Learning is a skill, like any other, that you can improve. Here are some strategies to help you learn more efficiently:
1. Approach your learning goals with the tools of effective habit formation. Don’t just aim to complete a single task—aim to make learning a regular, natural part of your life. Apply these techniques to prepare for, execute, and reward your learning behaviors.
2. Control and budget your time. Plan specific work in specific blocks of time using a calendar.
Mark due dates and tests, and schedule proactive ways to prepare for them. Take advantage of all the available time in your day, even if it’s brief, the earlier the better.
3. Optimize your workspace. Work in a well-lit room (plan your work earlier in the day, so you don’t disrupt sleep with bright lights at night). Place computer screens at or above eye level when sitting up straight. Experiment with different levels and types of background noise, music without lyrics, or silence. Choose a location with as few distractions as possible. Associate this place with work, so when you’re there you know it’s time to learn.
4. Approach learning with an alert, focused mind. This is best achieved with a foundation of good sleep, diet, exercise, and relaxation.
5. Before you start studying, remind yourself why your learning goals are necessary and important to you. Your perceived need to change and grow influences your mind/body’s level of neuroplasticity. (Think of how much faster you’d learn a language if you needed to in order to communicate at all.) Approaching a task with indifference limits your ability to learn. Especially if the material isn’t very interesting or engaging, remind yourself how your efforts will eventually benefit you and others.
6. Think about your work as a function of both time and intensity. Your time is valuable, don’t waste it with pseudo work, just going through the motions. If you really focus and think deeply about the task at hand, if you forego all distractions,
you’ll learn much more efficiently. You can improve your intensity with the right tools and consistent practice.
7. Active recall is one of the most effective ways to learn. Test yourself. Try to reproduce information from memory, without books or notes, as if you were teaching it to someone. (This is opposed to passive recall: re-reading notes or highlighting passages, which often gives the mere illusion of fluency.)
Here are some ways to practice active recall:
– Use flashcards, testing yourself more frequently on material you know the least.
– As you read, frame important concepts as questions you can ask yourself later.
– Summarize as you read: after a few paragraphs, or a distinct passage, write down (or say aloud) a brief summary from memory. Do the same for subsequent passages, also adding a summary of all you’ve read prior.
– Ideally, teach what you’ve learned to another interested person who can ask you questions and expose weaknesses in your understanding. Otherwise, imagine you are speaking to such a person, and explain what you’re studying.
– As you test yourself, exhaust your inner resources before looking up an answer. Allow yourself to struggle as you search your memory.
– The best kind of tests for the purposes of studying have open ended, short answer questions with minimal prompts (as opposed to multiple choice questions).
8. Space out your learning. Avoid studying in single, long blocks of time in which focus and intensity taper off. Break up learning into multiple sessions over days and weeks. Test yourself as soon as possible after being exposed to material to prevent forgetting.
9. Keep bouts of learning relatively short, and relax afterward. For every ~45 minutes of work, go for a ~5-10 minute walk or take some kind of break. The amount of time you’re able to do focused work will depend on how much practice you’ve had. If you’re just starting out, you may need to aim a little lower. But try to push the limit of how much high-quality work you can do. Set an alarm to let you know when your target time has been reached.
While on your break, don’t do a different cognitively demanding task (like check emails or social media). This is called context switching, and it makes it harder to focus once you return to your task. Frequent context shifts (and distractions in general) contribute to mental fatigue.
10. Try to understand material at a conceptual level, don’t just commit it to memory. Think about the meaning of what you’re learning. How does it fit into the big picture of the subject? How does it relate to other things you already know? Try to understand the general principles of your subject and how they can be applied broadly.
If you have to memorize facts that are hard to conceptualize, use mnemonic devices like acronyms, rhyming phrases, visual associations, etc.
11. Work with other people some of the time (but don’t let them do your work for you). Form learning accountability groups: tell each other what you’ll be working on, then get together to share what you’ve done. Test each other and review each other’s work.
12. Spend time learning the things on which you’ll make mistakes. Provided you’re working earnestly, making errors improves your ability to learn. Errors cue the mind/body to enter a state of greater neuroplasticity in order to change and adapt.
Associate the feeling of making mistakes with positive motivation and growth. Train yourself to overcome frustration and embrace errors as beneficial.
13. To minimize procrastination you can create your own deadlines when a goal or due date is far enough away to be unmotivating. Make your first deadline easy and immediate to build momentum.
14. Reduce your impulsiveness and susceptibility to distraction. Turn off unnecessary notifications on your phone. Silence your phone while you’re working, keep it out of sight or in another room. Work in plain rooms on clean desks; work in a library or someplace away from home if the distractions there are too much. If necessary, use browser blockers to forbid distracting websites, or print things out to avoid digital temptations altogether. Schedule specific times (apart from your work) for the things that are likely to distract you. To minimize distraction more generally, limit your use of smart phones and social media to ways that improve your life.
Practice mindfulness. One of the aims of mindfulness meditation is to become more aware of distracting thoughts as they arise. This will help you detect when your focus begins to drift, and guide yourself, kindly, back to your task.
15. Keep a work-progress journal: each morning (or the night before) write down what you plan to get done. Be realistic. (Perhaps no more than three work-related tasks per day.) Record whether you complete these tasks, and if not, write down why. You’ll learn to notice, and hopefully avoid, what keeps you from getting things done. You can also proactively ask what obstacles may hinder your goals when you set them, and make a plan to avoid or overcome those obstacles.
16. If you’re really dreading a task, make working on it special in some way: study in your favorite place, give yourself an unusual reward.
17. Build a solid routine. The more habitual your learning behaviors are—the more thoroughly you plan your days—the less impulsive and prone to procrastination you’ll be.
18. Don’t let yourself get fatigued. Anticipate busy, hard days and distribute your work accordingly. Take care of your mind and body, and rest when you need to. If you’re going to prioritize effortful work, you should also dedicate some time for recovery.
19. Study how you study. Experiment with different learning strategies, resources, mediums, etc. and take notes on what works for you. After an exam or any kind of performance, review your preparation: What did you do that mattered most? What didn’t help at all? How can you refine your study plan to perform better next time? Seek feedback from teachers and experts. Develop how you learn and work best based on evidence you collect over time.
20. Find the best material to learn from. Even when material is chosen for you, seek out the best supplemental material. Improving how you study will matter much less if you don’t carefully choose what you study. Take advantage of the insights of others who have already learned what you’re learning.
21. Document and organize your learning in a knowledge management system. Create one place where you can capture all your work and the valuable resources you’ve found.
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