When Is It Alright To Skip A Study Session

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On this blog I'm always tooting the horns of consistency. A good study routine is one that is as close to habitual as possible. At the same time, I've left a few comments in the mix that led to a little confusion among my readers. It's probably been a mistake not to have cleared this up earlier. Thanks to everyone asking the question about it.

Study consistency is ideal and practically 100% required for the first few weeks of your study routine. Many people, that aren't completely committed, take takes off early in their attempted study routine and then end up giving up on the routine completely. So, for the first two or three weeks of any new study routine, buckled down and don't skip a session. Past that, you don't have to be perfectly consistent.

Bumps In Life

In an ideal world a person would be able to study at the same time, everyday, for the same length of time. Naturally, we live pretty far from that ideal world. That's particularly true for the busiest of students. It's a complaint I hear all the time, “I can't predict when I'm going to have time to study consistently.”

Honestly, you just need to be 95% sure you can study at the same time consistently. (Do it when you wake up in the morning if you have to.) It doesn't really matter if you miss one or two study sessions a month. You'll still end up miles ahead of the less consistent studier.

That being said, if you're missing study sessions regularly then you probably need to look deeper at yourself. Why can't you adjust your schedule to a consistent study time? You may unintentionally be trying to force yourself out of studying by putting that study session at a bad time. Then, when you have any excuse to cancel the study session you use the excuse.

This is a serious motivation problem that you need to always be looking out for.

Sickness

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Studying while you're sick can often be a waste of time. If you have the sniffles and aren't feeling that bad, it probably won't hurt to study. That's particularly true if you had already skipped some study sessions. That being said, you're going to be working at a lower efficiency than if you were feeling well.

If you're seriously sick then you don't need to waste your time studying. Sure, you can get some results but for the most part, you are wasting time. It will be easier to spend more time studying when you're not sick to catch up (most of the time.)

If you're seriously sick for more than just a couple days then this changes slightly. One or two days of completely skipping your study routine for sickness won't hurt all that much. Once you skip a week or more you're putting your study routine (and ability to catch up) at risk. That being said, don't ever force yourself too much.

If you're anything like me, you probably don't mind studying as much when you're bedridden and feeling like crap anyway. (Sure, it's not ideal but studying can help you fall asleep.) When you're sick for a long period of time, let yourself study if you feel like you're up for it. Ultimately, you're going to have to have a little discipline but you don't have too many better options.

The Don't-Cares

Ever start a study session and feel like quitting within five minutes?

Probably. That's usually a sign that you're doing something wrong with your study session. If you're completely immersed in your study session you won't start feeling the urge to stop for at least 15 to 20 minutes. That being said, even if you have the kind of study session I recommend in this blog, every once in a while you'll realize your brain is stuck in the off position for the night.

It takes a lot of discipline to do the following but I absolutely stand behind it's effectiveness.

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If you normally don't have an issue studying but for some reason, you just don't feel like it this one day then feel free to quit. That being said, you should only be quitting after attempting to study for at least a third of your regular session.

So, if you study 15 minutes (like I recommend in this blog. Check out the archives for the details,) then  5 minutes into your study session, if you still feel like quitting, you can quit.

After you quit studying, do not rush off to play a video game or do something fun. Instead just relax. This is to help prevent your brain from associating quitting studying with too much enjoyment. If you give it a few minutes before having fun, you'll be in a much better position to study the next day.

Of course, with all of these things I'm recommending, they come with a caution.

!WARNING!

I try to focus on consistency for a reason. Most people are too inconsistent with their studying. Whenever they see a post like this giving good reasons they shouldn't study, they'll use this as an excuse to keep studying inconsistently. (While I said it's okay to miss a couple sessions a month, they'll be missing 50% of their sessions and using this as an excuse.)

That's obviously not most of the regular readers of this blog because, lets face it, people that look up study strategies generally are much better at discipline than the general population.

