How To Memorize Insane Amounts Of Information (Quickly)

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This article is my response to request I received from a student. That student was looking for a way to memorize a list of words for a foreign language. Now, I would normally recommend using my typical study strategies outlined through this blog, one thing changed that. This student didn’t want to memorize the list for class. She wanted to memorize the list for her own personal scholarship. Since grades aren’t the primary concern anymore, a ton of details in learning change. To really memorize a set of information and make it stick, I recommend a different set of strategies.

The basic layout to think about when trying to memorize a large amount of information is as follows. First of all, you need a standard method of memorization. You need to have a strategy that you plan on using through the whole process. Flash cards are going to be used as the example in this articles. There are alternatives but flash cards are usually the most accessible method.

Second, you need to set up a cycle of sessions for studying based on the amount of information you need to remember, the time you have to study them, and the accuracy rate you want to achieve. The faster, the better, and the more, you want to learn, the more sessions and cycles you’re going to want.

Third, you need to adjust the information to be palatable on flash cards. For foreign languages, this should require no work at all. If you’re applying this strategy to biological processes or something complicated, it’s essential that you scale back complex details and only force yourself to memorize the macro details at first.

Throughout this article, I’ll go over how to make sure this basic layout turns into something practical, easy, and quick. Most of the information provided so far can get you into an effective study strategy but without the details you may end up wasting a ton of unrequired study time.

The Method

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If you don’t have any better ideas, don’t feel the slightest bit bad using flash cards as your go to method. I’ve practiced similar strategies for years and they’re my go to method. Sure, flash cards suck but they provide more versatility and effectiveness than 95% of methods.

There are other options if you get creative though. For foreign languages, there has been one particular strategy around for years. To memorize a language just put post it notes on everything that you own and write the foreign languages word for it on the post it note. This is a powerful strategy for languages but unfortunately, you need to combine it with another method to include parts of speech other than nouns.

There are a ton of game methods as well. There are boatloads of websites that create games based on learning. Using those games instead of flashcards is reasonable. Of course, it comes with the risk of not learning the exact words you need. (No game was specifically designed for your learning needs.) Also, you need a computer to use them.

See the complexities I’m talking about? Flash cards are usually way easier.

Cycled Sessions

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Don’t use those flash cards in the typical “study for an hour” style method. Sure, it will work better than some things but that’s one of the least efficient ways to learn.

Use your flash cards in sessions under 15 minutes long. It’s much better to require extra short study sessions than increase the time you sit and study. The human brain learns best early in the study session. By doing multiple study sessions, you learn best for more time than using just a single study session.

If you need to learn a ton of information then increase the number of sessions you use per day. If your motivation is for school then I don’t recommend more than 6 ten minute sessions per day. (Ideally, don’t use this method for school though. Use my other strategies outlined in this blog.) To the student that asked the question: Since your motivation is personal, you can add in virtually as many sessions as you want every single day. (Max perhaps around 1 per hour. You don’t really need that many in most cases though.) If you ever feel drained then just cut back on the sessions.

Lets say you have 1000 words you’re trying to memorize. It would be absolutely insane to try and cycle randomly through 1000 different flash cards. That’s why you should break up the flash cards into sets of 10-30. Then design a schedule to go over all of the different sets of flash cards.

So, if you’re studying 50 sets of 20 flash cards, you may schedule them one after another with 5 sessions per day. That would take 10 days to get through. That comes with some problems though. By day 10, you won’t remember most of the information from day 1. So try to cycle day 1 flashcards in on day 3, then day 2 flashcards on day 4, and so on. Notice how complicated this is getting? Yea. Write down the schedule to make it work. (Also don’t feel bad about combining sets into fewer larger sets of flashcards as you get through memorizing them. So, instead of two sets of 20 you can make one set of forty to be memorized in a couple days.)

You need to be really damn motivated to make this work. I’ve personally done it but I wouldn’t judge anyone that struggles at this. If it’s too much then cut back somewhere until it’s reasonable for you.

Macro VS Micro

Throughout school, I got in the bad habit of studying almost anything with flash cards. I would write one word on one side of the flash card, then on the other side I’d have a wall of text that I’m trying to remember. That doesn’t work too well.

Some information is not designed well for flash cards. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use flash cards though. It means you should probably adjust the information into something that’s more accessible with flash cards. Let’s say you have this monster of information for your flash card:

Required Information:

Metazoa: Heterotrophic and motile multicellular organisms. (Some have adopted a sessile lifestyle.)

Yikes! Do you have any idea what that means? Well… I don’t but that shouldn’t be an issue for my point.

The easiest flash card to make would be “Metazoa” on one side, and then the line after that on the other side. That wouldn’t be a miserable flash card but it’s definitely not an ideal one. There are ways to make this easier though.

