10 Minute Test Prep - An Alternative To Cramming

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To properly prepare for a test, you need to invest a lot of time and energy. There is no way that you can expect your best possible grade without investing at least a few hours into studying. That being said, many students make the mistake of trying to pack those hours of studying into a single cram session.

Cram sessions don't work. The brain isn't designed to lock pages and pages of information in place in a single sitting. Sure, you'll get some of the information but you could have invested half of the time to get the same amount of information if you spread it over a week. The worst part is, most students already know how horrible cram sessions are.

Even if we accept that cram sessions could help you memorize a little more information, at the end of a cram session (especially an all-nighter) no one is mentally prepared to take a test. Sleep deprivation steals all the extra points they got from learning all night. If students already understand this, why do they still do it?

Why People Cram?

Students know it doesn't work well but by the night before the test, what choice does anyone have. A week before the test it's easy to procrastinate. The night before the test it becomes impossible. So, in the last second people feel the need to “make up for” the studying that they didn't do. That's just not possible though. You can't make up for a weeks worth of studying in one night even if you have the study time. You also need the processing time.

People know that it doesn't work but still feel the need to try and assert some control. It's kind of like an experiment scientists regularly do on animals. The scientists would give the animals a button and randomly dispense food to them. When the animals get hungry they'd press the button hoping for food despite the button not having any connection to the food. The animals feel the need to do something (even if they can't prove it works.)

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Studying in one cram session is not effective. It's just a way people alleviate their guilt for not studying in the first place. After they get their poor grade back they can say, “Well, I tried my hardest.” Cram sessions are not really intended to help them learn. They're just there to convince themselves they're not completely lazy.

Truthfully, it's better not to cram. You'll do worse on the test. You'll hate yourself for it but you're significantly more likely to learn your lesson and do better next time. The few points extra on your single test score means nothing compared to the points you could be sacrificing by not learning your lesson.

But I Only Have One Night?!?

Okay, so what do you do when you only have one night left to prepare for a test and you didn't do anything to prepare for it? The average student would dig up the textbooks, get a pack of Redbulls, and start studying until their eyes bled. Do not fall into that trap. In fact, if you haven't taken the time to study at all so far then now is not the time to start.

When you pick up the textbooks, it's going to be difficult for you to put them down. There is no way you can significantly improve your grade at this point through bulk studying. You're going to need to work smart instead of hard.

When you're already late starting, the only thing you should do the night before the test is figure out what you should have studied. Look at any material your teacher gave you on the test and find the absolutely essential information that you should have learned. DO NOT TRY AND LEARN IT YET. Once you start trying to remember it you will stress and kill any chance of a good grade.

Your goal is to prepare for one final study session. It's not to actually study yet. You want to find the most important subject that you need to remember. Use everything that you know about the teacher to try and figure out the most valuable information you can learn. If the teacher typically offers more points for certain kinds of questions (essays, tricks, etc.) then take note of that.

There is nothing more that you can do that will help your grade significantly the night before the test. Just try to learn your lesson and sleep well.

10 Minute Test Prep

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The 10 minute test prep strategy is surprisingly powerful but should be used with caution. If you haven't read the rest of this article then do not expect great things from it. This is a last minute strategy. It will not provide you with a great grade. It will usually only provide a score as good as cramming.

Your final (and only) study session needs to take place 10 minutes before class time sitting at your desk. Human memory is good at memorizing things for the long term but it requires consistency to last. Memory is also good at memorizing things for the short term. While most test prep focuses on using long term memory (it's the safest way to go,) this strategy focuses on using short term memory.

10 minutes before the class you need to go over all of the information you know you will need for the test. If you prepared the night before then this should be easy. Focus on memorizing all of the essential information. To make this work, you can't be talking to your friends or daydreaming. You need to have all of your energy invested in learning the information on the page.

Do not start studying too early. Studying too early is just as risky as studying too late. If you start studying too early it becomes easy to lose a lot of information you're trying to remember. It's better to focus hard on the important information and not even try the rest due to time constraints.

When the test lands on your desk forget about the traditional test taking strategies. Go through the test a question at a time looking for the information you just learned to be useful. Answer anything that you just learned first. This information will be gone a half an hour later. Answer it while it's still fresh in your mind. Then go back and finish the rest of the test.

This will not provide you with the best grade you could get but it will put you just about where you would have been with an all-night cram session. The difference is you'll save a whole lot of time and you'll have a significantly larger chance of learning your lesson.

10 Minute A Night Test Prep?

While the 10 minutes single session may be a great alternative to the classic cram session, the most effective strategy is studying over a longer period for short 10 minute sessions. Studying doesn't have to be a long and painful process. In fact, it can be enjoyable once you start looking at it right. Most of the things that make learning enjoyable aren't taught in the classroom. If you want to learn a little about the best study strategies then be sure to check out my article on it. It can change the way you look at studying forever.