Here is the way I recommend you keep an eye on yourself. If you ever feel like you're missing too many study sessions (and you miss more than 1 or 2 a month) then you're probably right. Heck, even if you're wrong, a little bit too much consistency wont hurt you all that much. For the most part, not studying because of these three things is for your pleasure. It's not because it would wildly hurt your study session. If you don't take a day off, don't.

Do you want to know how hundreds of readers are studying less than 15 minutes a night and still kicking ass? That's what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives. Also, look at the ebooks to get the crash course.

Study One Page A Semester

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What if you never needed to study more than a single page for your classes? How much easier do you think studying would be. It could save you hours and hours every single week. It would leave a ton of free time after studying. That is why I originally used this method in college. I was hoping it would have a dramatic impact on my final grade. Surprisingly, it did something much more interesting than that. I’ll get to that later.

If you’ve read this blog at all then you’re probably familiar with the tons of experiments I’ve done around studying. I’ve studied in more methods than I could name and with each one I did semi-controlled experiments to find to the absolute most effective ones. When I heard someone describing this method I’m discussing here, I got a little excited. It seemed to coincide with some of the most important study factors I was finding. It sounded like a super powerful method. After the experimentation, I found out it was but not how I expected.

So, without further ado, here is the study method:

Throughout each course, keep on extra sheet on lined paper. After each class, or chapter in your textbook, write down the absolute most important things on that single extra sheet of paper. Here’s the important part though: by the end of the semester, you cannot get a second sheet of paper to continue writing this. Just continue to add to this single sheet of paper.

You can get creative to try and write more and more information on that single sheet of paper. That’s actually part of the fun. By the end of the semester, you’re going to have the most important points for the class written on a single sheet of paper. I, personally, was able to study exclusively off of that single sheet of paper without it causing any negative effect on my expected grade.

This might sound a little crazy. I’ll get more into the details later but first, I think it’s worth going over why this method is awesome.

Why It Works

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This study method is a false restriction on the amount of information you need to study. In the average textbook there are hundreds of thousands of potential facts to memorize but in reality, the class probably only requires you to know a handful of them.

When you pick up the textbook to study, or your full class notes, you’re making the task of studying significantly more difficult than it has to be. You not only have to study the information but you’re forced to try and find the most important information to actually learn.

When that most important information is already decided, you don’t have to go through a list of unrequired facts again. That means your studying goes much easier. That does something even more important though.

When you reduce the information that you have to learn, you completely change the way you think about studying. When I was studying for that course, I never once felt overwhelmed having to learn the information on the page. That meant getting myself to study in the first place was unbelievably easy.

This method involves false restrictions on the amount of information you have to learn. That makes it much easier to learn the important stuff. It also does one more super important thing.

It ensure that you actually think about the class outside of class. You’re required to spend at least a few minutes after class narrowing down any important information that you received. That process involves a bit of studying in itself. It’s no surprise this method works because it actually requires you to put in a little bit of studying regularly.

Some Important Tricks

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This method of studying works very well. It can cause a very deep level of learning. While most of the study methods I recommend are quick fixes that don’t offer you “permanent stick-forever” learning. This is one of the methods that can really make information stick. Since you’re going over that same information regularly, it’s natural to remember it. Here is what you need to know and do to make the best of it.

Information Capsules:

At the earliest chance you get, create boxes on that single sheet of paper. Create the number of boxes based on the number of times you plan on updating that single page. If you plan on updating it once a class then make one box per class. (In high school, you may need to focus on one box per week or something.) Make those boxes as big as you can while still fitting them all on the page.

Then, each class, or each time you fill it out, make sure not to require more than the single box.

This ensures that late in the semester you’re not stuck using a tiny section of the paper for a large amount of information.

Single Sheet Is Variable:

If you’re taking an anatomy course or something ridiculously tedious, forget about the one sheet restriction. Some courses, mostly in college but not all college courses, have too much information to fit on a single sheet of paper.