First of all, if you have any flash cards explaining what “heterotrophic,” “motile,” and “sessile” mean, then learn those flashcards first. Put this flash card into a set you study after those other words are learned.

Second, don’t be afraid to lop off a semi-essential piece of information like “(Some have adopted a sessile lifestyle.)” At least, be willing to lop it off early in your study session. Maybe write it on your flashcard but don’t force yourself to remember it to get through that flash card until the second or third time through the set of flash cards. (Write it in blue or something to make it obvious.) Using a strategy like that you can include unbelievably complex concepts on a single flash card and not feel like banging your head against a wall.

By using a cycled sessions strategy like this one, you should be able to memorize virtually anything you’re looking to memorize. It requires significantly more motivation than many of my methods but for personal use, it can be absolutely ideal.

Do you want to know how to study in less than fifteen minutes a night? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to check out the articles in the archive and follow to learn more. Also, please check out the ebooks in the sidebar.

How To Permanently Improve Your Study Strategies With One Unusual Trick

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“My grades were miserable,” he was telling me. “But that was the time I started playing basketball. The funny thing is that I didn’t really change my studying all that much. I just spent hours and hours a day watching basketball, learning basketball, and even reading books about it. Virtually everything I focused on, for a while at least, was basketball. Somehow though… my grades popped right up.”

This isn’t all that unusual a story. Sure, the specific activities change but it’s actually rather typical. I’m not just talking about sports here though. Sure, study after study has confirmed that students participating in sports tend to get higher grades but it’s more than that. (Also, those studies often just show a strong correlation. Correlations aren’t all that useful alone.) No matter what “growable” activity a student gets themselves caught up into their grades will regularly improve.

What do I mean by growable? I mean they can improve at it. For example, no one person can watch TV better than another person (well, maybe they can but it’s not something people practice and try to get better at.) Basketball, on the other hand, offers tons of options of gaining new skills. That makes it a “growable” activity. Anything that you consciously try to improve at can work.

Once a student finds an activity that they can grow at, they have the chance to learn something about learning that many students never do. Learning is a process that works best at peak levels of focus. Student’s that enjoy learning something can understand that most of all. By getting significant amounts of practice at serious studying and training, every time they study or train anything they end up farther ahead.

Don’t Give A Hoot

Here’s the sad truth. Most students (probably not you because you’re reading this) care only the slightest bit about school. Sure, they’ll show up because they’ll get scolded if they don’t but their minds are consciously focusing on other things in their life. Occasionally their brain drifts back for a while but to call it focus would be exaggerated. They pretty much just show up.

Who can blame them though?

Every person has different interests and skills. It seems impossible for any school to offer enough methods of teaching to stimulate every students interests. Schools these days hardly even try. (Really, so many schools have plenty of duds for teachers that haven’t got fired in over 20 years of poor teaching. It’s one of my major pet peeves.)

Over those years, if a student happens to come in contact with something they actually care about, it’s usually due to dumb luck.   

How To Work This Into Your Life

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For many students, this is a purely lucky coincidence. They never consciously set out to improve themselves by studying something that they care about. It just happens naturally. In some ways that’s a good thing. In other ways it’s much better to consciously focus on it. Using these three steps you can start from zero and end up learning more about studying than you could have ever imagined before.

It’s a slow process, by the way. It could end up taking months to complete every step. It won’t be months of work but it will require a lot of thinking about what you’re doing.

1. Find Something You Love To Study

This can be the most painful part of the process. Or… ideally… it can be the easiest part.

Do you have any activity that you love to do virtually all the time? Next, ask yourself if there is a clear way to get better or worse at it? As offered before, tv is something you might love to do but can never improve all that much at. (If you find a way to improve at it significantly, perhaps it could still work but I won’t be recommending it.) If you can’t improve at the activity then you need to change your approach.

If you find out you don’t have any activity like that, it’s time you invested a significant portion of your time into looking for it. That’s the time to look at things you wish you could do. Look at everything you admire and spend your time on. Then experiment with those things until you find something you love and can improve at. (By love, I don’t mean you want a career for the rest of your life. I mean, you’re genuinely curious enough to waste a few weeks on it.)

One activity that you might not have considered is video games. They often offer a huge amount of improvement potential. Sure, it’s not the most productive hobby in the world but if you enjoy it then perhaps you can spend your time learning the in and outs of a single game. (Heck, look into some video games and you’ll find thousands of pages of strategy and analysis. They’re often more accessible for improvement than sports.)

2. Study It and Keep Track

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Once you find that activity that you can bury yourself in. Bury yourself into it. Start reading books on the subject. Start practicing it. Start listening to podcasts about it. Start trying to plot and scheme your own strategies. All these activities, when focused on improvement, can seriously improve your grades.

