Study Smarter, Not Harder

STUDY SMARTER, NOT HARDER:

Learning is an important part of student's life, and memory is the fundamental tool in learning process. We are taught to develop our memorization skills at any early age and often good memorization skills lead to success in exams. We have seen many students top grade in spite of studying for a short period of time while others constantly struggle and cramme same topics for days, despite don't achieve success. These students always ask themselves that what are those golden habits of high achievers they lack? What successful students do differently that makes them so smart without much effort? The answer to these questions is they study smarter not harder.

A science journalist Benedict Carey in his book 'How we learn'

Similarly for learning something effectively it is better to study one hour one time than to allocate three hours straight to study at one time. According to Benedict, this effect is called 'Spacing effect' or 'Distributed effect'. This effect can increase the performance of the brain up to 46%. It is because our concentration at the start and end of a session is at its peak so, shorter study sessions will help you to memorize effectively than continuous hours of cramming.

2) UNTESTESTED FLUENCY IS AN ILLUSION:

We all might have gone through this situation. Suppose you have a test tomorrow you learn a topic by repeating it again and again, and at last you might feel that you have memorized it and instead of testing yourself; you move on to another topic and the very next day when you see the same topic on the exam you try to remember what you learn but couldn't this is called 'Fluency Illusion' when some lines are written before your eyes, and you keep reading it an illusion is created in your brain that you have learnt it, but you haven't, and you move on leaving it.

To avoid being trapped by fluency illusion try reading a line one time and recall it three times in your head instead of reading a line three times without recalling

So remember short naps during study is not a loss, but it is very important for retaining information for a long period of time.

7) ZEIGARNIK EFFECT:

In psychology, Zigernik effect refers to a state when people can remember an uncompleted tasks better than the completed ones. This effect was first studied by Bluma Zigernik.

Therefore, after giving an exam our mind forgets what we had learned because the task has been completed. We can use Zigernik effect for our benefit by doing some unrelated activities during study like watching t.v, taking a walk or a nap and by getting distracted in the following way we can learn the material better this also enhances our creative abilities.

So use the above described seven techniques to memorize efficiently and to remember what you learn for a delayed period. With using these techniques for a couple of weeks try to learn something and see what results you get, you might be surprised how easy it is to study smarter not