ready for any question that might be  thrown at them as richard feynman once said the  

first principle is that you must not fool yourself  and you are the easiest person to fool so now you  

know how to study smart you can process and retain  as much information in two hours that many other  

students would take eight hours to learn and now  imagine if you can study smart and study hard  

imagine if you can study so incredibly efficiently  but still be able to study for 14 hours a day  

i made a video recently on how you can study  hard how you can study for 14 hours a day  

you can click on the video on the screen because  if you can combine those two things to be able  

to study smart and study hard at the same  time your grades are almost guaranteed to  

increase significantly it's almost impossible  for them not to so i'll see you over there