The most intriguing common factor in high-performing students is their ability to be both efficient and effective. They leave us wondering: how?! How do you understand these topics so well without spending anything near the amount of time that I do??
You might think it’s annoying and discouraging. It leaves you feeling breathless and depressed, almost like you’re trying to chase a bird that is flying vertically.
Some of you might attribute this ability in other students to some kind of innate gift, or natural talent, like how an athlete can be “built” for their sport.
Yet, even the most naturally-gifted athletes will tell you that the bulk of their incredible results comes from smart strategy and a ton of hard work. But since most students who look for these kinds of resources already have the initiative to work hard, we will focus on strategy.
How many hours do you spend on one subject prepping for a single exam? How much information do you actually retain after those hours?
How long does one homework assignment take you? How much does the homework practice actually help you understand the topic better?
Depending on your answers to these questions, you may or may not need to revamp your whole study strategy. How exactly do you do that? Well, below are the top three strategies (with real-life examples and hardcore scientific evidence), that when combined together will render each of your study sessions a massive success.
Little friendly reminder before we start:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
- Learn the Same Material From Multiple Sources
Let’s say you’re assigned 4 chapters for your 2nd unit in AP U.S. Government and Politics and you’re given 3 weeks to learn the content and then test on it. What do you do?
Most really good, hardworking students would frantically crack open their textbooks and start reading each 35-page chapter like a video game Javascript. Others may attempt to just read the chapter summary and take shorthand notes on the important points.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but both of these strategies are insufficient. In order to actually learn anything, you have to interact with the material. You need to think about it deeply, internalize it, and somehow make it relevant to YOUR life.
Ummm, okay, but how do you actually do that?
Right. So, instead of taking notes on each of those 4 chapters, write one essential question that is answered by each section of the text you read. For instance, instead of writing down the definition of “Bicameral Legislature,” write down “How did the Articles of Confederation create a need for Bicameral Legislature and why did that lead to filibuster in the Senate?”
The question above requires you to 1) understand the definition of more than one term addressed in your text, 2) connect the many pieces of information together to make sense of them in one coherent central idea, and 3) familiarize yourself with the standard method of assessment that will be used on you in any test.
This is a great strategy because testing systems have long left behind the “Define the substantive representation theory” questions. Anyone can literally search that up (and most people already know that), but you have to be a true scholar of the subject to answer: “How did substantive representation create tension among minorities and their delegates in congress and strengthen the ideas of internal efficacy and civic duty?”
The latter question requires an in-depth understanding of the content, a recognition of the fact that all the ideas are essentially intertwined, and a masterful weaving of events and connections to shed light on one answer or one major understanding.
To be able to answer questions like that you have to know the nuances of the concepts/events/ideas that you are learning. And to get there, you have to learn these ideas from many sources.
You are essentially creating multiple connections by incorporating all of your senses in the single act of learning.
Think of each source of information as an “info vitamin” going into your brain. You need more than one vitamin and mineral to have a healthy body, and the same is true for effective information retention.
Reading a textbook and asking yourself questions is one way. Watching videos on the topic is another. Teaching or explaining the material to someone else that has no background on the subject is a third.
This last method is my absolute favorite. It requires of me nothing but to talk, and oh, how well I can do that! I make my parents’ ears bleed over the dinner table explaining to them how (*dinner-table me speaks*) “the electrons in a molecular bond jump from one electron region to another and are never stable and so you need many variations of the same diagram to illustrate that, and that is called resonance!!!”
If you don’t see how teaching can actually help you learn, then please read the following article by the American Psychological Association (APA).
2. Alternate Study Subjects
Another way to study the content effectively is to alternate between the type of content you are studying.
My favorite combinations are language/literature classes with history/social studies classes and math with science. For example, after 30 minutes of AP Calculus homework, I jump to AP Chemistry or Medical Science. Yes, even if I am not done with the AP Calc stuff.
This creates many connections in my brain between and across the different courses. There’s a fancy term for it: interdisciplinary studies. And I love doing just that. lol.