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Why You're Too Lazy To Study (And What To Do About It)

When a person calls another person lazy, it's usually intended as an insult. Despite the use of laziness as an insult, it's actually not a completely negative action. Being lazy is not being incapable of doing something. Being lazy is being unwilling to do something. This might seem like a minor change in wording but it's absolutely essential to understanding what's behind any bouts of laziness you're suffering through.

If you're too lazy to study then you're not incapable of studying. You're just unwilling to.

But how much do you really want to study? Logically, you may know that the education would be good for you but you most people still struggle with it. Where is this unwillingness coming from?

A History Of Lazy

Not doing stuff may seem unattractive to people today but think about this from an evolutionary perspective. Getting enough calories to survive today might be easy but throughout most of human evolution it was a major challenge. People would have to hunt for hours and hours a day to bring home enough food for survival. Doing anything other than something required for survival is a waste of energy in those situations.

(They didn't run marathons for fun because it would be a dangerous risk of resources. They didn't seek to become bodybuilders either. That may have helped them survive better but survival is the goal not “better” survival. Your education isn't survival. It's “better” survival.)

In fact, if you look at the leaders in many different species, laziness is a rather common trait. Alpha male lions would hunt for only a few hours a day. The rest of the day was used for resting. Any more hunting is excessive and unnecessarily dangerous.

I say this to remind you that your laziness comes from a long genetic line of laziness in the past. Laziness is a sign that you're surviving successfully. The world owes you a big congratulations in successfully setting your life up in a way that allows you to use less energy than you may have had to use.

That's not the whole story though...

You Have To Do It

The alpha's of a species can get away with laziness the most. That being said, you don't have to be an alpha to feel the same desire for the position. What are the real reasons that you want to study?

What are you really studying for? It's it for yourself? If you're mister or misses noble you might say, “I care about furthering my education,” but is that really it? Most people have much different true motivations.

Do you really just want to make your parents happy?

Do you really just want to make your teachers happy?

Do you really just want to make the colleges you apply for happy?

Do you feel like you have to study?

The vast majority of people that struggle with studying do not want to study for their own improvement. If you need to study because of some external motivation then you're always going to have to watch of for procrastination because you're subtly admitting that you're not in control of your own life.

You're not an alpha if you have to do something for someone else. The need to procrastinate is the urge to take back control of your own life. You may know it's temporary but it's your body's way of saying you're still in control.

That brings us to one of the best ways to end procrastination.

You Don't Have To Do It

As long as you think about studying as something that you “have to do.” You're going to struggle getting yourself to do it.

Studying is not something you have to do. You can get subpar grades, heck, most students could still pass all their courses. If you wanted to you could continue to not start studying. Every time you realize that you're putting off studying you should reassure yourself that you can not study anytime you want to not study (and mean it.) Studying is a choice.

We live in the most advanced time in history. If there was ever a time that a person could survive without doing anything that they didn't want to do, it's now. You never need to develop the discipline to farm a field. If you've read this far then you're probably smart enough to do alright in life putting in hardly any effort at all.

That being said, do you really only want part of what you're capable of? (It's okay if you do.)

There has never been more opportunities for you to focus your life on the things you love and do absolutely amazing things with them. Everyone has something that motivates them without even trying (even if it's something seemingly stupid like wandering the web.) You can do virtually anything you want compared to every other time in history.

Knowing that you can do or not do anything you want...

Why Do You Want To Study

In the dream world, everyone would study everything because they absolutely adore the subject. Math fans would spend their time studying math. History buffs would be studying history. Everyone would have their own little joys of learning. The world doesn't work quite so magically but everyone seems to want you to think it does.

You may have a favorite subject. If you do then you probably don't need too much help preparing for it. It just comes natural to you. Teachers tend to want you to feel that way about every subject. Just think about it. Why do math teachers teach math instead of English? It's usually because math is the subject they love. Teachers tend to love their subjects. That makes it difficult for them to understand how it feels to not love them. This leads them to struggling to provide advice when you're not as interested as they are.

You don't have to fall in love with a subject to study it. All you need is a few good reasons. If you're just looking to “pass the course” then, of course, you're going to struggle to get the motivation to study. You're never too lazy to study something you really love though. If, on the other hand, you want to make a career out of the information you're learning, studying will become easier. There are plenty of other reasons to learn subjects.

Every class could have a whole list of reasons. With English courses you could try to learn to communicate with other people more effectively. With Math courses, you could look at the problems like puzzles to solve. At the very least, in any course, you can admit that you're just trying to score a good grade for some external reason like parents or college. While it's not the most powerful motivation, admitting it in advance can help you beat procrastination.

You need to find a real reason that you want to study. It doesn't have to be noble. It doesn't have to be the reason your teachers would give it. It only has to be something that you can relate to.

So, the next time you find yourself struggling with procrastination, don't beat yourself up about it. You're just doing what your body was meant to do. You don't have study if you're too lazy to study. It's always your choice. When you know it's your choice you can find the reasons to study that are right for you.