How to Learn Faster, Remember Everything and Reduce Anxiety for Exams
Effective Study Tips helped me regain control over my time while getting better exam scores.
After almost completing my bachelor’s degree and consuming endless information about productivity on YouTube, I feel like I have developed a very effective study method. This method really changed my life as it instantly made studying easier and more efficient for me. In this first article, I will break down the key concepts. I will post many more articles which you can look out for.
My workflow consists of these concepts:
- 80/20 Principle
- Cornell Note-Taking
- Active Recall & Spaced Repetition
I won’t go too far into detail with all these methods, as there are a lot of fantastic videos and articles about it on the internet. I will link some of my biggest inspirations below.
But I will show you a very good way to incorporate them into your life and specific task. But I want you to start right now!
Sadly I discovered the positive effects of this workflow only in the last few semesters and I want you to not make the same mistake.
These methods instantly helped me in getting better grades and more importantly feeling more secure in my abilities. This had the added benefit of reducing the anxiety I had when taking the exam.
80/20 Rule
So the most important principle and a good starting point is the 80/20 Rule:
It states, that most of the work, so 80%, can be done 20% of the time. And on the opposite it takes a lot of time, to achieve the last 20% of a task.
Simply put, it is very important to not get lost in the minor details of every topic. On the contrary, you want to scope the subject and then try to get a good understanding of every topic, before trying to dive into the last 20%.
I use this, especially when taking notes on the lectures. Here I will scope the slides and note the most important information. If some slides go into greater detail I will skip them at first and revise this content later.
With this method, you can break down the topics into much smaller chunks and studying won’t appear as this huge mountain you have to climb.
Remember you can always go deeper into the details if you have time.
I usually take a 2nd screening of my slides after studying the subject for a while. By then I progressed in the topic and understand the key concepts. So now you can notice the details because you understand the slides.
This will help you in getting the highest scores because you will know the last few percents that are necessary to go from good to perfect!
Never highlight again!
Instead, use the smart way of taking Notes called the Cornell Note-Taking System:
You take notes on the topic, but you leave one column on the paper open. This column is for writing down questions that are used for revision. Later you can cover the notes and only use the Questions to remember the information.
But don’t copy everything that’s on the slides! Try to think about which information can be questioned in the Exam. And also what information is important for you to understand the topic.
The questions you ask yourself should be challenging so that you have to recollect and connect the consumed information.
Active Recall as your new Mantra
The incredible power of the Cornell System can be explained with Active Recall:
The principle of Active Recall states, that the brain learns best if it is challenged to remember and connect information.
This is very important! Simply highlighting your slides or copying what is written on them, is not effective. With this method, you won’t make good progress and the information isn’t stored long term.
So please don’t revise your notes just by reading through them. The best way is by making yourself work for it.
So close your book and laptop and try to recollect everything you know about the topic. The Smart Notes from the previous paragraph will help immensely. By covering the Notes and answering the questions you will learn the content much faster.
If you can answer all the questions without looking at your Notes you have really mastered the subject.
Time is the key to everything
The step to make all of this studying stick in your brain is called Spaced Repetition. You can use this effect by planning ahead when you will revise different topics.
If you are a human reading this, then you know that we tend to forget a lot of things. For example the names of new people we meet and especially the stuff we study for our exams…
This phenomenon can be described by the curve in the image on the left. The so-called Forgetting Curve shows that the amount of any arbitrary information we remember decreases over time.
But this should not make you sad, as this is also the starting point of something great.
What is so great about forgetting?
We can use this to solidify the information as a long-term memory simply by taking increasing intervals between studying the same topic.
This gives your brain room to start forgetting. But you don’t stop there!
After the n days, you study the topic again, and using Active Recall your brain has to work harder to collect all the information again. But this way you signal your brain that this information is important.
In practice, you start by creating your notes for a topic. The next day you will revise them by using the Active Recall Method. The next revision will be scheduled after 2 days, then after 4 then after another week, and lastly a month later.
Stop revising the same notes every day, as it was proven to be very ineffective!
In future articles, I might go further in-depth with these methods and provide easy-to-use tools for planning your repetitions.
To Sum up:
- 80 % of the result can be achieved with only 20% of the effort, so break down your work and understand every topic before you go into the small details
- Use Smart Notes and revise by covering your Notes and recalling information from your head
- Use the Power of Spaced Repetition to solidify what you studied for the long term.
I hope you enjoyed this insight into my Study Workflow. Please take these ideas to heart and try them for yourself. I will follow up this article with more on productivity, note-taking, self-development, and also some coding.
You can look out for what is to come by following me.
Thanks for reading!
Inspiration and People I highly recommend:
