The Quickie Flashcard Strategy: Never Sit Down To Study

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Throughout my hardest years in college I developed a strategy that improved my grades dramatically while reducing the actual time invested in studying. While I'd tried tons of crazy strategies in the past, I started to realize that my most consistent results were coming from the more traditional approaches to studying. Flash cards were consistently showing good results while some of my other methods were more spotty. That drove me nuts.

I'd always hated flash cards in the past. Using flash cards always seemed like a really boring game to play with yourself. I'd read one side of the card. I'd say what was on the other side. I'd check it. Within 10 minutes of using flash cards I'd want to drive a railroad spike in my eye. I always found it miserably boring.

When I realized how effective flash cards were, something started to click for me. I was already into researching study strategies like crazy at that time and I knew that enjoyment made all the difference in studying. I knew that people that enjoy studying study more effectively than people that dread studying. If I studied with flashcards and dreaded it while still getting good results, how good would my results be if I actually was able to enjoy using flashcards?

Now I'm not one to try and force the enjoyment of something but this thought got me looking into flashcards much deeper.

The Magic Of Flash Cards (And The Problems)

Flash cards are one of the most commonly recommended study strategies for a reason. They are one of the simplest methods of testing the effectiveness of your studying. When you're looking at one side of a flash card, you either know the other side's information or you don't. This can be stressful but it's using your brain the same way as a test would.

When students study using their textbook, they can read for hours without doing a single test on whether or not the knowledge stuck. (If they're not actually learning it then they're going to be preparing for an unpleasant surprise on test day.) With flashcards, it is almost impossible not to know if you’re screwing up.

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After going through a set of flashcards, you can empirically determine which information is in your brain and which information isn't.

This comes with some problems though.

First of all: Constantly testing information is relatively stressful. After a few minutes of using flash cards you can completely wear out your brain. That ultimately means it's really hard to enjoy doing for a long time. While you can derive some “running a marathon” pleasure out of it, the actual process is just painful.

Second: Flash cards are a major time investment. It can easily take 20 minutes or more to prepare a set of flashcards for a difficult course. In some cases, that means you're investing more time in preparing for the studying than you need to spend actually studying.

Finally: You need to actually use them. Yes. Despite the stresses of setting this whole system up, eventually you need to buckle down and find time to use them.

Making The Most Of Flashcards

Flash cards may be stressful to use but it is possible to enjoy things that are stressful. Anyone that's had a good workout in their life knows that. Stress, to a certain extent can be pleasurable. That's exactly how you need to think about flashcards.

Flashcards are stressful but only using a few flash cards at a time can actually be pretty fun. That's the change I needed to make to instantly rewire all of my previous thoughts about studying because everything finally came together.

Studying in short bursts with flash cards aligns with some of the most verified study experiments around. Studying is most effective in short bursts with long rest periods in between.

The problem with short bursts of studying is usually convenience. Who wants to carry a textbook with them to study a few minutes every few hours? That's where flashcards come in handy.

Picture this: You're waiting in line at a store. You pull the flash cards out of your pocket. You go through a couple. You put them back into your pocket.

This is the ideal way to study with flashcards. The effectiveness of each time you pull out the cards is off the charts. Flashcards are absolutely perfect to use in short bursts randomly throughout the day. Within that one minute you would have used to stare at a celebrity on a magazine cover, you were able to learn as much as you could have learned spending 2 or 3 minutes reading out of your textbook.

Not only that, but you'll often even find the random flash card test kind of enjoyable.

Making The Flash Cards

One of the hardest parts about designing your study strategy around flashcards is creating the flash cards in the first place. It can take a little bit of a time investment but it's well worth it if you make a large number of flash cards at a time. It also helps to create a system you regularly use to decide what deserves a flash card and what doesn't.

For example, here is a strategy I used:

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At the end of most textbook chapters, they have a summary of everything in the chapter. Use that summary and develop at least one flashcard per key point in the chapter. Those flash cards are the bulk of the information required. Oftentimes, they produce 85%-90% of what you need to know and they can be turned into flash cards within 5-10 minutes.