Increase the number of sheets to something a little more reasonable. More reasonable means a couple more sheets, not a whole notebook. Personally, I couldn’t see a course requiring more than 4 sheets for a really good grade (as long as you’re filling in those margins well.)

There is one important note though: Plan the number of sheets in advance and do everything in your power not to increase that amount. The false restriction doesn’t really exist if you don’t actually plan to follow that false restriction. You won’t get half the benefits if you don’t treat your selected page limit seriously.

Teacher’s Emphasis:

In most courses, teachers are virtually giving away the test questions. Teachers have a tendency to lecture for the specific tests. Remember that whenever a teacher spends a significant amount of time on any particular point.

Given the choice of focusing on the textbooks emphasized points and the teacher’s emphasized points, always put the teachers points first.

The Results Of My Experiment

Here is the most interesting thing about this method. It actually taught me the information in the course really really well. While I’m all about using cheap tricks to score high in courses, this study method ended up getting the information to stick really well. That is actually one of the reasons I don’t use this method particularly often…

Here’s the deal: This is a great method for learning new information. That being said, it’s not the most efficient way to score high in a class. That means it doesn’t fit into my 15 minutes a night study strategy.

Are you looking to really understand the material in a course? Then this study method is absolutely great. If you’re looking to score high without investing much energy, this is an okay method. That being said, it requires a relatively large time investment when you add up all the single sheet updates.

Do you want to know how to study in less than 15 minutes a night? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives for the details. Also, check out the ebooks in the sidebar for a crash course.

Maximize Your Grades With Focus Rotation

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When you're working to study as efficiently as possible, you need to change the way you approach your study time. Theoretically, you could be studying all day. The average high school provides enough textbook pages to make it completely impossible to keep up in all the potential study material. There is no reason you couldn't be studying every free second you have but, of course, that's a complete waste of time when you could  score similar grades studying less than an hour every night.

If you've kept up on this blog then you'll know this by now. Studying longer usually just reduces the efficiency of your studying. By dramatically reducing your study time, you can usually get better results. Doing that introduces a few problems though. First of all, when you're taking 5 or 6 or more classes, how can you possibly study for all of them in a limited study period?

The answer includes two different things.  

From my experience, a portion of the classes you're taking will require almost no studying. (That is, assuming you've kept up with your previous courses and aren't in a particularly challenging program.) That instantly knocks away a portion of your required studying.

The next part of the solution is...

Focus Rotation

Focus rotation is absolutely fundamentally to getting this study routine to work. (Quite frankly, I think it's fundamental to just about anything in life but that's a whole different subject.)

Focus rotation is the strategy you use to decide which courses you're going to be putting your study time and focus into. If you're doing it well then you should be scoring high in virtually every class. If you're doing it poorly then you'll probably be falling behind massively in at least 1 class.

Focus rotation happens naturally in most cases. A student might see a test coming up the next day in one class and decide to study for that test. That being said, naturally (and haphazardly) hopping from study focus to study focus usually just causes more harm than good. Instead focus rotation should be a conscious and planned change between your potential focuses. By doing that, you can learn to actually maximize your results.

The Basics

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Focus rotation isn't all that complicated a subject but it can be tempting to leave it up to chance. You've got set up a focus rotation plan AND actually follow it. The effect this can have on your grade can be dramatic (if you're not naturally good at it.) If you're naturally good at focus rotation then you'll still usually see a small boost.

An example of a focus rotation plan might look like this:

Study for my lowest grade class 3 days a week. Study for my second lowest grade class 2 days a week. Study for my next two lowest grade classes 1 day a week each. Excluding the night before test days when I can study for the class with a test.

Simple. Right? Mostly at least. (I've personally used a study rotation strategy that took up a whole page. These strategies can get pretty complicated.) Notice the focus on lowest grade classes. That is not required but can work well (with a few challenges.) Everyone requires a different strategy. You'll need to play around a little to find yours.

