Outsmart your studies how to study learn effectively hack your memory with faster revision techniques for exam success will

OUTSMART YOUR STUDIES How To Study Effectively, Hack Your Memory, & Learn Faster William Wadsworth Copyright © 2022 William Wadsworth All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission from the publisher ISBN: 9798781744688 Cover design by: Rebecca Pitt and Crucible Creative Edited by: Luna Beasley CONTENTS Introduction Part How to Study Effectively: The Six Pillars of Student Success Pillar 1: Know Where You’re Going Tracking your learning across different topics Tracking your assignments progress in written Matching your studies to the time available What does “good” look like? Pillar 2: Know You Can Get There Pillar 3: Make Time for the Journey Deciding on your routine Staying consistent Pillar 4: Eyes on the Road Controlling external distractions Controlling internal distractions Pillar Learn Faster by Retrieving Studying with retrieval practice Pillar Remember for Longer by Spacing The Goldilocks Effect Putting it all together: building spacing right into your study routine Part Learning Faster: Six Study Strategies that Work Strategy Powerful Learning Using the Blank Paper Technique Upgrading your mindmaps Memory journaling Strategy Supercharge Your Memory with Flashcard Mastery Flashcard best practise part 1: making the cards Flashcard best practise part 2: training with the cards Strategy Q&A Ultranotes: How to Make Notes that You Can Actually Remember How to upgrade your note-making Best practise for Q&A Ultranotes Strategy Getting Creative with Practice Questions & Past Papers Four advanced ways to use practice questions Strategy Hack Your Memory with Study-Ready Mnemonic Tricks Mnemonic techniques: helpful for students? What is chunking? Mnemonics numbers to chunk and remember Mnemonics to learn long and tricky lists Strategy Get Test-Ready for Maths (& More) with Interleaving What is interleaving, and how does it work? Studying with interleaving How far can you stretch the concept of interleaving? Putting It All Together Your study system: choosing strategies that are right for you Study systems for knowledge-rich courses Study systems for less “knowledge-rich” courses How to get in Touch and a Final Request… Recommended Reading INTRODUCTION Welcome to Outsmart Your Studies, the book that teaches time-strapped students how to study more effectively for their exams, so you can: Learn faster and remember more Prepare for exams without the overwork and stress Get the grades you want and deserve on test day These exams you’re working towards could be standardised tests at (high) school, exams as part of your university or college course, or even qualifications taken as part of your career It really doesn’t matter – the strategies for effective studying are the same If you have stuff to learn for your exams, if you want to well, and if you want an easier path to getting there, then this is the book for you! ******* The first part of this book covers the foundations: the Six Pillars of Student Success, introducing principles the rest of the book will focus on: Pillar – Know Where You’re Going: have a plan Pillar – Know You Can Get There: master your mindset Pillar – Make Time for the Journey: building a solid study routine Pillar – Eyes on the Road: cultivating unshakeable focus Pillar – Learn Faster by Retrieving: how to get knowledge to stick in memory – fast Pillar – Remember for Longer by Spacing: the secret to beating “forgetting” Part covers the Six Study Strategies That Work It’s not necessary to use all these strategies – most students get great results by focusing on just one, two, or three You can read this part in order, but it’s also possible to dip into specific strategies that appeal to you the most Strategy – Powerful Learning Using the Blank Paper Technique Strategy – Supercharge Your Memory with Flashcard Mastery Strategy – Q&A Ultranotes: How to Make Notes You Can Actually Remember Strategy – Getting Creative with Practice Questions & Past Papers Strategy – Hack Your Memory with Study-Ready Mnemonic Tricks Strategy – Get Test-Ready for Maths (& More) with Interleaving To finish, Putting It All Together explains how you can use the various strategies in combination to build a complete and coherent study system A smarter path to exam success awaits! PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Designing Your Complete Study System You’ll know by now that the gold-standard approach to effective learning is spaced retrieval practice – that magic combination of retrieval practice (testing yourself) spaced out across different days Let’s recap the strategies we’ve covered and discuss how to start combining them in sensible ways to create a complete and coherent study system In Strategies 1-4, we covered four great ways to retrieval practice: Strategy – blank page retrieval: perhaps the simplest of all retrieval practice strategies: simply grabbing a blank sheet of paper and writing out everything you can remember about a topic from memory Strategy – flashcards: my personal favourite study strategy, flashcards, including both good old-fashioned paper flashcards as well as quiz apps like Anki or Quizlet, which are essentially digital flashcards Strategy – Q&A Ultranotes: a powerful way to upgrade your regular note-making by simply drawing a line down the middle of the page and splitting every nugget of information into a question-and-answer pair, with the questions going down the left-hand side and the answers going down the right You can then retrieval practice by covering up the answer column and testing yourself Strategy – doing practice questions, such as from past exam papers if they’re available These aren’t the only ways to retrieval practice, but I’ve been coaching students on effective ways to study for years, and it’s extremely rare I’ll come across a case where the preferred strategy is not a variant on one of these four techniques: blank page retrieval, flashcards, Q&A Ultranotes, or practice questions But we didn’t stop there The final two strategies covered two very important additional aspects of a study system: Strategy – Mnemonics: clever techniques you can use to assist you in remembering the hardest-toremember parts of your course: those long equations, extended quotes, long lists of factors, and obscure terms in the sciences or alien foreign language vocabulary Strategy – Interleaving: a brief departure from talking about learning knowledge to talking about how to practise skills – in particular, how to practise maths problems more effectively using the interleaving strategy So, which techniques work combination with each other? well in Your study system: choosing strategies that are right for you The first consideration is what you’re doing today What strategies are you already using? If you’re reading this book, then the chances