If you want to improve your learning and retentive capacity, good study habits are key, and they’re not difficult to pick up.
It is no doubt you face a lot of issues in your daily lives, and these things compete for your attention. This makes it difficult for you to focus during your learning or study sessions.
These issues will never go away completely, so you will need to be proactive in improving study habits that can help you hack your learning.
Find out why study habits are important and the habits you need to cultivate to enhance your knowledge.
Table of Contents
Why Are Study Habits Important?
Impact Your Motivation
Study smarter says the adage, not harder. By building good and simple study habits and learning techniques, you will keep yourself supercharged. This will assist you in attaining your goals efficiently and quickly, which will help you maintain high levels of motivation.
You can check out the video below to help you learn how to train your brain to crave learning:
Position You for Success
Cultivating simple study skills is not only relevant to life in university; these skills will position you for success in life overall. Every leader out there from Bill Gates to Elon Musk is a die-hard reader and learner. If you desire success in life, be studious.
Increase Your Self-Esteem
Good study habits impact your competence, confidence, and self-esteem. When you lose your self-esteem, you can lose the motivation required to learn.
Study habits help in safeguarding the most crucial ingredient to your success. It can also reduce the anxiety you usually have about deadlines.
Save You Time
As soon as you become proficient in your studying skills, you will cut down on the hours you spend on studying. This will give you more time to focus on other things that are crucial in your life.
Enhance Your Learning
Cultivating practical study skills will improve your retention and your ability to learn. It will also make learning more exciting and rewarding.
With these benefits, you may then ask which study habits are the most essential.
9 Study Habits to Hack Your Learning
You may already have a good grasp on some of these and be weaker in others. Focus on developing any of these study techniques to improve your ability to learn.
1. Review Often
Design a study plan to review your notes and other class materials. This will help you to maximize every study session. It will also reduce the pressure of cramming before any significant examination or job interview.
Reviewing is also a means of enabling your brain to store facts and new information in your long-term memory. If you cram often, you tend to forget what you have learned as the information will be stored in the short-term memory.
You can look at the graph below to get an idea of how reviewing helps you[1]. The more often you review, the less information you’ll forget over time.
2. Comprehend
Some learners try to memorize all the information while studying without trying to comprehend it. They will find it difficult to cope when they are faced with structured questions during examinations or interviews where the application of knowledge is needed.
If you study to comprehend, you will be in a better position to attempt any question on various topics presented to you. It becomes easier to explain a hard concept when you study to understand the concept. You’ll also be in a better position to learn how to debate, teach, or analyze.
3. Employ Different Study Materials
Do not depend on your book or all those good notes you take. Make use of different materials to aid your learning.
If you’re not sure of your learning style, now is a good time to figure it out. If you’re a visual learner, making flash cards will likely be helpful. If you’re an auditory learner, try listening to additional podcasts or lectures on the topic. This is all about knowing your strengths and how your brain likes to learn.
You can check out a learning style guide here to help you figure out which kind of learning will be best for you.
4. Utilize Flashcards
Employing flashcards can enhance memorization. It will assist you in recalling vital concepts and key terminology as it utilizes something called “active recall,” which refers to attempting to remember the concept from scratch rather than simply staring at the passage in a textbook[2].
Flashcards will help you condense voluminous amount of notes. You can also form the study habit of drawing diagrams to recall important information and details about the topic.
5. Take Breaks
Breaks are very crucial in between study sessions. It helps you to store and retain information in your long-term memory.
Prolonged studying can make you feel tired and put pressure on you. You cannot learn effectively when you are under pressure.
Overloading your brain can cause congestion. Taking breaks will provide your brain the required time needed to refresh before absorbing new information.
Research suggests that studying for one hour and then taking a 15-20 minute break is ideal[3].
6. Teach Others
Several studies have found out that you learn better when you teach others a concept you have studied.[4]
You cannot teach what you don’t know. Teaching other people positions you to learn as you have no option but to regularly recall learned information. This reinforces the information as you repeat while teaching others.
At some point, your “students” will ask questions, which you will need to analyze before providing answers. In this way, teaching enables you to gain a better understanding of the topic.
7. Evaluate Yourself
Evaluation is essential to determine if you understand what you are studying. It will enable you to gauge which aspect you need to work more on.
Evaluating yourself enables you to gain an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. You can leverage online tests or quiz.
Most books have evaluation sections or questions to answer. These are designed to test your knowledge and manage your study time.
8. Link Your Previous Knowledge to What You Are Learning
You can link your study notes to concepts you have learned previously. This helps you to recall things accurately.
Utilizing analogy can enable you to learn the content faster. You can also make use of acronyms to recall concepts, which is known as a mnemonic[5].
For instance, the BODMAS acronym is utilized to solve difficult mathematical problems. Any mathematics student understands that subtraction comes last while solving a mathematical problem, thanks to the BODMAS acronym.
9. Take Good Care of Yourself
This is one of the key study habits that most learners don’t manage properly. Getting a good night’s sleep and eating healthy both affect your ability to assimilate information. Learners who neglect proper diet and quality sleep will find it hard to retain information fast.
You should drink at least eight glasses of water, have eight hours of sleep, and a eat balanced diet daily. Foods such as berries, fish, groundnuts, eggs, and broccoli have been found out to boost brainpower.
How to Learn Study Habits
How can you learn these study habits in order to learn more effectively?
Focus on the Big Picture
How many topics do you want to cover? What amount of time do you have to cover them? What’s the purpose, target, or objective of studying the topics? How will learning this impact your career and personal development?
Set Priorities
Several topics will likely clamor for your attention. It’s important to prioritize them. Perhaps you work better by starting with the most complex topics, or you prefer to get your feet wet with an easier piece of information. Choose what works best for you.
Plan
Design a daily study schedule of what you want to study and when. A learning or study calendar is one of the essential tools to organize your learning activities.
Allocate a Considerable Amount of Time
It does not matter what purpose you have for studying; cramming is the least effective means of retaining information in your long-term memory. You need considerable time to study in advance to achieve your learning objectives, especially if it’s a topic you’re struggling to understand.
Establish a Suitable Study Area
Discover a spot where you can quickly spread out your materials, notepad, books, and your computer. The place should be well-lit, cozy, and devoid of distraction. It could be inside a public library or a private study area in your house.
The Bottom Line
Everyone learns differently, and each brain picks up information in different ways. However you learn, the study habits mentioned in this article will help you remember important information to become more productive while studying. Pick which ones you think will work best for you and get started.
More to Help You Learn Faster
- How to Learn Fast and Remember More: 5 Effective Techniques
- 12 Powerful Learning Strategies to Help You Retain Info Fast
- How to Learn Faster with a Feedback Loop
Featured photo credit: Windows via unsplash.com