After memorizing those points over a few days, go through the chapter completely. (Fortunately, going through the chapter after you already know all the key points is much easier.) If there is anything else that seems important than make a flash card for that information.

The funniest part about this strategy is that you never have to sit down to study. You just need to sit down for 10-15 minutes a week to make the flash cards and randomly sneak a few flash cards out of your pocket a few times a day.

This is all you need to do:

1. Invest a few minutes in making flash cards.

2. Carry those flash cards wherever you go.

3. Pull them out randomly 3-6 times a day and go through them.

4. Never force yourself to study more than a few minutes at a time.

Total Time investment: Less than 10 minutes a day.

Do you want to know more ways to study faster and easier than you ever have in the past? Be sure to check out the archives for the secrets you need to know.

Screw Your Plan! You Don't Need It

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I had the perfect schedule all laid out. I was in college and I was set to go own my A+ rampage. I was getting good grades at the time but I wanted to crush them. My schedule started at 6 am. I'd get up. I'd workout. I'd eat. I'd shower. I'd study. Then class. Then more studying. Then another class. Then... more studying. I'm sure you get the point.

I was reading a book on time management and it inspired me to try and become a better student through being more organized with my time. It didn't take long before I realized how stupid my plan actually was. Within a week I wanted to quit school and join the circus.

That's what a schedule can do to you. (Everything except possibly the circus part. I'm weird.) A schedule seems like a wonderful thing in theory but it takes a special kind of person to actually put it into action consistently. I've talked with tons of students that had similar experiences to me. When you make an exact plan for what you need to do, you're just setting yourself up to fail.

You are not a study machine. You can't just insert a schedule of hole punched cards in your mouth and program your actions. (If you understand that joke then you win some geek cred.) You can't program yourself into doing things you want to do. Even if you could, it probably wouldn't be better than the alternative. What's the alternative?

Passion Is The Plan

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This may be something you can't understand right now. If you've never experienced it then it can seem a bit unbelievable but after a few years of practice, it comes together. There are times in the day that I'm  dying to get studying. I'm serious. My brain is pumping with every focus hormone in the world and I'm thinking, stimulate me! (No that's not a sexual reference. No matter how much it sounds like it. I use that kind of a reference because it's eerily similar.)

Your brain knows what it wants better than you do. Despite what you may be told, you're brain isn't naturally lazy. It takes years of training to make your brain that way. When you work to stimulate your brain, it can break free of that natural stagnation. Eventually, when you break off some of the brain rust, you can get it running naturally again. What's your brain running naturally?

Your brain wants to think. It's designed for it. It wants to soak up all the information required for it's survival. Once you start getting that survival instinct kicking, you may even start to want to study. (It will likely start with studying subjects completely unrelated to school. It's an urge you want to cultivate from there.)

Your brain won't always want to study but eventually your brain will tell you that it's time to start thinking. When your brain tells you it's time to study, hours of scheduled studying would mean nothing compared to 10 minutes of passionate studying.

Sure, scheduled studying may sometimes be a necessity but so much more is possible when you get passionate.

Schedule Of Passion

As much as anyone would love it to, passion doesn't happen to come on a schedule. It's impossible to predict the dates and times that you're going to feel passionate about studying. That means, you cannot count on scheduling to set up the best study periods of your life. They need to come naturally.

I believe a study time scheduled daily is helpful for studying in school for two reasons.

First of all, it takes time to break the bad study habits that hamper most students. Most students have effectively trained themselves to hate studying. (Who can blame them with the way the school tries to educate them?) That means the method of getting a student to study efficiently has to change. The first thing that needs to be changed is that hatred for studying. That can't changed without consistent and non-miserable study sessions (short, regularly scheduled, and not too stressful.) To get into my specific prescription, check out the archives of this blog.

