Supercharge your Study Habits with These Tips
With midterms coming up, most of us are starting to feel overwhelmed with the amount of studying we have to do. That panic can make it harder to focus, which is the last thing we need! When we can’t focus, a study session that could take 2 hours can end up taking a whole day. Luckily, students and education experts have come up with study tips to help create and maintain focus so you can study well.
Preparing to focus
Some of the most important steps you can take to study better can be taken before you even open a book (or your laptop). These tips will help you get into a focused space so that you can finish those 2 hours of studying in 2 hours!
Move your body
Exercising has plenty of positive effects on positive effects on mental health, including improving concentration! Exercise releases hormones in the brain that affect your focus, namely dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. The increased focus will help you study for longer and more efficiently
Meditate before studying (especially if you are stressed)
Meditation can help you calm anxious thoughts and improve focus. Some people find that a short meditation before you start studying can get you into a focus faster. You can start by doing breathwork for only a minute before you start. If you want guided meditations, you can search for guided meditations on youtube or you can download one of the many meditation apps available.
Organize your study space
One of the most common study tips I’ve heard is to remove distractions from your study space. Throw away any trash, push unnecessary items to the side or put them in the other room, and create enough space for your elbows and your work. Having less clutter will help you keep your mind on your tasks.
Separate your spaces
Your brain expects certain activities in various environments. If you are resting, sleeping, relaxing, and doing homework all in the same place, you are going to have a harder time convincing your brain to do any of those things. If you separate these environments, your environment will send you clear signals of what to do and what not to do. That means you will have fewer urges to take a nap, play a video game, or scroll through your phone. Try dedicating a desk to doing work, a chair to reading, a couch for relaxing, a table for eating, and a bed for sleeping.
Handwrite your study materials
When preparing your study materials, many people take notes. But if you take notes on your laptop, you may be missing out on some of the benefits of taking notes. A Princeton study found that people test takers perform better when they write their notes with pen and paper rather than typing their notes. The reason may seem counterintuitive. Typing allows you to take notes faster, capturing more of what your teacher is saying. But writing your notes forces you to paraphrase since you only have time to write shorthand notes of what the lecturer is saying. That paraphrasing helps you process the information, keeping you more engaged and later giving you a better recall of the information. That means even before you start studying your notes, you are going to have a better grasp of the material.
Tools for maintaining focus
Timed Study Sessions: The Pomodoro Method
A popular method among professionals and students alike is the Pomodoro method. The Pomodoro method entails 25-minute work sessions with 5-minute breaks. After 4 rounds of this (2 hours total), you get a 25-minute break. There are plenty of apps to help you make these timers, but it’s just as easy to set timers on your phone. I’d like to note that some people aren’t satisfied with the 25 minutes of work. If you find that stopping at 25 minutes breaks your groove, you can try alternate durations, like 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off.
Play white noise (piano, rain, lofi)
If you are constantly distracted by noises and conversation around you, putting in earbuds and playing white noise can help drown out surrounding noise. My personal favorites are rain sounds, piano covers, and lofi.
Complete study guides and practice tests
Instead of reading from your notes, try actively recalling information through completing practice tests or filling out study guides. The questions that you don’t know can serve as an indication of which topics you need to study further. This can save you tons of time reading notes of information you already know.
Leave your study space every once in a while to reset
Whether or not you are following the Pomodoro method, you should take breaks every once in a while. Taking breaks helps you avoid fatigue and gives you a chance to reinforce your studying with something pleasant. During your break, you should remove yourself from your studying environment. Get outside, stretch, and get the blood flowing back into your body after a long time of sitting.
Tips for after you study
There are tools you can see after. studying to help you remember what you studied for your test
Get enough sleep!!
This one may be one of the least followed and most important study tip. It’s oh so common for students to compromise sleep for more studying. But this is actually the last thing you want to do before a test! Sleeping, specifically REM sleep, helps you encode information so that you can remember it later. By not sleeping, a huge portion of the studying you do is lost because your brain isn’t able to actually retain it. So before a test make sure you are getting 7-9 hours of sleep.
Splashdown: Memorize numonics and write down
Sometimes, memorization is the only way. When there are complex formulas and concepts that you just can’t seem to remember, it’s useful to get them on the page as soon as you receive an exam. The way you would do this is by reciting it in your mind for the minutes before your exam so that you remember it, and then “splash it down” as soon as you have the paper so that you don’t need to remember it after that. I have had a lot of luck with these for formulas or for pneumonic that I use to remember the first letter of each word in a name or process.
Supercharge your studying with accountability
One of the best ways to stay on track in your studying is by meeting with someone else at least once a week to go over the concepts from that week. Being accountable to another person to show up and study together is enough motivation for many people to study regularly. It also makes studying more enjoyable because you get to spend time socializing as well as studying.
The same idea goes for study groups. These groups give you a set time to study and a group of people depending on you. With big groups you divvy up topics for study guides and then each person can explain one part to the group. You can also have everyone prepare questions to go over as a group ahead of time. Either way, you will all learn a lot from studying together.
Don’t fret if you don’t know anyone to study with yet. At Subject Saviors, we have a free Study Group Matching tool to help you find a study group at your school!
Find what study habits work for you
Studying is a very personal endeavor and you may need to experiment to find what study habits will work for you. If you find something that gets you the grades and doesn’t drive you insane, you should keep doing it! If you’d like to share any of your own personal study tips, please do so by commenting below! We love hearing from you.
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