Notice the phrase, when focused on improvement. If you just happen to go to the court to shoot hoops with some friends, you can’t say you’re seriously focused on improvement unless your brain is really invested in it. If you’re telling jokes on the court and not thinking about your screw ups then you’re probably not invested in it.

After you start to see yourself get better at the activity you’re doing, you’re likely going to find your learning gravitating towards a single learning activity. Maybe you’ll find yourself reading a ton of books on the subject. Once you find yourself gravitating towards that one activity. Start taking note of all the important factors surrounding that studying.

For example, where do you study? Is there background noise? How long do you need to study before you feel like you got something? How are you studying? This information is preparing you for the third step.

3. Implement What You’ve Learned

Using the strategy you enjoyed learning what you love, start trying to learn school related subjects. So, if you read biographies outside to learn about basketball, perhaps you should read biographies to learn about history? Perhaps not, you will never know unless you try.

Sometimes, implementing a study strategy that school doesn’t approve of will lead you into studying slightly different material than you’d study for school. In most cases, you shouldn’t worry too much about that. (If you’re an A+ student fighting to get into a top university in the country then worry about that. If you’re happy hitting A’s then I wouldn’t be too concerned.) It’s often better to study slightly off track in a way that you enjoy than to study right on track with something you don’t enjoy. (Because you’re more likely to study off track enjoying yourself longer.) Naturally though, it’s ideal to study school materials directly.

Some of these study strategies will easily fit into your study routine. Others won’t really work. The key is to try them and see what clicks. You’ll never know until you try.

More importantly than all that conscious effort. Your brain is going to be learning how to focus more effectively. That extra focus will offer improvements to your studying whether you use a strategy you learned from this exercise or not. That’s the real secret.

Do you want to study faster than ever? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives to keep up. Also, check out the ebooks in the sidebar.

Busy VS Productive Studying

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This is a concept that’s been noted time and time again through the business world but it’s rarely brought up in a studying context. Even though it’s hardly ever brought up, it’s one of the most common problems that students struggle with. By learning the difference between busy studying and productive studying, you can dramatically reduce the studying time required to get the same grades. It can also be used to seriously increase your grades with little to no extra time investment.

The average student is well trained in busy studying. It’s the kind of studying that most teachers recommend. Busy studying is studying that requires your full attention but doesn’t necessarily give you any good results. One common style of studying that fits this category is reading the textbook. Some students spend hours reading their textbook hoping that the information will stick, usually, hardly any of the information sticks. That just means they have to read the textbook more and more. That’s busy studying.

Productive studying usually requires your full attention but it actually provides you with significant results. It’s not just wasting your time repeating yourself in hopes to get something to stick, it’s actually using a sticky method to go over the information in the first place. This is the kind of studying that most students should do but unfortunately, most students don’t do.

Why Not Study Better

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From a young age, children are encouraged to study like an idiot. Studying isn’t an easy concept for a young child to get their head around. Honestly, scientists have spent careers trying to learn how people can study well. It’s a complicated subject. So… instead of trying to teach young children a complicated study session,  teachers and parents usually just teach children the good old repetition study strategies at first.

The good old repetition study strategy is one of the worst culprits of busy studying. It’s hard to memorize something. You need to be focused. You need to have motivation to learn it. You need to understand it to some extent. These all are complicated study requirements to understand at a young age. That being said, with a repetition study strategy, eventually, you will stumble into the right position to learn information. It will just take a little extra time. (Young children tend to have plenty of that time to invest.)

Good studying doesn’t require short term repetition if you’re doing it right. If you’re trained with a good study strategy, you shouldn’t need to go over the same information more than once (at least most of the information you’re studying.)

Eventually, most students are taught some effective study strategies. They’re taught things like flash cards and mnemonics. Some may be crazy enough to work with mind maps. That being said, they never learn the intimate details that actually make them effective. (Things like focus aren’t treated seriously.) That tends to make students fall back on their old repetitive study strategies.

Why Don’t Students Stay Productive

Productive studying is painful.

Yes… I used the word painful. It requires a large investment of energy. You need to invest focus, motivation, and planning into making productive studying work. It will save you a ton of time but it is not something that comes naturally for school work.

I use flash card examples a lot throughout this blog but I feel like it’s one of the few study strategies that everyone is already familiar with. That means I don’t have to re-explain simple details to make my point.

Flash cards are difficult to use correctly. If you’re working really hard with a set of flash cards, you’ll become completely exhausted mentally. By the 30 or 40th flashcard you’re going to be a little bit stressed out. That’s understandable. That’s to be expected. That’s why most students using productive study strategies quit and decide to use a more simple study strategy like repetition.

Is Productive Studying Worth It?

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Many students decide that productive studying isn’t worth the cost in energy but from my experience, I think the energy is well worth it.