Second, you can't count on passion when you have class tomorrow morning. You sometimes need to take it into your own hands. Eventually, with practice the schedule gains the same advantages as I'm about to discuss. It just takes time to work out the skill.

As you begin to hate studying less and less, you'll get more and more moments that you actually want to study. At first you may only feel the urge to study once a month. Over time though, you'll find that urge can come as often as daily.

Breaking The Plan...

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One of the worst things you can do for the efficiency of your studying is making a ridiculous plan. Sure, it can make sense to plan a half hour a day but you need to be unbelievably careful every time you do.

Plans don't work because your brain doesn't work that way. The things that you’re passionate about get your attention whether you want them to or not. There is no magic button you can press to get into the zone studying. It's much better to just be ready whenever you find the inspiration.

The worst part about these ridiculous plans is that they interrupt your ability to study in the future. One week of excessive or boring studying can completely change the way your brain works while studying. The brain needs to be focused to work well. When you force it through miserable study sessions, you won't be able to focus. When you don't focus, you make your brain think it's acceptable to not focus while studying. It all just stacks itself up into the impossible wall of studying that most students never break through.

Do you want to know how to let your brain do the studying without the stress? That's what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives for all the details. Oh... And if you have a kindle, make sure you give the ebooks a look too.

3 Reasons You Might Be Procrastinating (And What To Do About It)

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“HOW DO I STOP PROCRASTINATING?!?”

It's one of the most common questions that I get asked. Yes, and it is regularly asked with caps lock on. (Really, if you're going to ask me anything, please turn caps lock off to help what’s left of my sanity last a little longer.)

This is a really tough question to answer. It's kind of like they're asking, “how do I stop getting hungry?” To actually offer advice on the matter, I have to completely understand the situation. Maybe you're hungry because you haven't eaten in a month. Maybe you're hungry because you have medical issues. Maybe you're hungry because your Redbull and Adderall diet don't offer enough calories. Really, this is a question that needs some serious background info to even touch on.

If you want to stop procrastinating then you could have any of a number of different problems. Each of those potential problems come with a different solution. Here are three of the most common problems.

1. You Don't Care

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This point should be one of the most obvious ones but sadly, many students don't actually realize how much they don't really care about school. If you don't care about school then you are going to procrastinate. Even worse though, even if you beat that procrastination physically, your brain is going to study terribly.

Many students are scared to admit that they really don't care about school. They have the urge to please their parents or teachers but they really have no internal motivation to learn the information required. This is something that you may need to think about for a while to realize.

You might recognize this problem from completely forgetting about studying. If you never even think to pick up the textbooks (more than a quick thought) then this may be the problem. It may not be though. There are a lot of potential procrastination causes and this one can be one of the trickiest to spot.

Another  way to think about this problem is the “have to” mindset. “Do I have to do this?” No... You absolutely don't have to. No one is pointing a gun at you. You only should study because you want to (ideally.)

How To Solve This Problem

This is the hardest problem to solve.

Procrastination is just a symptom of not caring. Of course you're going to put off learning for school if you don't care about school. That's your brain doing the right thing.

You need to find a way to care about school.

The best way to do that is to change your schooling situation. Get a better method, teacher, or school. That, of course, is impractical for college students and almost impossible for high school students. (It's absolutely natural for self-directed schooling.)

Since that’s probably not an option, your next option is to change the way you feel about school. Find a way to actually care about it. Spend some time thinking about how important the information you learn could be to your future. If you're in high school, think about how it will prepare you for college. If you're in college, think about how it will prepare you for your job. At the very least, think about how the course is a means to an end. Maybe you just need to pass to graduate. (Of course, that pass only motivation won’t help you study more than the minimum but it’s better than nothing.)

Get in the habit of reminding yourself the reasons you have to study every time you want to study.

2. Too Much Study Stress

One of the biggest reasons people don't do things is because those things seem too big to do. It's your brain's defense mechanism.  If you want to do something that your brain doesn't think can be done, you're easily going to be distracted by all the other things you're confident you can do.

