# How to study

Studying is devoting time to remembering things.

As you gather the materials, observe how you remember things best:

- Do you connect your ideas with the reality around you or use abstract symbols and comparisons?
- Do you retain more through seeing or hearing?
- Do you need more hands-on experiences or thoughtful re-assessment?
- Do the ideas flow as an ordered series of steps or a global idea working downward?

Take advantage of how we recall more easily in the same state of mind we encoded ("state-based memory"):

- As much as possible, put yourself in the same frame of rest, hunger, clothing selection, mood, and physical position when you study as when you take the test.
- If you were tired and hungry while memorizing the information, you'll best recall it while tired and hungry.
- Use a specific flavor of gum while studying, then take it to recall during the test.

Make studying a new experience each time:

- We learn best with new experiences, especially if they're interesting.
- New experiences can be as small as studying in a new venue or eating something unfamiliar.
- Sometimes, being uncomfortable can heighten our memory if we're not too distracted.

We learn well when we enjoy what we're studying, so try to make learning fun (or at least interactive):

- Build something out of the information.
- Make a summarized format of all the material.
- Connect what you learn to practical matters in the rest of your life.
- Try studying [with friends](people-4_friends.md) to enjoy it more.

If you want to deeply understand the information, add variety:

- Textbooks are usually written sequentially, but we connect memories through experiences and feelings.
- The modern academic style of staring at a book for hours at a time is *terrible* for good study, so do whatever will make you more comfortable with the experience.

## Study in the right location

The actual location isn't relevant as much as your ability to feel comfortable learning:

- Exposing yourself to a *lot* of the subject doesn't matter if you aren't retaining it.
- Being immersed in a [culture](people-culture.md) affiliated with the subject will *not* help you learn unless you're comfortable enough to retain the information.

Try to study in as close an environment to where you'll need to recall the information.

If you can choose, sit in a blue room to focus more.

While listening to anything, sit in the most acoustically pleasant part of the room.

In a large lecture, sit near the front (which also makes the lecturer think you care about the material).

Lying down will help you think faster.

Whenever possible, read the hardest possible information on the subject you're studying:

- By reading advanced-level information, you save tons of time trying to understand content.
- Even if you don't fully understand what you're reading, you'll slowly ramp up through "soft" understanding.

Read the history of the subject you're studying, which often helps you understand *why* things are how they are.

## Manage your time

If you aren't interested in the information and just need to cram, focus on the material most likely to show up on the test:

- Focus *only* on information referenced by the syllabus.
- Tests tend to pull most of their questions from the first and last 20% of the syllabus or textbook.
- Only consider ideas that might be a test question, especially short lists and numbers.
- If you can, find copies of old tests that have their questions.
- If the teacher has a political opinion, write everything as if you were defending that opinion.

To avoid test anxiety, prepare for the test with earlier deadlines than the test date.

Studying takes repetition, so spread out the studying across the most time as possible:

- Studying heavily beyond your comfort zone only yields results for a test, but has little to no benefit for long-term retention.
- Start studying as early as possible.
- Avoid cramming, since it disrupts retention.

Instead of watching a video once, you will learn more if you watch it twice at twice the speed.

Schedule a routine, fixed study time across multiple days:

- Synchronize your study time to sunrise or sunset to link it to your [circadian rhythm](sleep.md).
- Space out your study sessions and swap out subjects to keep it interesting (which will make you remember things better).

Consider the time of day for studying:

- On a typical circadian cycle, our analytical capacity peaks around late morning or noon, so schedule your mentally challenging classes or study sessions in the morning.
- If you study in the morning, your mind is uncluttered, but studying in the evening means you'll [meditate](awareness.md) on it while you sleep.

### Before you start

Eat a healthy meal to peak your blood sugar beforehand:

- Eat a [balanced diet](body-2_diet.md) with an emphasis on healthy fats.
- To stay steadily supplied, have a healthy, slow-digesting food like oatmeal.
- On the other hand, an empty stomach has been scientifically proven to help focus.
- Stay well-hydrated with water or herbal tea.
- A few various foods and drinks have been linked to better memory:
  - Zinc (found in oysters)
  - Chocolate
  - Caffeine

Get plenty of [sleep](sleep.md) or take a power nap if you can't sleep.

[Meditate](awareness.md) and focus yourself.

Since it harms memory development, cut out *all* multitasking:

- Turn off anything like a phone or TV that could distract you.
- Since it disrupts deep focus, avoid listening to any rhythmic music.

"Prime" your brain by keeping study tools ready:

- Keep all your materials ready in your usual spot.
- Chewing gum is a great way to focus, especially cinnamon gum.
- Drink peppermint tea or eat peppermint leaves.

Mentally warm up with small, stimulating exercises such as addition, counting backward or doodling.

Learn the best [way to take notes](mind-memory-notes.md) with respect to your [personality](personality.md).