You only have so much time to spend studying. Since you’re limited on the amount of time you can study, you are also limited in the grades you can get using repetitive study strategies. Since they’re so inefficient, you may not even be able to get your grades up to the level you want.

Using productive studying, you can easily reduce your required study time investment by 50%. I’ve personally been able to cut my study time by 80-90% (depending on how you wanted to calculate it.) Since it requires less time investment, your grades aren’t as limited by the time you can invest.

More important than those two point though: You have only so much time in your life. Sure, studying can be good for you but I imagine there are much more enjoyable things you could be doing with your time. For every hour you save on studying, you get to spend an hour doing things that you actually care about.

Productive Studying In A Busy World

Sadly, one of the most common reasons students avoid productive studying is family and teacher pressures. Teachers and parents will assume you’re not studying well if you only spend 20 minutes studying every night. That means, they often pressure students (or downright force them) to study longer.

Considering how painful productive studying can be, it’s hard to blame anyone for not using it if they aren’t allowed to benefit from the extra time. That being said, I don’t think giving up is the right solution here.

There are plenty of other ways you can work with productive study strategies. With a little creativity, all restrictions can provide wonderful loopholes to enjoy. Perhaps if you’re in a really tough situation you can look up some studies done on studying and show the evidence to people restricting you. (The longer someone is studying, the less efficient they get at studying.) Of course, having to beg permission to study effectively is one of the biggest problems with education these days.

Get creative and solve your study problems. It’s difficult at first but it’s well worth it in the long run.

Do you want to study in less than 15 minutes a night while still killing on the tests? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives for all the details. Oh… and have a kindle? Be sure to check out the books in the sidebar.

Stand Up Studying

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What I’m going to be going over, on the surface, looks an awful lot like a minor point. It, alone, won’t dramatically improve your grades. Yes, it can have a positive impact on them but the real point of this article will come later on. I’m going to be telling this in a bit of a unique way in hopes that it helps the most important concepts sink in.

What if I told you that you could improve your grades by studying while you’re standing up?

It probably sounds a little ridiculous on the surface. It seems like one of those micromanagement things that I’ve discussed in the past. By that I mean, it’s a minor detail that you could waste hours experimenting with just to find a weak correlation with better memory. A weak correlation is hardly worth the extra effort involved.

It might seem that way but I’d make the argument that it’s not.

Study Experiments

I’ve done hundreds of memory and study experiments in my life. I’ve constantly tried to find the most efficient way to learn the things that I had to learn. One of those experiments I did was with standing while studying. Of course, one semi-controlled experiment on an individual doesn’t mean all that much. That being said, considering I wasn’t trying to solve the problem for the world, I was just trying to solve the problem for myself, it was all I really needed.

By standing up while studying I increased by average memory test scores (long term and short term) by 5-10%. That is a relatively dramatic result for my average testing. The vast majority of my testing methods resulted in virtually no discernable data. This was an experiment that I was actually pretty confident in before starting because I had a theory.

I’d done a number of experiments using physical activity while studying. I had the theory that muscle activation helps improve memory.

This wild theory was repeatedly proven in my own experimentation. I hopped on one leg while studying. I used sign language. I did all kinds of bodily triggers for memories. Each one of my experiments showed a small memory increase when muscles were activated. That got me thinking that my theory was right.

Muscle Activation And Memory

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My theory was originally based on wild and unscientific evolutionary theory. I thought, memory was required for hunting, gathering, and running from dinosaurs (okay… I know that last one’s not true,) so perhaps, memory is designed to work better in physical situations. Physical situations were more life and death than non-physical ones.

My experimentation was able to prove (well-enough for my own personal use. It wouldn’t be nearly enough proof for a serious theory,) that unscientific theory. To some extent, science has already proved this theory with it’s on experiments.

Have you ever heard of muscle memory? Muscle memory is “riding a bike.” It’s the idea that, even with decades in between the last time someone rode a bike, they can still remember exactly how they need to move their muscles in order to not fall over. That’s actually an unbelievably complicated muscular movement that takes virtually no time to stick in the permanent memory.

Many experiments have gone even deeper with that memory and muscle connection though. Experiments have been done with subvocalization, sign language, and many other physical activities that show similar results. By activating your muscles while you’re studying, you introduce something else into your memory. Your brain is treating the situation with a higher priority than sitting on the couch with some flash cards.

What I Want You To Take From This

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Studying is a full body experience.

Now, I can’t promise that statement is 100% true. Perhaps there is some part of your body that doesn’t participate in the acquisition of memory. That being said, I recommend you imagine my statement is completely true. Study as if, studying is a full body experience.

What do I mean by a full body experience?