You might recognize this problem from thoughts like these: “Well... I want to study but I don't have much time.” or “I want to study but I'm too tired.”

There will always be excuses not to study. You will virtually never be wide awake and have plenty of time to study. Studying is something that has to be done despite those challenges. The problem isn't what you're excuses are, the real problem is that you made studying into way too important a task to manage. (You wouldn't not surf on Facebook or play a video game because you're too tired.)

How To Solve This Problem

Usually, you just need to chill out on the studying a bit. No, I don't mean study less, I mean loosen up your study routine a little. If you normally study an hour a night then cut the study time down to twenty minutes. If you normally work yourself into a curled up ball of stress by the end of the study session then you need to find a way to relax a little. (I've got some articles that can help you with that in the archives.)

Just changing your study routine isn't enough though. Your brain still associates that high stress to studying. That means you're still going to want to procrastinate. You need to break that association in your mind before the procrastination stops.

That association is usually best broken by using a little discipline to develop a study habit. Use your new more relaxed study routine at the same time everyday. Notice the word everyday. Trust me, everyday is way easier than only when you need it. Once that habit sticks you'll be learning more with less stress than ever. (In fact, this blog teaches how you can study only 15 minutes a night and still ace your courses.)

3. Distract Me!

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Okay. Now I'll tell you to study. Then, I'll place you in a room with the most awesome video games around. The room has a phone to talk to your friends. The room has fast internet. The room has a television with hundreds of stations. It has every movie you could ever want to watch. Oh yea... it also has a textbook for that studying. GOOD LUCK!

You cannot be surprised that you're procrastinating when you put yourself in an awesome place to be procrastinating. Your brain is designed to seek out pleasure. Studying is like a subtle pleasant flavored candy versus a sugar packed candy (all the cool things you own.) If you sit down to study with all kinds of awesome things around you, you're going to struggle to get yourself to study.

Sure, with a little practice and discipline it can be easy to study around turned off distractions but when you're stuck in a bad cycle of procrastination, it can be almost impossible to get out.

How To Solve This Problem

At the very least, you need to turn off every possible distraction that you own. That video game, shut it down, and unplug it if you have to. Disconnect from the internet. Your phone needs to get shut down. Do everything in your power to make studying the most interesting and easy thing to do in the place that you study.

Ideally, you don't even want to be in the same room as something more interesting than studying. The farther away you are from something more interesting than studying, the easier it's going to be to get into the studying. (“Wow... I'd really like to play that game but I would have to stand up... and... whatever... I'll just finish studying.”)

To make this happen, it may be smarter for you to head somewhere other than your bedroom for studying. It also helps to get into the habit of studying at the same time everyday. That means, sometimes, your body will just go to the place you study without you needing the discipline to force yourself.

Procrastination is a complicated problem. There is no one size fits all solution but there are some very common problems that people share. Solving procrastination eventually comes down to you making a personal decision of what's important to you. You can put yourself in a good position to choose right but eventually, you've got to make that choice.

Do you want to know how to study in less than 15 minutes a day? Well... that's what this blog is all about: efficient studying. Check out the archives or my books to learn more.

Why Hopping On One Leg While Studying Works (And Other Insane Methods Work)

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I spent years experimenting with different study strategies. I would spend hours and hours experimenting with different study strategies and then test the results. Some of those experiments were practical. For example, I spent over a week experimenting with listening to music while studying. (In case you're curious, it didn't work well.) Other of those experiments would seem downright stupid.

For example, I spent a couple days experimenting with hopping on one leg while attempting to study.

While it's a bit of a tangent from my point, I feel I need to explain why I'd experiment with something so ridiculous. I was including that experiment in a larger concept I was working on. I wanted to know how the activation of different muscles changed the effectiveness of studying. (It helps but that's a story for another day.)

That's not the only crazy experiment I've tried before though. (It's not even close to the only one.) I even spent a day trying to study for my history class in a language I barely understood. Again, this was part of a larger series of experiments that I was working on.

