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.

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.

Students Guide To Time Management

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“That’s when I take 15 minutes to eat lunch before I get back to studying Spanish until 1:30 when I head to class…” At this point I realized my little task of trying to help him study better was becoming something a whole lot bigger. It was something that I’ve seen a number of students doing and it makes it blatantly obvious the problem isn’t the student’s studying at all.

Some students get this time management bug. It causes them to schedule every minute of their day as closely as possible. While this can cause some short term gains in grades, and efficiency it’s usually a long term mistake. The students that end up creating these impossible to follow schedules usually end up driving themselves crazy until they give up on their schedule.

Schedules are okay. A loose schedule that says, “I’ll do this, then this around this time, and then this if I have time,” is reasonable. A schedule that requires you to stop and start tasks on a particular minute (or even with a 5 minute window,) is ridiculous. Sure, they help manage your time. The problem is that they completely limit your ability to manage your own life.

The Problems With Schedules

You probably already know that “time management” is a popular subject in adult non-fiction. Thousands of books are written on the subject every year. Each one of those books has hundreds of interesting ideas to improve a person’s ability to manage their time. I’ve spent way too many hours reading books on that subject. Despite all the time I invested, I never could feel comfortable on a schedule.

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Schedules are impossible to follow while keeping life in order. If you only have 15 minutes to work on something that requires 20 minutes then you’re given a choice, to keep your schedule and not complete it or to complete it and ignore your schedule. If you ignore your schedule, what’s the point of having the schedule? If you don’t complete what you need to complete then you’re going to have to pay the consequences for keeping your schedule. It’s a painful decision that virtually every major scheduling system requires you to make.

To some extent, it is possible to “kind of” follow your schedule. By nudging and adjusting your schedule daily, you can keep everything in order while adjusting your schedule to fit. That being said, a good portion of your day becomes a process of Frankenstein monstering your schedule from the dead. (“Oh I chopped 15 minutes here so I better plop 15 minutes here later in the day.”)

After a few weeks of following a schedule in that way, most people are driven completely nuts. It’s a mechanical, boring, and painful experience after a few weeks. Humans are not machines. We can’t continuously do the same thing over and over again without some major consequences on our mind. We need variety. We need spontaneity.

When it comes to time management, schedules are not the way to go.

Do You Even Need Time Management?

This is a question I consider fundamental. Time management is useful when you have a whole lot of important things going on in your life. It is significantly less valuable (and possibly harmful) when you only have a few things in your life because instead of letting spontaneity spark productivity, you end up forcing productivity into little time slots.

More often than not, a person looking for time management advice doesn’t need time management advice, he or she needs elimination advice. If you’re worked to the point that you’re unable to manage your time automatically and without stress then you’d do better just giving up doing the things you really don’t care about. Before proceeding with time management, make a list of the big things you need to manage. If you could eliminate one or two of them then time management is not the best solution.

Also, time management is usually a short term solution. Sure, you can learn lessons that can be used throughout your life but strong time management can usually only be held in cycles of high productivity. This comes back to the schedule problem, the longer you keep the schedule, the more difficult it becomes to follow it.

Ensure that any time management you use is temporary to keep yourself motivated. For example, manage your time closely until you get your grades back up to B’s, or manage your time just for the month of finals. These are practical time management goals.

How To Manage Your Time?

Schedule.

Yes. After all that hatred of scheduling I discussed, it’s still the most powerful way to manage your time. That being said, by the previous discussion on time management, I’m hoping you’ll realize you don’t even need time management. You just need what the next section in this article is about. Until then, for all those of you that really need time management:

Set up a schedule and eliminate the unproductive activities in your day or limit them to a small period of time in your day. Considering this schedule is temporary, don’t try and make it practical to follow long term. Instead make it at least a little bit uncomfortable sounding to follow. Cut out as much pleasure time as possible. (Trust me, pleasure time sucks when it’s scheduled anyway.) The less time you spend enjoying yourself, the less time you need to keep the schedule.

For studying, make sure you don’t invest more than a half hour during each study session. The efficiency of learning decreases the longer you’re studying. It’s better to do 2 half hour sessions than 1 full hour session. If you’re studying by the recommendations in this blog regularly, an hour of studying is usually excessive in any number of sessions. That being said, it can be useful if you haven’t been keeping up with a class.

Better Than Time Management

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I hope you choose not to manage your time. It can work short term but it’s kind of like a drug. Eventually, you’re going to hit rock bottom and hate everything about your life. That can easily lead to significantly worse problems than not following a schedule in the first place. There is a much better alternative to most time management problems: Passion management.

Passion management is focusing your life on the things that really matter to you. Instead of trying to make time for everything. Make time for the things that are most important to you. Then let as much of the other stuff as possible go. Instead of trying to get perfect grades in every class, fight to get great grades in the classes you love and okay grades in everything else.

That idea can scare a good percentage of the students thinking about college. It’s usually an irrational fear though. If you’re competing to get into Harvard or MIT then you’re probably right to be concerned. The difference between a top notch, big name college and an average college is a big deal. If you’re worried about not getting into a particular smaller named college then it’s probably a waste of your time. (Most employers don’t know the difference between average universities.)