I have a friend that’s an artist. If we were to watch a movie together, he’d always pull out his sketch pad and draw while the movie was playing. At first, I found this awfully irritating. I thought, there is absolutely no way this guy is enjoying this movie. That’s when I tested my theory by quizzing him.

I asked him questions about the movie we were watching. With my first 10 questions, I couldn’t even tell he wasn’t watching the movie with all his energy. He constantly answered my questions right. (That was until I got into downright stupid questions like “what color shirt was this character wearing last scene?” I couldn’t have answered that one despite watching it.)

I asked him about this after that movie. He told me something like, “it may look like I’m not paying attention but I draw with almost none of my attention. It’s just doodling to help me focus.” (Naturally, his doodling makes my 100% focused drawing look like crap but that’s beyond the point.)

Not all things require all your attention to do. You can probably chew gum and walk at the same time. Many students try to treat studying as if it’s chewing gum and walking. Instead of giving their studying all of their attention, they spread their attention between as many things as possible.

Distractions are deadly to focus while studying. This may seem wierd based on how I presented the information so far.

As much as you like to think texting your friend while studying won’t devastate your studyings effectiveness, you’re wrong. Unless you can objectively prove through your own personal experiments, that you’re the exception to the rule, you should not be letting yourself listen to music, talk to friends, or surfing the web while studying. Those offer physical and mental distractions that do miserable things for your studying.

Wouldn’t activating your muscles while studying be a distraction from actually studying? To some extent, I imagine it is. If you were, for example, trying to learn to ride a bike, I have a feeling you would suck at memorizing anything else. What if you’ve already mastered riding a bike? Then I’d think memory would be improved. Instead of being distracted it would be a rhythmic muscle activation that virtually doesn’t distract you at all. (Unless you were, perhaps, in traffic or something.)

 

Now, throughout this article I drove this train of concepts right off the tracks and brought it down a few different dirt roads. Here is where I’m going to be trying to bring it back onto the tracks I was hoping to introduce you to…

What if mental activity can work similarly to physical activity when it comes to studying? If you had a rhythmic study interruption that didn’t require any focus to deal with, could it offer similar improvements to your ability to study?

What’s the answer? I don’t know.

My point: Studying is an unbelievably complicated subject that no one has even scratched the surface on. Everything I write in this blog is my attempted interpretation of the things I’ve learned and experienced.

Science is a constant tunneling of vision. Newton’s theories allowed scientists to focus their vision better. Despite all the progress made, Newton was proven wrong (or at least not 100% right) by Einstein. Einstein allowed scientists to focus their vision better. Some theorists think they’ve proved Einstein wrong in certain ways. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant but the idea that a scientific theory can’t be proven wrong is faith and completely unscientific.

Experiment to learn more. Sure, this blog can help you focus better based on what science has discovered but if you ever get the curiosity to test for yourself, that would give me more pleasure than any of the grades you could get from talking this blog as gospel.

Do you want to know how to study faster than ever? That’s what this blog and my books (in the sidebar) are all about. Be sure to follow this blog to keep up with all of the details.

6 Things To Ask Yourself Before Going To College

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Too many students underestimate the importance of the decision to go to college. The vast majority of students (particularly the more gifted ones) are poked and prodded from their childhood with the idea of going to college. Considering the statistics, it’s virtually inevitable that an average or above average student is going to end up in college. Hell, some students are even required to apply to colleges to graduate from high school. It’s hardly even considered a choice anymore.

That being said, college is a choice. The question that’s virtually never asked is, “is it the right choice?” Sure, statistics show a correlation between income and education. That correlation, doesn’t necessarily mean much. It could just mean people “destined” to make more money tend to go to college. (By destined, I mean any of a million possible factors. Students that go to college could be smarter than average. That means they’d probably make more money with or without college. Students that go to college could be richer. That means, again, they’d probably make more money with or without college.) Of course, even considering that correlation matters assumes income is a more important goal than happiness. My point is just that it’s more complicated than it looks.

I think college can be one of the best decisions of a persons life. A college education can open a ton of doors. That being said, you need to think about what’s behind those doors and whether or not you really want to open them. (There are plenty of doors you can open without college too. Maybe you’ll like those better.)

Here are some questions to ask yourself before going to college:

1. Do You Want To Go?

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This is a more important question than most students consider it. Your decision to go to college is going to cause you to spend tens of thousands of dollars. That makes it a pretty big risk to be playing around with.

If a year into college, you change your mind about wanting to go, you’re still going to have to pay for that year of college. More importantly, you’re probably going to have to pay for that year of college with a non-college graduates job. Sure, plenty of students end up surviving that mistake but it could easily take years of your life just to start back at zero again.

That dynamic leads many students into graduating just because of the costs they’ve already lost. They’re committed to four years because they can’t afford to switch to doing what they want to do. That, usually, just leads to the college graduate getting a job he or she hates in the field he or she graduated from (and wanted to leave.)