## During the study session

Try to focus on short spurts of study (5-10 minutes) with short breaks instead of longer sessions.

Write down everything that stands out to you as worth remembering:

- You'll lose 60% of the information you don't write out within 9 hours.
- Handwriting is more effective at retention than typing.
- Writing in blue ink or some other color is easier to remember than black ink.

Focus less on absorbing every piece of information and more on retaining what you *do* observe:

- You should be gathering key themes and images instead of word-for-word transposition.
- Only write summaries or something that jogs your memory.
- Observe potentially critical information from shifts in inflection/tone or through repetitions.

Use shorthand or symbols to condense the ideas:

- If you take notes with misspelled words or missing a letter, you'll remember it better during review by trying to "fix" it.
- If you make too many analogies, you'll forget the original information.

You won't retain much information if you're working your brain to the point of mental exhaustion:

- Stress will temporarily boost your short-term memory, but use it sparingly because [anxiety](mind-feelings-happiness-stress.md) will ruin it.

## Stay alert

You are only legitimately studying when you're fully alert.

We can only stay alert for short chunks of time (usually no more than an hour), so focus on depth instead of breadth:

1. Read through a page of notes once.
2. Try to recall as much as possible.
3. Reread until you're happy with your retention.

There are ways to stay alert for longer:

- Aim for content that's interactive, such as games or problem sets, over static content, such as videos without following along or reading books.
- Imagine you'll be teaching the information later.
- Put pieces of candy on each page and eat them as you get to them.
- Set an alarm to take routine breaks (every 30--45 minutes) and get physically active for at least a few minutes.
- Add variety to your material if the subject doesn't interest you by jumping between chapters or books/lectures.
- Instead of passively consuming the information, think of new ways to explain or rephrase it.

Watch for Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS):

- After a certain point, any further [information](information.md) will make us numb to *any* new information.
- [Go directly to sleep](sleep.md) and tackle it again when you're rested and fed.

If you start drifting or getting frustrated, casually read ahead to get a feel for what you have to look at later, then stop.

## After the study session

If you have time, sleep to encode the ideas into memory.

Review your notes within 24 hours:

- Type out the notes or paraphrase them.
- When typing, a weird font (e.g., Comic Sans) is easier to remember than a familiar font, but the easiest fonts to *read* are Times New Roman, Palatino, Bookman, Georgia, Garamond, and Courier.

Take [practice tests](mind-memory-tests.md) to track improvements, increase your confidence, and find gaps in understanding.

Focus intently the next time on any gaps in your [understanding](understanding.md):

- You should be able to quickly paraphrase that section of the material.
- Focus on one aspect at a time.
- You should know the content well enough to teach it.
- Reward yourself for accomplishing predefined milestones.

[Find others](people-4_friends.md) who care about what you're studying and share your thoughts with them.

The scientifically easiest way to remember things requires recalling something precisely when your brain is about to forget it (spaced repetition):

1. Write down ideas on opposing sides of cards, with only small bits of information on each card.
2. Quiz yourself on each card:
   1. If it's super easy, put it in a pile to review in 4--7 days.
   2. If you understand it but aren't sure, put it in a pile for the end of your session.
   3. If you don't understand it at all or missed it, put it in a third pile.
3. Work through the pile, then take the third pile and repeat the quizzing.
   - Color the cards by topic or by pattern to help build further associations.
4. At the end, quiz yourself on the second pile, then mark your calendar to review the first pile.
5. As you become more and more familiar with the concepts, you can space the future piles out further.

When you train yourself correctly, you can often learn a year's worth of material within a month or two.

At the same time, don't deceive yourself about how much you know:

- We tend to think we would have guessed the answer *after* we see it.
- Quiz yourself and come to a complete answer *before* you see the correct answer.

## During the Test

Before you go in, take a 20-30 minute break to eat, play, and socialize before the test:

- Cramming right before the test will give you more stress and offset any benefits of what you're cramming.

If the test permits a card or a page of notes, fill it with *everything* you weren't able to memorize.

- To make more room, use 3-D red/blue glasses to write notes with red ink, then with blue ink, then bring the glasses to the test.

Calculate how much time you'll have for each question.

Before anything, go through a quick run-through and answer all the things you know instantly, then go back through and spend more time on the difficult questions:

- Often, you'll know 80% of the information and have trouble with the other 20%.

Take your time, and use as much of the extra time as you need to think out and recall the answer.

- If there's no penalty for a wrong answer versus a non-answer, you can also [increase your chances on questions you don't know](mind-memory-tests.md).

If a wrong answer is the same penalty as a non-answer, and you don't know or are short on time, trust your [intuition](mind-feelings.md).

## Additional Reading

[HOW TO STUDY](https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/howtostudy.html)

[Effective Spaced Repetition](https://borretti.me/article/effective-spaced-repetition)