I recommend you come up with your own basic outline for your current classes. Think about it like creating a flow chart for your required studying. Make it so you know which courses you're required to study for every night (or at least most of them.)

There is one important point you need to focus on with your study rotation. Do not make it subjective. If you say something like, “study the course I need to study,” or something up to ridiculous interpretation then you're wasting your time. The key is making only one potential option that leads to the right choice.  Objective factors would include class scores, homework scores, test scores, class difficulty (as rated by anything excluding your gut,) etc. The more objective your rotation, the more you're going to be able to adjust it for perfection.

The Hardest (And Easiest) Part

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The hardest part about setting up a study focus rotation is being honest with yourself.

In designing this plan, you have some incentive to lie to yourself about which classes you need to study for most. That's because, usually, when you don't do well in a class, you also don't really enjoy studying for it. While you're designing this plan, you may want to undercut the required time you'll need to study for the class.

The opposite incentive also exists. If you score well in a course then you probably enjoy studying it a little more. That means you might want to give yourself extra time studying it that you don't actually need.

These incentives can be difficult to ignore completely. People have a tendency to either fall for these incentives or, instead, study the hard classes excessively to make up for those incentives. Do you want to know the secret to dealing with that and balancing the classes study time? Yea... Me too. That's just about figuring out your tendencies.

The great part about that challenge is that when you figure out the solution, you never have to worry about it again.

Most students occasionally have hiccups in their unplanned focus rotations. They might not know which class they should study for. That can lead to five minutes of the student metaphorically (or physically) banging their head on their table trying to figure it out. When you have a focus rotation set in place, you don't need to waste time trying to balance your course load because the equation is already set.

Rebalancing

Oftentimes, this study rotation routine will suddenly not work. Sometimes, courses can introduce piles of extra required studying. To make up for that, you may have to adjust your study focus rotation. That being said, try to update the rotation to include a clause to help you deal with that extra required studying (so you, hopefully, don't have to change your plan again in the future.)

Over a few semesters, your study rotation should almost be set in stone.

Using your objective focus rotation you can maximize your grades in each and every class without wasting a significant among of your time studying things that you don't absolutely have to.

Do you want to know how to study for less than 15 minutes a night while scoring in the top of your class? That is what this blog is all about.  Be sure to follow it and check out the archives to get all the secrets. Also, check out the ebooks for some crash courses in the subject.

How To Survive The Most Difficult College Majors (15 Minute Study Strategy)

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I’ve received a ton of questions from students asking how to use my study strategies in a “hard” major like Pre-Med or Engineering. I put hard in quotes because there needs to be an important note considered with that. I, generally, agree (not based on anything useful like experience, well one, not the other) that engineering and medical are the most difficult majors to score high in. There have been plenty of studies suggesting that. That being said, hard is a really difficult concept to pin down.

Every subject has its particular challenges. Those challenges shouldn’t be compared based on a single scale because every person has their own skills and weaknesses that ruin the simple scale considered. A person that loves and kicks ass at math might find engineering significantly easier than psychology or something. A person that hates math but is smart as hell can still suck in an engineering major.

Sure, maybe those scales are generally accurate but they mean almost nothing without including the students aptitude to learn certain things.

When you’re looking to use the study strategies suggested in this blog, you may or may not have to adjust them a little. If the classes you’re taking are particularly difficult (TO YOU) then you definitely need to adjust these strategies in certain ways.

Here are the factors you need to work on:

Study VS School Work

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I recommend not spending more than 15 minutes a day studying. As unbelievable as that number may seem, in almost every major it’s appropriate to score good. If you want to learn more about the 15 minutes of studying then be sure to check out the archives of this blog for details. I’ll go into the specific ways to adjust those 15 minutes later in this article.

Those 15 minutes are for studying. They are not for school work.

Schoolwork can dramatically change the amount of time you have to spend. If your teacher is a jerk and gives you two hours of boring school work every night then I can’t help you with that. (Other than possibly suggesting to check the value of completely skipping the homework and taking the loss.) Some teachers don’t provide homework. You can be finished with those teachers work in absolutely no time at all.