Going to college when you don’t want to go is a terrible mistake in most cases.

2. Is It An Investment?

Virtually every teacher and parent would tell you college is an investment. No, they won’t ask what degree you’re getting first. They’ll just blindly tell you that college is an investment. Mostly because, they have absolutely no idea what an investment is.

An investment is something that you’re putting money into to, ideally, make more money. When you take out loans for college, you need to make a considerable amount of income more than you would have if you didn’t take out those loans. If you don’t have very clear job prospects that can pay off those loans in a reasonable amount of time then you’re not investing.

Many college degrees are not investments. They’re luxuries. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a luxury but don’t go spending money that you don’t have on luxuries. If it’s not an obvious investment, pay for college in cash. That’s the only way to make play it safe. (If you do happen to get a good job from your luxury degree then consider it a bonus. You never have to pay interest from your loans.)

3. Is It Better To Wait?

For many students, it’s actually a smarter financial decision to wait a few years before going to college.

One of the most obvious reasons a student should consider that is loan favorability. If your parents income disqualifies you from federal loans then it may be smarter to wait a few years until your parents are off your forms. That could save you thousands of dollars and a significant amount of private student loan stress.

I remember being told, “If you don’t go to college right after high school then you’ll never go!” I didn’t listen. I ended up going to college years later. I’d argue that time off schooling taught me more than college ever could. I ended up having no student loans and had plenty of fun. Of course, if I graduated high school started sleeping around, binge drinking, and spending every penny I earned, there would be a real chance I wouldn’t end up in college. It’s all about making smart decisions. If you make smart decisions, you can put college off safely. Even after a few mistakes, it’s usually still reasonable with a little extra work.

Some other advantages of waiting: You don’t end up the average new college student that can’t even do their own laundry. You actually care about schooling because you saw the world without it and chose it rationally instead of emotionally. You have time to learn how to deal with money before taking thousands of dollars in loans.

4. Do you need it for your dreams?

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If you’ve dreamed of being a doctor since you were a child then you damn well should be doing to college for it. Many fields are regulated so that a degree is required. If that degree is absolutely required to do what you want to do (even if it’s not the greatest investment) then it’s usually a good decision.

Sure, bad investments aren’t usually a good idea but if this is about chasing a dream then investing has virtually nothing to do with it.

If you want to be a writer or something, you don’t need a college degree. You can pursue that field and become successful without ever graduating from college. In fact, instead of getting the college required liberal arts education you could spend 9-5 everyday learning how to write. You’ll end up miles ahead of the average student.

5. Do you have a solid career plan?

If your career plan consists of only, get a job, then you’re making a bad mistake. There is so much information that you should consider first.

First of all, what jobs does your degree qualify you for?

Next, which of those jobs pay enough to pay off your debt (unless it’s your dream job?)

Next, how many of those jobs are available?

How many students are going to be graduating and competing for those jobs?

“I’ll become a college professor on the subject!” NO NO NO! Really… that is usually a horrible mistake. In fields where your best job options include teaching the subject you’re getting your degree in, you’re limiting your options significantly. Look at the data. Are there really that many jobs available when considering how many people are graduating? Usually they’re not.

6. Why Are You Going?

This is one of the most important questions to ask yourself.

What is motivating you to go to college? If it’s your dream job then awesome. That’s a good motivation to have.

The sad truth is that most students pretend that it’s for the job. They lie to themselves and say that when the truth is something a bit more embarrassing.

Are you just trying to get away from your parents? Are you trying to get people off your back? Are you scared that you’ll fail outside of college? Do you just want to drink and party (you can do that a lot cheaper outside of college)?

These are all motivations that you need to question the value of. Is it really worth the price it’s going to cost? Are there cheaper alternative ways to do them. Of course, if you have a few million dollars in the bank, perhaps they’re cheap enough to pay for willy nilly but if you’re the average person, you need to seriously worry about that price.

The ideal motivation to go to college is the joy of learning. Of course, if it’s the joy of learning that’s pushing you then you’re stupid to take out student loans for it.

The second best motivation is an investment.

Don’t end up at 25 living in your parents house with a crappy job trying to pay down your student loans. By paying attention to the consequences, and risks, of every option you can make a smarter decision.

Do you want to know how to study faster than ever? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives if you’d like to learn more. Also, there are some ebooks in the sidebar that you might want to take a look at. 

The Pursuit Of Knowledge Versus "Grades"

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Knowledge and good grades are not the same goal. They aren’t completely opposed to one another but they’re definitely skewed a little away from each other. Just because you have a ton of knowledge on a subject, it doesn’t mean you’ll get good grades in a class about it. Just because you get good grades it doesn’t mean you have a ton of knowledge on the subject. You need to keep that in mind with every decision you make in school.