I come to understand why good gut bacteria matter so much in digestive health when I see a graph of an exponential function showing the relationship between the amount of gut bacteria and immune failures. I understand science because of math. And vice versa.
I could never have possibly understood the dialect and syntax in Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God ( from AP Literature) if I had never studied the Civil War in AP U.S. History.
It is just as true for you and whatever subjects you are currently studying. Everything comes together and feeds off of one another to build a coherent whole. The world isn’t boxed into “history” and “math” and “art” categories. Often, knowledge in all of these disciplines is required to manifest something tangible in the world.
Here is another article by the APA showing just that , as well as another one from the Scientific American showing the effects of what is called “interleaving” or mixing up subjects while studying.
If you want the quick summary, here it is:
The mixing of subjects creates a spacing that makes the brain learn, forget, and then relearn material, and eventually cement the new information for the long-term.
It also forces the brain to notice similarities, differences, and connections between the things you’re trying to learn, which makes you better understand each subject.
3. Parkinson’s Law
This is not a disease, I promise. It’s a simple concept, that once grasped, can change your whole study game.
Parkinson’s Law states that: work expands to fit the time allotted to it. Meaning, the amount of work required for any task adjusts (usually increasing) to the time available for its completion.
That’s exactly what scientists observed happening in these studies. For the sake of word count, I will not discuss how these studies were conducted, but I will tell you what they proved and discovered.
The studies showed that when people were given extra time to complete a task, they took advantage of that time even when they really didn’t need it and when it didn’t change their performance on the given task.
This research suggests that when people are given a task to perform, they often think in terms of “how much time do I have to complete it?” rather than in terms of “how much time do I need to complete it?” This mindset causes people to be inefficient and waste time needlessly.
An’ what does this mean?
It means you gotta put a time limit on everything you do! Never step into an activity or task just trying to “finish it” without being clear on how long it will take you and how much you are willing to give it. The truth is that we often overestimate the amount of time a task takes.
Here is a cute little timetable for starters:
We have already established that to be effective while studying you must: 1) learn the information from different sources and 2) interweave the subjects while studying. But what about efficiency?
This is where Parkinson’s Law comes in. There is only a limited amount of time in a day for you to use solely for work/studying. In order to maximize that time, you have to restrict it intentionally. But that’s okay because any kind of freedom comes with an initial restriction.
High-performing students know this like a ballerina knows her tutu size. Yes, it’s true they don’t spend half as much time as you do on any given assignment/task. And it’s not because they’re some kind of wizard or automated neural sponge that zaps the facts out of textbooks.
It’s because they understand the power of this law. If you go into a homework assignment with no clarity on how long you want it to take you, you will be surprised by how many minutes d/d(x)[cos(x)] takes to translate into -sin(x).
For a practical example, I know that one blog post takes me about 4-5 hours to produce. That includes generating ideas, research, outline, drafts, applying SEO optimization, social media presentations, and so on.
But since the process is sooo long and requires many steps, I a) don’t attempt to complete it in one sitting (because I’ll lose my creativity) and b) I don’t ever sit down to work on any portion of it without limiting my time and ensuring that it will contribute just enough to the 4-5 hours total when added to the other parts.
Unlike resonance in organic chemistry, this is how time-management actually works, folks. If you cannot monitor yourself or your consumption of the most valuable currency of life, then forget about everything, drop your fancy-student classes, and figure it out right here.
There are many things that I want to do in a day in addition to academics. Most people think that high-performing students or “high-performing anyones” spend more time cranking out essays, business plans, or research papers.
However, that’s not always the case. More time doesn’t always equate to higher quality or better work. In fact, dare I say it’s the opposite. When I stress myself on purpose to finish something under a self-imposed deadline, it is ALWAYS more focused and dense with creativity than its counterpart done under a more relaxed schedule.
The gist of this whole article is this: there IS a way to be efficient and effective as a student so that you could pursue other things in your life and still be high-performing. This is achieved through interdisciplinary studying, resourceful and active learning, and time-restricting.
I promise you that if you implement these science-backed strategies, you will see immense returns in your effectiveness as a learner.