Tips for Effective Studying

For anyone who is willing to learn, especially us students, studying is an important thing that we should do in order to gain knowledge. It helps us in our school work, research, and others.

But sometimes, we tend to have difficulties in studying. There may be some information that is very hard to understand and digest with your current study technique. That is why I am here to tell you some tips for effective studying, some based from my own experiences as well as from others.

Avoid cramming. Admit it, we’ve all at least done it once because we forgot to study in advance for an upcoming exam. And while it is helpful when we have only little time to study, it really isn’t advisable. You will over exhaust yourself, physically and mentally. There will be some tendencies where you will forget what you’ve studied through cramming sessions. Click here to learn more on why cramming is such a bad idea.

Study while in a “flow state of mind”. If you’ve played games before, and you get to a certain point where you become perfectly focused at what you are doing, that nothing else seems to matter, and you give it your full attention, what you had experienced is basically what some people call “the flow state of mind”. The flow state is where your brain gives its full attention to something, and you might feel a sense of hyper awareness and focus to the task at hand. Once you have that kind of mindset while studying, you can easily digest all of the information that you want to learn. To attain this state of mind, it requires focus and a calm mind. Here’s a link to know more about the Flow State.

Have a group study with friends. Having group discussions can help you and your friends brainstorm ideas on the certain topic that you are studying. Studying with friends can also make the task less difficult, and because you are at ease, you can study more effectively, with the help of your friends. There are many things that you can go with this, such as having question-and-answer games, mini reports, and many more. This really helped a lot in my high school days, and still now in my senior high years.

Use visual and textual aids. Flashcards, sticky notes, and PowerPoint presentations are great examples of this. With visual and textual aids, you can easily digest the information without difficulty. It can help highlight main ideas, emphasize essential phrases, and as well as summarize the whole topic into simple sentences. It could also be handy to have a friend or two while doing so. You can search some PowerPoint presentations of the topic that you’re studying on the internet.

Find other sources and summaries in other media. If the current source and medium that you have for the topic may be a bit difficult for you to understand the topic, try finding other sources. The internet can help you find websites with information that can help you understand the topic. A great example of this is Google. You can also go to different media, like other platforms such as Youtube, reading other books, and many more. Summaries of the topic can be helpful too in order to have a much better understanding of the topic.

These tips has always helped me in my studies, so I hope this post helps you, too! Leave a comment below if you have other tips. I’d also like to hear different studying techniques from other people!