Factors come into play that virtually no one discusses. You can get grades best on showing up to class, dumb luck, concentrated studying, smart memorization tricks, sleeping with the teacher, or cheating. Grades are not knowledge. Grades mean virtually nothing when you don’t factor in the methods used to achieve those grades.

You can’t become knowledgeable by cheating the system. Well… maybe you can. Using cheap memory tricks can help things lock in your brain easier than ever but hacking your brain chemistry isn’t exactly a problem in most cases. Knowledge is the end. Grades are just one slightly related means to achieve that end.

In Pursuit Of Grades

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I recommend focusing on grades for students. Forget about acquiring significant amounts of knowledge. Students are judged based on the grades they get. Not based on the knowledge they have. By making intelligent study decisions, a student can learn everything required for a course in relatively no time at all.

Using prioritization methods a student can focus their energy on the information that really matters and spend very little energy to do it. Energy doesn’t have to be wasted on low value projects.

Teachers are constantly benefiting the students that chose this path through school. Many teachers virtually hand the questions of the tests to their students before the test in test prep material. Virtually every teacher focuses their class time significantly on the testing material. Teachers encourage this focus because it helps them too. (Who cares if you know more than the average student in a subject if you don’t get a good grades on the test? The teachers will look bad in that situation.) The whole system is designed to focus around grades.

Is that a good thing? Who cares!? That’s irrelevant to your success or failure. Using these biases in teachers you can study for minutes every night and get a good grade in virtually any course. Sure, the system may be stupid but at no point do you have the reasonable option to not participate in it (until college but college the system tends to be slightly less stupid too.)

By focusing on grades you get one less obvious advantage over other students.

In Pursuit Of Knowledge

Knowledge is something that requires emotional investment. In school, going after good grades is your emotional investment. Parents and teachers guilt and scare you into getting good grades. “What are you gonna grow up to be a bum?” “I’m so disappointed in you!”

Sure, it works to some extent but as you can imagine, it’s not the most motivational way to go on the pursuit of knowledge. It’s just emotional blackmail. By pursuing good grades without the knowledge goal, it offers you a significant amount of extra time. Suddenly, you won’t have to study for hours a night because you’ll have great grades already. Any extra studying would be the pursuit of knowledge.

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After you free that extra time out you can do virtually anything with your time. You can slack. You can watch a movie. You can talk to friends. All that is an option but there is a problem with those decisions. They’re a bit shallow and boring after a while. If you’re the kind of student that would study hours a night to get good grades, you’re probably going to pull your hair out slacking off. This is the perfect time to spend actually pursuing knowledge.

I know… Why pursue knowledge when you can veg out? That’s your natural thought but once you free this time up for a while, you’re going to feel slightly differently. You’ll likely find yourself curious about certain things. That means you’ll look them up. You might even start to study a few subjects completely unrelated to school.

The great thing about this pursuit is that it’s your curiosity driving you instead of your fear and guilt. You’re looking to learn things that you actually care about. That is how you actually try to learn something effectively. Instead of fighting to force yourself to remember something, you’ll find yourself just not forgetting it.

Making Your Distinction

The dreamer in me says, “never sacrifice knowledge for grades.” I believe that is probably the preferable way to leave. I sometimes wonder if I chose to drop out and focus on my own studies if I’d be better off. The practical part of me says, “You’re F’in nuts. Get good grades and play the game dumbass!”

If you’re the kind of student that focuses on actually learning the information your classes teach you then this can be an awfully strange distinction to make. It can take you a very long time to completely accept it. It can feel like knowledge and grades are linked but it’s a much looser connection than most students even imagine.

In fact, just look at some of the syllabuses for your class. Look for the section that shows a percentage of your grade for each aspect of the course (for example, 10% homework, 40% tests, etc.) Get a little creative and see if you can find any little tricks for improving your grades without increasing your effort. Or, at the very least, not affect your grade while decreasing your effort.

Think about the example I gave where 10% of your grade is based on homework. In that case, you could skip all your homework assignments and still get an A- in the course (90, depending on grading style.) Is that smart? I don’t know. Does the teacher give hundreds of hours of homework, maybe? That’s a class specific question. Usually the smart decision is a simple balance with most of your energy going towards the valuable factors. (If you’re going to skip anything in that example, homework probably is one of the better things to skip.)

Prioritization like that is one of the most powerful ways you can focus on improving your grades without increasing your knowledge.

Once you learn that skill remember this though. School doesn’t value knowledge. It values grades. Life (past college) doesn’t value grades, it values knowledge. Sure, getting good grades without more studying is a skill in itself but it has limited value outside of fields dealing with the government and contracts. (“Oh look… if we reallocate funds here it will be tax deductible.”) You want to have knowledge.