Anyways, grades are an almost impossible to compete with standard. Points often come down to impossible subjective standards and teacher quirks. Sure, it’s good to get good grades but great and top notch grades require an absurd and usually excessive amount of time investment for the return.

Instead of managing your time. Manage the things you care about. Whenever you realize you don’t really care about something (and you don’t have an objective reason to worry about it,) slide it down on your priorities and spend less time worrying about it. That leaves you with more time to think about the things that matter.

Doing this, you can virtually live your whole life without “managing your time.”

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

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.

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.

Where You Study Matters

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Student after student has been told the same piece of bad advice time and time again. The empirical studies on this subject have shown how stupid this piece of advice is but teachers, parents, and everyone else with a complete lack of creativity seems to spout it out like gospel. If you're looking to improve your grades they tell you to “work harder.”

I know, you probably don't think that sounds stupid at first thought but there have been repeated studies on this. Working harder is absolutely awesome in some aspects of life.  If you're looking to dig a hole in the ground, it helps to work harder. If you're looking to bang your head against a wall until you can use that hole as your own final resting place, working harder helps again. That being said, if you're trying to do something that requires more than a handful of brain cells, working harder is probably just going to screw you over.

A conscience effort to work harder almost always leads to increased stress hormones. Increased stress hormones are useful when you're running from a bear but they're detrimental if you need to think creatively or are trying to remember something. There are much more important factors that need to be considered when looking to improve your grades that don't run that same risk of stalling your study progress completely.

It's much more effective to focus on the mechanics of your studying to improve your grades. After that, you can worry about optimizing your “effort.” One of the  most important of those mechanics you need to worry about is the environment that you're studying in. (If you want to learn more about those other mechanics then be sure to check out this blogs archives.)

Your Personal Study Bubble

The human brain isn't designed to plop itself into isolation from the rest of the world to study. You can't sit down in the middle of Times Square with your textbook and expect to be capable of learning the information you need to learn effectively. Your brain is designed to be easily “distractable.”

Just look at it from an evolutionary perspective. Which brain is more likely to survive and breed, the one that hears a branch break and looks in that direction, or the one that thinks it's studying is more important than a potential predator? Of course, studying means nothing when a tiger can eat you alive. You've, thankfully, inherited that easily distracted brain.

With that, you need to learn to work with it instead of constantly trying to fight it. To help you work around it, I recommend thinking about your need for “your personal study bubble.”

You should only be studying while in your personal study bubble (or possibly in a group personal study bubble, but I've never been able to appreciate the benefits myself. I always felt unnatural studying in groups but if it works for you...)

In the ideal world, your personal study bubble would be a completely safe and quiet room without any distractions from your studying. That means no phone, no people, and virtually no entertainment short of the textbook. If you can make that happen then I highly recommend it. That being said, I've virtually never been able to make it happen for more than a day or two myself. People generally need to work at it.

Working Out The Kinks

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If you're not privileged to complete silence, complete seclusion, or even a safe place, you need to find a way to make the bubble work.

For example, if you don't have a completely silent place to study. A library may be an acceptable alternative. While it's not completely silent, the quiet voices and environment will reduce distractions. Let's say you don't even have a semi-quiet place to study.  Perhaps you can only study in your frat house or something. What do you do then? While leaving would be ideal, you may be able to block out the background noises with music (or white noise on repeat in your headphones.)

Students regularly complain to me that they struggle to study because of interruptions from other people. People say that their friends or parents “won't leave them alone!” This brings two thoughts to my mind.

How could they possibly interrupt you? Seriously, turn off your phone, lock the door, or run away into the forest if you have to. When I'm setting up to study, there is virtually no way someone could possibly interrupt me. That is the ideal scenario. (No... do not play the “emergencies” card. Emergencies don't happen every 10 minutes you've turned off your phone.)

Even when people find a way to interrupt my studying, they don't do it more than once or twice. Why not? If I'm interrupted, I start by politely (but harshly) asking them to value my study time and leave me alone (perhaps with an expletive if we're close.) If I'm interrupted again, I respond coldly and accept that they're not going to help me study so I need to get away from them to study. They're no longer to be trusted. The evidence has officially shown that they disregard requests to be alone to study. Accept the evidence and find a way around it. (Maybe a new place to study will help.)

By consciously changing your environment to be your personal study bubble, you do more than just improve your immediate study environment. You also signal to yourself, and other people, that you're in your study bubble and your damn well taking it seriously. That improves studying in more ways than you can count.

Constant Improvement

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The most important point you can get from this article is not the specific study recommendations. It's realizing the necessity for improving your study environment. Most students give up almost immediately when their study environment gets compromised. Maybe the library they're studying in gets filled with loud people. Instead of getting up and leaving, the student will sit there and stew in their frustration for an hour praying that the loud people will get run over by a truck. That strategy isn't helpful (especially since trucks rarely drive through libraries.)