are you’ve already tried one or more of the study techniques covered in the How to Study Effectively series My strong advice would be to start with what you today and improve that rather than throwing out everything you and starting from scratch with a totally fresh technique Why? Well, the science of behaviour change tells us that we have a bias towards taking an easy path, so if we’re looking for effective new study habits to stick, it’s going to be a much easier ask to tweak your existing technique than it is to start with something totally new (See examstudyexpert.com/howto-improve-study-habits/) For example, if you already use flashcards, then start there and make sure you have your technique optimised using the best-practise tips from the flashcards section (Strategy 2) If you like making a lot of notes, switch to Q&A Ultranotes (Strategy 3) If you make visual summaries like mindmaps or spider diagrams, modify that practise so that you’re doing more summarising from memory, as we discussed in Strategy And if you a lot of re-reading, start to shift some of your reading time away from reading in favour of doing some blank page retrieval on what you’ve just read (Strategy again) Start where you are, and build on it Study systems for knowledge-rich courses The second thing to consider is your personal circumstances – that’s a combination of your course requirements, plus your own personal preferences Clearly, I can’t give personalised advice to every single person reading this book – that’s a major reason why I offer 1on-1 study strategy coaching, so I can take the time to understand your circumstances and recommend a plan that’s right for you (examstudyexpert.com/coaching) But, here are some generally applicable tips, firstly for those taking exams requiring you to know a lot of knowledge, as is typical in fields like the sciences or medicine, for example I would recommend basing your study strategy around one of the three core retrieval practice techniques: Blank page retrieval Flashcards, including digital quiz tools Q&A Ultranotes These are all good options, but of the three, the most popular tends to be flashcards and their digital equivalent – they’re a little easier to manage than Q&A Ultranotes and are a little more time-efficient than blank-page retrieval if there’s a lot of challenging detail in your course to memorise If your course is a little less detailed or you’re quite close to mastering the material, then go for blank page retrieval On top of your choice of either flashcards, Q&A Ultranotes, or blank page retrieval, I’d suggest layering on both of two other elements: Mnemonic strategies: a useful tool if you find yourself struggling to get a particular bit of information to stick, no matter how many spaced retrieval practice attempts you Once it becomes clear that this is a tricky bit of learning, take a moment to step back and figure out a mnemonic strategy to help you – a stepping stone to help you over the river, if you remember our analogy from that instalment – then don’t forget to actually practise recalling the information using your mnemonic strategy Just having a mnemonic doesn’t remove the need to retrieval practice – you still need to it, only now with the assistance of your chosen mnemonic Practice questions: even highly knowledge-centric courses benefit from early and regular practise with real past papers, assuming you have access to them This teaches you all sorts of things about how to use the knowledge you have, how to give the examiner what they’re looking for, and various points of exam technique, such as how to manage time Start doing occasional past papers well before you feel ready to them because the experience can often inform your overall study strategy So, the combination of a retrieval practice technique like flashcards, adding in mnemonics for particularly tricky bits of knowledge, and layering on some past paper practise is an example of a good, complete system if you have lots of knowledge to learn Study systems for less “knowledge-rich” courses But what if your course is less about learning facts and more about practising skills, like: Solving maths-style problems Writing essays Here, practice questions will probably be especially important as a foundation to your overall study system, potentially used in conjunction with techniques like interleaving and perhaps dipping into retrieval practice techniques like flashcards for specific elements of your course, like memorising the equations you need for a maths or physics paper or the quotations you need for a literature course ***** Good luck in your journey to becoming the most effective student you can be, so you can study smarter, not harder, and so you can take an easier road with less stress and fuss on your way to acing your exams Wishing you every success! HOW TO GET IN TOUCH AND A FINAL REQUEST… If you enjoyed this book, why not share the love and leave us a short review on Amazon? It doesn’t have to be long – a sentence or two is more than enough to be extremely helpful for us Head to your local Amazon store: For the UK, see amazon.co.uk/dp/B09N1WN3KM For the US and the rest of world, see: amazon.com/dp/B09N1WN3KM For Australia, see amazon.com.au/dp/B09N1WN3KM For India, see amazon.in/dp/B09N1WN3KM And scroll down to find the “write a customer review” button under the “review this product” heading Thank you in advance for your review; it means so much! ****** Join the newsletter for regular-ish tips and advice on passing your exams right in your inbox: examstudyexpert.com/join ****** If you have any comments or suggestions or want to share your success story, you can send me an email at: examstudy expert.com/contact I read every one Thank you, and once again, very best of luck with your exams! I’ll be rooting for you RECOMMENDED READING You know how to study for the exams now it’s time to sit down and take them! But how can you ensure you score every mark you deserve when it matters most? Enter Outsmart Your Exams – the companion to Outsmart Your Studies that takes over when the studying is done and the test-taking starts No more “couldn’t remember.” No more “ran out of time.” No more botched exam essays The exam grades of your dreams could be in your hand Read it now! ******* For this and other recommended reading, please see examstudyexpert.com/bookshelf ... Welcome to Outsmart Your Studies, the book that teaches time-strapped students how to study more effectively for their exams, so you can: Learn faster and remember more Prepare for exams without.. .OUTSMART YOUR STUDIES How To Study Effectively, Hack Your Memory, & Learn Faster William Wadsworth Copyright © 2022 William Wadsworth All rights reserved... available your studies to the time Once you’ve made your “map” for what needs doing in your studying, a quick time budget for it For example, if there are 11 chapters to study and you have 25 days before