How I Study SMARTER, Not HARDER

two years ago i graduated in the top five percent  of my university and i wasn't studying 15 hours   a day i didn't sacrifice my social life i wasn't  cramming in my revision for weeks before the exams   it was all a relatively smooth and stress-free  process and a lot of people have this false idea   that in order to achieve incredibly  high grades you need to be studying   all of the time and you need to sacrifice all  other areas of your life in order to achieve them   but that's just not the case of course it does  take a lot of hard work but something that is   just as equally important is working smart  because often working hard just isn't enough   maybe you've been in the situation where  you're studying and studying maybe 10 11   12 hours a day but you're just not getting the  grades that you're aiming for and if you are in   this situation i created the project heath  and transform your grades in 30 days course   exactly for you check the link in the description  for more information but this video is going to go   through the exact steps that i took that made me  study smart that made me study more efficiently   therefore consuming processing and retaining  more information in a shorter amount of time   spread out your studying now this is such  a simple concept but it's so incredibly   underutilized so if your exams or just your  education in general is stressing you out then   this is for you the vast majority of students when  their semester first starts the number of hours of   studying they do will be relatively low as the  semester progresses and their exams get closer   the number of hours of studying will steadily  increase and then one or two weeks before the exam   the studying will suddenly increase even more as  the pressure from the exams motivate them to start   cramming in preparation and that's maybe how you  study it's how most students study but it's just   not studying smarts it's quite a stressful way of  approaching your exams and at least in my opinion   there is a better and smarter way of studying  so what i would do is at the beginning of the   semester i would set a goal of the number of hours  that i was going to study every day now that could   be six hours eight hours ten hours it really is  up to you but just make sure that whatever you   choose you can maintain it throughout the whole  semester so for me it was studying eight hours a   day i treated university like a full-time job so  eight hours was perfect and at the beginning of   the semester i would be studying eight hours  a day and this was focused intense studying   and at the beginning of the semester it would  often be background reading of the new material   going through past papers to get an idea of what  i'm going to be learning about in the lectures   and watching documentaries and youtube videos  about the new subject just to have a broad basic   foundational understanding of the subject you  see at this point no one else will be putting in   as much studying there's no exam deadline for  months to come so most people don't have the   pressure of an exam to motivate them to study  so this is where you get ahead of most of the   students because there's no pressure of deadlines  it's a relatively stress-free way of studying   and it can be fun too watching documentaries  and watching youtube videos on the subject   can be an engaging way of being introduced into  a new subject and is far more interesting than   reading thick textbooks now this is where it gets  interesting as you progress through the semester   your eight hours of studying stays the same  where most other students have to increase the   number of hours they study because they need to  catch up you don't you stick to your eight hours   throughout the middle of the semester and even  just before the exams there were so many exams   that i had approaching where i didn't have to  increase my studying in order to prepare for them   and this is why university on a whole wasn't a  stressful experience for me because i had exams   coming because i had started preparing for them  well ahead of time i wasn't panicking or rushing   to cramming my studying days before the exam so  if i had one tip for you to study smarter and not   harder i'd suggest setting a number of hours  to study at the beginning of the semester and   stick to it whether it's four hours six  hours eight hours ten hours whatever it is   start preparing for your exams right before  the beginning of the semester and then when   your exams do come around you'll be completely  prepared for them eliminate pseudo studying   now i just mentioned that you should be spreading  out your studying throughout the entire semester   rather than just cramming in a few weeks before  the exam but there's one big mistake that i see   a lot of students make when doing this they  space out their studying more which is great   but because there's no pressure from deadlines  or exams they begin pseudo-studying so pseudo   studying is when you just sit there with your  laptop and your textbook and you are studying   but you're not really taking in the information  you're more just studying to feel like you're   being productive rather than actually studying  with your exams in mind and you'll probably find   that the majority of the marks you get in an  exam are coming from a select few things that   you're doing when you're studying the rest is  studying for studying sake so for example for me   past papers were absolutely essential for getting  good grades in my exams and so i prioritized   past papers other tasks such as reading for  background information in a textbook didn't   directly correlate to getting higher grades so as  a result i didn't allocate much time to reading   pages and pages of thick textbooks i also didn't  gain much from answering unnecessarily large   amounts of practice problems it wasn't like i was  learning new information and getting significantly   better by practicing hundreds of the same practice  problems once i hit a certain number the learning   curve flattened so i stopped another thing that i  noticed was that i was researching for hours and   hours before writing an assignment i mean i could  research for like seven or eight hours before i   even typed a word for the assignment and although  preparation for writing an assignment is important   it certainly doesn't need seven or eight hours  of it so i