You don’t have to learn what school is teaching you but be damn sure to learn a little about something.

Do you want to know how to get good grades without the effort? That’s what this blog is about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives to learn more. Also, there are three ebooks in the sidebar that you might be interested in reading.

You Won't Believe How Much Speed Can Improve Your Studying

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The slow and steady approach is the most common approach to studying. People are taught from childhood to sit down with their textbooks and really try to digest the information. To this day, many teachers recommend you study hours a night for all of your classes. This insanity has been disproved time and time again empirically but they still insist it's the best way to study.

First of all, studying for long sessions of time is an instant killer of results. The efficiency of your studying decreases consistently over that period of time. By the end of your hour plus study session, your brain isn't going to be retaining a bit of information.

Second of all, no one wants to study for hours straight. That instantly means that 95% of people won't actually follow through with their studying. Sure, studying hours a night may work okay but it's not going to end up actually being hours a night. It's going to end up hours of studying whenever you can work up the discipline to actually start.

Third of all: Really, even if you sit down to study for hours. Your brain is not going to be thinking about studying 90% of that time. You'll spend a minute studying before getting distracted with stupid pointless thoughts like, “Ughhh I've gotta' be here another hour...” Actually, that's best case scenario. Worst case scenario you're going to end up daydreaming the study session away thinking about the person with the dreamy eyes in math class. You'll barely even read a page for hours.

Fourth of all: Phew... Maybe I should just move onto the better alternative.

How To Do Something “Impossible”

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There is a basic concept that's not true but I give it a whole lot of respect. It's the idea that you can't control your emotions. For the most part, it's true. You can, however, easily steer your emotions in the direction you want them to go. Your brain is a complex organ with more going on than you could possibly control. That's where focus and attention comes in. You may not control your focus completely but you can steer it in the right direction.

Just about every student struggles with focus at some point in their studying. Not being able to focus on studying is just as bad as not being able to discipline yourself to start studying. Hell, what's the point of pretending to study with a textbook in front of you (learning nothing) when you could be having fun (still learning nothing).

Focus is fundamentally based on emotions.

Your brain focuses on what is most important to it. Usually emotions define what is most important to the brain. Like I said before, for the most part, you can't control your emotions. You can only steer them.

When it comes to focus on studying, how can you steer your brain in that direction?

Speed Demon

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Have you ever watched the Winter Olympic sport called Skeleton?

It's pretty much a death wish where athletes ride head first down a iced path at over 80 mph. Imagine you're an athlete about to do the skeleton. (Or if you have a fast paced sport you love, imagine that.) In this situation, you don't have to come up with tricks to force yourself into focusing. You're going to focus. If you don't focus then there will be some serious consequences. Your brain isn't stupid. You're not going to be thinking about wanting a bagel or something while about to descend down the hill. You're going to put all of your attention on what you need to do.

Studying should be done kind of like that.

No, you don't need to go sledding with your textbook. My point is, you've got to change the way you think about studying. It is not a long and boring session. It is a quick and powerful moment. How do you do that?

Study fast. Read the words on the page faster than you're comfortable. Test yourself faster than you're comfortable. Answer questions so fast that you do it on instinct more than thinking. Set the goal of learning more information than you think you're capable of learning in a single short session.

Instantly, you can finagle your brain into a state of near complete focus on what you need to do. That is, as long as you don't blatantly cheat this system.

After you finish studying fast, you can't let yourself have a do over. Let's say you set a fifteen minute study session. If, after that fifteen minutes of high speed studying , you feel like you didn't get it all, DO NOT TRY TO STUDY MORE that night. It's over.

That's what makes this study strategy so powerful. At first, this is going to be painful because you're intentionally going to be failing to learn information but it's going to train your brain to focus better and better over time because, like in skeleton, you have only one chance to succeed or fail. Your brain will learn how to succeed after a while.

The Other Advantages

Speed's number one advantage in studying is focus. It's an effect that can improve your grades dramatically. That being said, speed has a whole slew of other advantages for studying.

First of all, you suddenly have much fewer excuses not to study. Since you're studying faster, you can study for less time. I often recommend less than 15 minutes a night. That means it's easier to start studying in the first place. You can tell yourself, “It's only 15 minutes.” It also means you're less likely to skip is based on other obligations. That means a more consistent and effective study session.

Since you'll no longer dread studying quite as much, it's also a more enjoyable experience.

The best part of all is that you'll have more time to do the things you enjoy. You'll spend less time worrying about getting good grades in your classes. That extra time can be used to improve your grades more or maybe just to slack off and enjoy your life a little.

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 archives for a ton of tricks to help you out. Also, be sure to check out the books if you own a kindle.