Engineering is one of the majors where more time for work is needed. Much of engineering is math. Math is usually best learned by working on it. It can’t be studied well with the traditional strategies. That usually means you have to give it more school work time. Of course, since engineering requires a lot less brute memorization, you may be able to get away with a significantly shorter study session.

Another major that requires a ton of outside school work is education. You may have to put in dozens of extra hours a week to complete all your required assignments. In general, they’re not pull your hair out challenging but I hear they can drive a person nuts.

When To Increase That 15 Minutes

Some majors require a seriously ridiculous amount of memorization. Most of them don’t. While I can’t go through every single major and list which ones need more than 15 minutes and which ones don’t, I can give you some basic guidelines.

To start, assume you don’t need to study more than 15 minutes a night. As before, this may sound ridiculous but you’ll never know unless you try. That is the case with most students in most majors who aren’t already behind. The only exception to the 15 minutes a night studying to start, I would consider, is a student that missed out on significant portions of the basics or doesn’t speak the native language at their college.

If you’ve used this strategy in high school then you’ll know within a week or two if you’re keeping up. If you’ve never used this strategy before, you may need to try it for a month. (Of course, if you’re already thinking “there is no way this will work.” It probably won’t work. You need to be committed to getting it to work.)

There is one major that gets a ton of attention as a difficult major. Some medical major classes you enter are going to be particularly challenging when it comes to studying. Studying for a medical major is like studying in a new language. There are going to be thousands of new words to learn. Then you’re going to have to learn how they interact. I would not be surprised if you need to add more study time. Make sure you do it right though.

Do not add more than 10 minutes to your individual study sessions. You’ll just kill your efficiency past that. Add more short study sessions if you have to. Instead of doing a single 30 minute study session do two 15 minute study sessions. Keep your study sessions closer to 15 minutes than 25 minutes whenever possible. You should not need to add more than two 25 minute sessions unless you’re struggling, approaching finals, or taking an insane course load.

As you increase your study time, you have to count on your efficiency lowering. Remember to control the length carefully. If more study sessions doesn’t work for you. Consider switching to the flash card strategy I discussed a few weeks ago. That strategy is particularly powerful for medical majors.

Adjusting On The Fly

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To some extent, if you’re taking a really difficult major then you’re going to need to learn to adjust as you go along. Every single major in every single college offers wildly different experiences. While you may dominate in one college’s math major, you may completely bomb in another one. That means you need to be observant enough to know when you’re struggling and when you’re thriving.

I’ve found most students (that read this blog) tend to assume they’re struggling even when they’re not. Try to force yourself to be honest about these kinds of things. If you can’t be objective then keep track of all your scores and set goals in advance for them. Then don’t trust the way you feel and only trust the results. Did you meet your goals or not?

As you get deeper and deeper into a particular major, you should be able to find people to help you come up with good study strategies yourself. Remember to look for efficiency. You don’t have to waste your whole day studying just to survive a major. Heck, I can almost guarantee you, there is someone dumber than you, studying less, and still scoring higher than you without cheating. Figure out what that person would do.

Do you want to know how to study in less than 15 minutes a night (well… usually?) Well, that’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to check out the archives and maybe even get an ebook for a crash course in it.

5 Reasons Your Teachers Are Usually Horrible Resources For Study Advice

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Most students are horrible at studying. That's because the only education they ever got on how to study came from people that are also horrible at studying. Teachers typically give some of the worst study advice around. They often suggest ridiculous time periods to study every night. They often recommend reading the textbook (as if anyone ever learned from that.) This is the kind of advice you get for studying from a person that's never learned how to study themselves.

Why are your teachers usually such bad study resources?

1. They Love The Subject

Imagine you're a history teacher. You became a history teacher because you really enjoy learning about history. People don't become history teachers unless they're particularly fond of history (otherwise they'd become math or english or some other kind of teacher.) This history teacher probably thinks about history when he's not on the job. He enjoys it.