Students always need to be looking to improve their study environment because the world is constantly changing, and, of course, there is always room for improved study efficiency. While it can seem virtually impossible to change your ability to focus, everyone has some control over their physical environment. Use it.

Do you want to know how to study in less than fifteen minutes a night? Check out the archives of this blog for details. (Also, be sure to check out my ebooks on Amazon. Check them out in the sidebar.)

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.

Cheating In School...

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Since I say so many controversial things on this blog, I kind of feel the need to go off the deep end and say to go cheat away on everything... but I won't. It's usually just a recipe for trouble. I personally have some experience on the supplier end of cheating. (I never cheated on my own work but I've helped others with getting their work done before.) There are a few reasons I learned that cheating is usually a really bad idea. It's not even a bad idea for the reasons you might think.

You'll Get Caught!?

The most common objection people use against cheating is that you're risking consequences if you cheat. If you get caught cheating, you can get a mark on your permanent record that will haunt you forever. That mark can cost you tons of options in the future. If you're in college then you're also putting yourself at serious risk of getting kicked out.

There are some risks involved with cheating but statistically speaking, you won't get caught.

Sure... If you're stupid enough to copy and paste an essay then you have a good chance of getting caught. If you take the time to thoroughly think out your cheating methods then you have virtually no chance of getting caught. Even if someone does suspect something, there are ways that you can be almost completely safe from getting proven guilty.

College professors deal with hundreds of students. For the most part, you aren't going to even get noticed. (Of course, in certain class sizes this is much less true.) Most essays don't go through the automated plagiarism tests. Even if they do, with 10 minutes of intelligent editing, you can ensure the essay won't even trigger it. Even on tests, most teachers don't have the resources to stop every attempt at cheating. With a little creativity, the odds of a student getting caught are one in a million.

Despite that, you still shouldn't be cheating.

Spark Of Genius?

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I used to sell essays to students that wanted to cheat. (Of course, as a safety precaution, I told them I didn't allow them to use essays for class submission but everyone knew the business...) One thing always drove me nuts about the students that would purchase essays.

Most of these students were below average to average students. I was known for writing extraordinary essays. (Yes... no one knows what hole that writing skill slithered off into...) These teachers got to read okay essay after okay essay from these students, until one day, they submit a really good one. Teacher's that actually read their students essays are not too dumb to realize this change.

A teacher will probably never take note of a C student getting a B or a B student getting an A but most students cheating aren't in that situation. Most students that end up cheating go from D's to A's overnight.

A good percentage of the time, the teacher knows something is wrong. They may be completely unable to prove anything. They may not even have enough to feel comfortable asking the student questions but in any average class size, the teacher can notice massive changes in a single student.

When you cheat once, you're setting yourself up to need to cheat more in the future. Even assuming the teacher never realizes that you cheated, that teacher is going to hold you to a higher standard when you show that you're capable of doing better. To keep up with those new standards, you're going to need to continue the lie even longer.

The whole problem just stacks on itself over time.

Digging The Hole Deeper

Students usually cheat for one of two reasons.

The first reason is that they lack confidence in their ability to learn or produce. When you're not confident about your ability to remember information, you're going to make it significantly harder to actually learn. This can be an unbelievably destructive mindset to get stuck in because it affects every area of your life.

The second reason people cheat is because they failed to prepare. Despite knowing the value of getting that good grade, they made poor decisions that left them with the option of failing or the option of cheating.

Both reasons are miserable excuses to cheat.

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When you're not confident in your ability to take a test and you cheat. You're admitting that you were right not to be confident. It's like betting against yourself. This just trains your brain to think it was right to stick with cheating. Your mind won't change and you'll just have to do it again next time to appease your lack of confidence.

When you failed to prepare for a test, cheating just encourages you not to prepare for tests in the future. Failing a test isn't the end of the world. No, you probably won't get kicked out of school. No, you won't be dying on the streets. You'll just have to suffer a little bit of embarrassment. As long as you use that embarrassment to prevent making the same mistake in the future, you'll be much better off just failing.

When you cheat, you're giving yourself an attractive out. That attractive out often just ends up being more of a trap. Sure, it wouldn't be so bad if you cheated one time in your life but it's probably not going to end up being one time because you're just giving yourself permission to do it in the future more.

The more you cheat, the more your gut repulsion to cheating will go away. That won't help at all.

You Don't Need It

You don't need to cheat.

There are ways that you can get very high scores on essays, tests, and just about anything else without investing hours and hours of your time. With less than a half hour of work a night, you can be one of the most successful students in your class. (Easily top 10% in most non-elite high schools and colleges.) Quite frankly, cheating is probably more work than it's worth.

In the same amount of time it takes you to write a good and thorough cheat sheet, you can learn everything you need to learn to pass the test. You just need to be using the right strategies. Once you learn these strategies, the idea of cheating almost sounds like a hard worker's approach to getting good grades. Why work hard when you can work smart? Learn these strategies and you'll be set.

Do you want to learn how to study in less than 15 minutes a night? Follow this blog and be sure to check out our kindle books listed in the side bar.