While I did tons of crazy experiments that seem completely unrelated to each other, there was one strange fact that most of these had in common. The crazier the experiment seemed, the better it's results seemed to be.

Interruption-Proof

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It can seem odd that doing things that seem completely stupid can increase your ability to study but I have a theory on it based on some solid science.

Imagine a person talking loudly in the background while you're trying to study. You're just trying to get ready for a test but some jerk feels the need to virtually yell everything he or she says. This is the kind of noise that can drive you nuts while you're trying to study. This is the kind of interruption that I'm always hounding on getting rid of in this blog. It can completely ruin every ounce of focus you invest.

Most of my crazy study experiments can seem similar this person talking loudly. Hopping on one leg is an interruption for your brain. Every time you go up into the air your brain has to focus all of your stabilization muscles for the impact. With my studying in another language, it would seem that having to translate words from the language I barely knew, into the language I knew would be another interruption. They are interruptions but they're just a different kind.

Imagine listening to an air conditioner while you're trying to study. In fact, imagine listening to a super loud air conditioner. How much of a disruption from studying is that? I could see you thinking either way on this one but the experiments suggest a clear answer. White noise, like the kind you'll hear from an air conditioner doesn't hurt your ability to study. (In some cases, it's been shown to help because it blocks out non-white noise.)

Your brain is designed to be distracted by anything unusual. It's not designed to be distracted by something repetitive and boring. The repetitive and odd can actually help you focus even better.

Interruptions That Improve Focus

When you're studying, the hardest part is getting your brain into your most efficient level of focus. The brain is a fickle device when you're not utilizing it properly. To truly understand this, you need to train yourself for year just to achieve your highest levels of focus. That's where some of my odd experiments come in.

Hopping on one leg while you're trying to study forces your whole brain and body into the studying. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't get distracted from studying. To maintain the pace I used, I needed to keep my brain completely invested in studying and not falling over. I couldn't suddenly think about the show I watched last night or I'd fall on my... Moving on...

The language translation studying forced my whole brain into the studying.

Of course, each of these individual study methods had other mechanisms at work but fundamentally, they could have helped just because they forced me to invest more of my excess energy into the study time.

Should You Hop On One Leg To Study?

No.

There is one fundamental flaw with all of these strange study strategies. Eventually, your brain and body gets used to the unusual factors about studying. At that point, you're brain doesn't need to focus quite as hard at it. That means the focus advantage deteriorates. (Anyway, you look like an idiot hopping on one leg to study.)

To make it even worse, your brain gets used to the excess stimulation while you're using one of these strange study methods. That will ultimately makes it more difficult to study when you're just sitting in a chair trying to learn it. (Your brain wants to be hopping while studying. That distracts you.)

Why Does This Matter?

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I personally gave up playing with silly sounding study strategies. Ultimately, I realized most of them may improve studying but they take a whole lot of management to constantly cycle through. I would have to change my study session nearly every week to keep studying at a high efficiency. And honestly, the 5% boost I was averaging wasn't worth the stress. Instead I figured it would be much better just to focus on improving my brain's focus without the extra tricks.

Through all these personal experiments I learned one important thing.

The human brain is awesome.

I'm serious.

While studying, it can sometimes feel like we've got a brick bonking around in our skull where our brain should be, but we still have the most complex machines around. The human brain is designed to learn information pretty darn well. If you feel like you're not learning something that you need to be learning then trust your brain to tell you what to do.

If you don't feel like you're learning something. You're probably not. If you're not learning with the strategy you're trying then it's time to change strategies. Stand up. Think. And do something new.

You may not understand exactly how the cogs turn in the mill of your noggin but all you need to do is trust that they're spinning in the right direction and let them turn.

Would you like to have the tricks your teachers don't tell you about how to study faster? That's what this blog is all about. Be sure to check out the archives. (And the books if you're in a hurry to learn it all.)