learned to restrict the oxygen i gave   to the research and cut it down to two to three  hours and it saved me five hours per assignment   and my final grade wasn't affected at all so for  all my studying for every task that i started   i questioned myself to what extent will this  task affect my overall grade if the answer   was by a lot then i'd increase the time i spent  working on that task if the answer was not a lot   then i'd decrease the time on that task or even  eliminate it altogether active engagement now i   see students making this mistake all the time they  come to me and say they've been studying all day   every day for the exams but when their exams come  around their grades don't match with the amount   of studying they've done and one reason for that  is because a lot of students mistake reading and   re-reading texts or notes as studying but it's so  incredibly important that you're not just reading   the text or notes passively but you're actively  engaging in the material so active engagement   is the process of constructing meaning from the  material so that involves making connections to   lectures forming examples asking and answering  questions so basically it's about thinking about   what you're reading but active learning doesn't  necessarily mean highlighting or underlining text   rereading or rote memorization which is basically  just repeating the text over and over in your head   doing these things can help you engage in  the task but they're not generally considered   active studying techniques however some ideas of  active studying include create a q a so writing   out questions as you read and then once you've  finished reading writing out answers for the   questions and you can also create your own quiz  and even give that quiz to your friends to use   become a teacher so say the information out  loud in your own words as if you're teaching the   concepts to a class alternatively you can teach  your friends or even your parents or siblings   create concept maps and diagrams so things  like mind maps are a great way of processing   the information and actively engaging  the brain to help with memory retention   active recall and this is something that i  talk about quite a lot on this channel and   i talk about it quite a lot because it is such an  efficient way of studying so basically it's where   you read a page from a textbook then you close the  textbook and you write down everything that you   remember from that page you then go back and open  the textbook to see what information you missed   avoid multitasking now multitasking does  not improve efficiency so this is when   you're performing more than one task at the same  time so you might be studying two subjects at the   same time or studying and browsing instagram or  studying and chatting to friends on social media   a study in 2012 by raynal juncko showed a  correlation between a class's gpa and how   often they were multitasking when they studied  for their exams and the study found that the   more the students multitasked when they studied  the lower their gpa was so consider eliminating   distractions things that prevent you from becoming  fully engaged during your study sessions if you   don't need your laptop for your studying then  don't use it use apps such as the focus to do   app to help keep you focused and prevent you from  getting distracted or trying to multitask because   apps like these can also lock your phone so that  it eliminates the temptation you might get from   getting distracted from things like notifications  on your phone and so avoiding multitasking and   getting into the zone of studying is incredibly  important a student that studies for eight hours   and is super focused and engaged will obviously  process and retain significantly more information   than a student that also studies for eight hours  but is procrastinating and distracted throughout   the distributed practice technique so this  video is all about studying in the most   efficient way possible one of the most efficient  ways of studying is called distributed practice   so this basically means spacing out your studying  over several short periods so say over several   days or even weeks an example of this practice  is to study in short periods on each class every   day so this might just be for 30 minutes on each  class every day and what that will do is help you   process the information on a deeper level but  also help you with information recall and this   isn't a new concept it was first proposed  in the book psychology of study in 1932 by   professor cecil mates and he wrote perhaps the  most important discoveries are those which relate   to the appropriate distribution of the periods  of study acts of revision should be spaced in   gradually increasing intervals roughly  intervals of one day two days four days   eight days and so on so studying smarter rather  than harder is such an essential concept when   you're studying for your exams life is just too  short to be studying and studying but not getting   any results and this might be a trap that you're  stuck in where you are studying for 8 10 even 12   hours a day but you're not getting the grades you  expect and that's why i created the transform your   grades in 30 days course specifically for you the  whole course is designed to show you how you can   decrease your studying by a significant amount  but at the same time by significantly improving   your grades and you do this by studying more  efficiently so implementing study techniques   that have been scientifically proven to help  boost information processing and memory retention   you can click on the link in the description  where i talk more about the course in more detail   and if you decide to jump on board i look  forward to working with you very shortly

Channel: ProjectElon

Views: 850,126

Rating: 4.9696136 out of 5

Keywords: student motivation, study motivation, motivation to study, motivational speaking, motivational speakers videos, motivation, inspirational speakers videos, study harder, study smarter, study smart, study hard, harder, smarter, study, study smart not hard, study smarter not harder, how i study smarter, how i study smart, how i study smart not hard, smarter not harder, smart not hard, work smart not hard, work smarter not harder, work smart, studying smart, studying hard, studying

Id: IYCOlQSuVdE

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021