He probably reads books about history. (Not the crappy textbooks you're given but good learning resources.) Heck, reading a book about history may be considered a good time for him.

Now if you ask this guy for study advice, what's he going to think? “Well, I study about 1-2 hours a night.” Of course, his definition of studying includes him spending time doing the things he enjoys. At best, this study advice is heavily biased.

2. They Chose This Life

Teachers don't go into teaching because they think most of school is stupid.

People that don't enjoy school don't typically become teachers (short of a few sociopaths that like to inflict suffering or something and a few radicals trying to change it.) To anyone that doesn't enjoy school, this may surprise you but some people actually enjoy the simplicity of school. It's a predictable day with friends for those people.

If the vast majority of teachers enjoyed school growing up then they have a similar bias towards schooling. That means, when they tell you to study an hour a night, they're implicitly saying, “I enjoyed studying an hour a night,” not “This is what you should do.”

WAIT! Am I saying people that like school also like studying more? Yes. I am. Let's face it. When I took my textbooks out in early high school, I had to fight thoughts of killing myself (literally actually.) That instantly ruins any potential studying that takes place. If I were able to enjoy schooling, I'd be able to study much more efficiently.

3. Education Is The Easiest Major

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Estimates regularly show that education is one of the easiest majors that you can go through in college. (It is the easiest of the major fields. By the way, I'm disgusted by that too.) People that would not survive an engineering degree, or a nursing degree, or a chemistry degree end up going into education. That lower pool of competition means you've got a clear set of people that aren't studying as well as the harder majors on average.

Remember, people with engineering degrees can get into teaching easily. (Then again, why would they?) People with teaching degrees can't easily get into engineering. That means the more intelligent degree to get is usually the more difficult.

4. Learn VS Score Bias

When teachers give you study advice, they're usually not giving you advice to help you increase your score. They're usually giving you advice to help you learn the subject. Those are two unbelievably different things.

Learning a subject is always a challenge. There is virtually unlimited things you can learn about any subject. People often spend decades of their life learning about relatively small things like WW1 (not quite small) or Crawfish. After those decades of studying, they still end up learning new things.

Getting higher scores is actually pretty easy. There are tons of things you can do to increase your final score without learning a single new fact about the subject you're supposed to be learning. Increasing your scores is concentrating your study efforts on the things that actually matter to the class.

Most students looking for study advice are just looking to improve their grade. That means any study advice designed for learning can help but isn't nearly as efficient.

This is one of the most prominent reasons teachers always overestimate the time required to study for a subject. You can study for most tests in less than 10 minutes a night. (15 minutes is what I usually say but 15 is really conservative for a single test.) Of course, studying for the test won't make you an expert on the subject. It will just get you to pass the test comfortably.

5. They Rarely Know Any Of This...

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Sadly, teachers usually think they're one of the best resources for study advice without ever giving it any real thought.

They're applauded by everyone as heroes all the time and most people aren't willing to say anything that's the slightest bit judgmental. They're coddled into thinking they're special (even if the ones that objectively suck at teaching.)

Most teachers aren't actively trying to spread stupid advice. They're just spreading the same stupid advice that they were taught by their teachers. Maybe they'll change a few words to keep it interesting but in reality, most are just recommending the same old stuff.

In the past 30 years there have been hundreds of empirical studies on “how to study.” Most of this data hasn't been dug through by these teachers. If you spend 20 minutes looking at these studies you'd learn that virtually all the advice those teachers give is horribly misguided.

Now that this has all been said, you can't keep blaming them for the bad advice anymore. Just because they give bad advice, it doesn't mean you have to listen. You have to take ownership of your own life and start looking for a better way. There are tons of resources that can help you do that. This blog has over 50 articles that can help you get started.

Do you want to know how to study in less than 15 minutes a night? That's what this blog is all about. Check out the kindle books in the sidebar for the crash course.